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.