game engines

What is a Game Engine?

Game engines are used to create games, they are essentially used to streamline the process the making of games by having certain parts of the code saved automatically for example the gravity is saved within the physics engine so it’s easier to access because gravity is used in allot of games so it is useful to not have to rewrite the code over and over this also takes the time down that it takes to make a game, this is useful because of how much content is expected in a modern game, it also makes it allot easier to port games onto other platforms like Xbox and PC.

Components of Game Engines

-          Main game programme
      This is how the actual game logic is implemented through code or other means depending on the game engine, for example Game Maker has a drag and drop system and unreal uses Blueprint however in both you can still use code to some degree

-          Rendering engine
      A rendering engine generates 3D graphics for the game so the graphics don’t have to be rendered by the CPU directly and is instead rendered on one or multiple rendering applications

Graphic Rendering

Graphic rendering is the process of applying textures or 2D or 3D models it is done by the information in the scene file which holds the geometry, viewpoint, texture, lighting, and shading information then a rendering software takes the information and applies it to the model.

Artificial Intelligence

Artificial intelligence is when an entity in a game tries to mimic thought however all the possible actions the entity can perform have been entered into the game by the game developer for example the game developer will say when the entity sees the player character it will start following the player but to the player it looks like the entity has free will.

Examples of game engines

There are two main types of game engine, open source like the unreal engine or closed like the rage engine.

Unreal engine

Unreal is an example of an open source game engine allowing anyone to use it to make games it has had 5 versions: unreal 1, unreal 2, unreal 3, unreal development kit (UDK) and unreal 4. UDK was made as an open source version of unreal 3 because that was only accessible to people with licences so they made UDK as a free version, unreal 4 is accessible to everyone as well. The way it makes money is by taking 5% of the profits made by any game made with the engine, this is the first time the game engine was essentially free to use and publish on.

R.A.G.E

The rage engine stands for “rockstar advanced game engine” and is an example of a closed game engine, it belongs to rockstar so only people who work for them can use the engine, and it includes all the basic things found in rockstar games for example if the developers wanted to make a car act like something from GTA V they can just import it in via the game engine.

Game Maker

Game maker is an open source game engine which is good for first time game developers as it uses a feature called “drag and drop” so the basics of a game can be done by dragging certain bits of code in so the developer doesn’t need to add much code or none if the game is very basic also it cannot make 3D games so isn’t used by AAA companies however some notable games have been made on game maker for example: spelunky, undertale and downwell.

Cry engine

Cry engine was developed by crytek and has been used in all of crytek’s titles, it is also open to publishers under crytek’s licence, it can be free or paid for to get more features, for example amazon paid $50-$70 million in order to develop the engine itself into something called Amazon Lumberyard.

write up for sound implementation for a game

I was tasked with creating sounds for a game i started with writing a plan:

Sound 1: footstep sound

Record someone walking quite heavily.

Edit as to cut out only two of the footstep sounds and keep them on a loop.

When implementing into the game make the sound play at all of the times the walking button is pressed.

Sound 2: gunshot sound

Record someone slamming their hand on a table.

Edit in an echo.

When implementing into the game make it sound one when the fire button is pressed.

Sound 3: reloading sound

Record a door latch being opened.

Edit it so it plays slowed down and a lot louder, then mix in with the gunshot sound.

Music: Dark, Gothic and Depressing. Using organ, violin and drum noises, I will record it using garage band and a keyboard with different musical overlays.

then we went out with a recorder pack and a shotgun microphone this was because I wanted to make sure the sounds were of a high enough quality because the game I’m making will be on PC so the quality needs to be of a high enough quality, the sounds I used was someone slamming their hand on a table to make the sound of a gunshot, a door being opened for the sound of a gun reloading and someone stomping to make the sound of footsteps, I used audacity for the editing and the features I used were copy and paste, normalize, sound level editor and change speed. I learned how to implement the sounds into the game as I did not know how to before so there was things I had to learn like how to make the sounds not overlap or how to make the sounds not loop.

In conclusion recording the sounds for my game I had to consider lots of different things for example recording equipment, time management, editing techniques and implementation of sounds into a game. We had to choose the method we would use for recording very carefully for example if we were making a phone game we could use a Dictaphone or even our own phones to record the sound as the quality will be compressed anyway in order to keep the size of the game down due to the limited storage on phones compared to PCs and consoles, however if we were to be making a game for a console we would have to use something like a shotgun mic and a recorder pack in order to make the sound as high quality as possible, console or PC games usually gather more income compared to mobile games so using potentially more money on sound is worthwhile because PC games are usually worth more than phone games. Unfortunately I could not implement any music due to technical difficulties.

video of game play:

space invaders game, 26/01/2016

creating the player sprite:

I started with a 32 by 32 grid and drew an upside down T shape, and coloured it in grey I added some detail in the colours grey, blue, red and green.

using game maker I removed the white background and created a sprite for when the player shoots and all the colours light up.


Update:

i replaced the sprite with one of a man holding a gun because the nature of the game has changed from space invaders to a zombie survival game.

this video highlights how the player works in the game and how the two sprites are implemented

Enemies:

the enemies in the game are zombies that walk towards the player until they are shot or they get to the other end of the screen this video shows off the shooting mechanics, the walking animation as well as the death animation