Engine?

[mangoluvr]

Whenever I read a review about a game, most of them refer to a specific engine.............."This game is based on the quake3 engine or this game is based on the unreal engine" My question is, what is an engine? is it the complex programming or what? if so, what part of the programming is considered the engine?

 

[RossGr]

At the heart of every game is the "engine" the bit of code (yes softwear) that deterimines the main charateristics of the game. So all games that use the Unreal engine are simply Unreal with different graphics, maps and weapons set. How the damage done by a weapon is computed is the same, how movement and character interaction works is the same. Once you are familiar with the game engine any of the games which use that engine should be easy to pick up and play.

 

[dejitaru]

Making a game from an existing engine would take much less time and money than to program a new engine. It also ensures great compatibility, stability, and portability.

 

[Shalmanese]

the engine handles the HOW of the game, the developer handles the WHAT. basically, the developer can create a grenade or a gun or a player and not worry about how to make them behave realisitically since the engine does that for you. Engines are hard because not only do they have to be good, they have to be FAST. Like seriously sh*t kicking fast.

 

[Cogman]

this is where you run into the OpenGL vs. DirectX. Both are API's that interact with the Video cards hardware to have it do Specific things. DirectX provides More API's, is easier to begin programing with, and, in some cases, is faster. HOWEVER, OpenGL can go cross platform (I.E. You can have a game that runs in Windows Easily converted to Linux as the API's are called the same). Most engines support OpenGL and DirectX.

 

[FuriousBroccoli]

Actually, relatively few engines support *both* OGL and D3D. Graphics technology is getting more and more complicated, and thus it's increasingly rare to see a game that supports both, for several reasons:

*Because of the big differencies in the APIs; register combiners v pixel shaders for example.
*Because of the universal support for both OGL and D3D on video cards; Why spend ages coding for both when all modern graphics drivers support both! Just pick the best one for the job and use it. This isn't like the 3dfx days.
*Because of the differences in the feature sets; OGL is bare bones 3D, DX/D3D can do many many times as many things, so maintaining API compatibility could be very costly if it causes you to lose thousands of lines of support code.