Game Engines
By Alex Toner
What are Game Engines?
We can compare the game engine car engine, you know, the engine is racing heart, determines the car's performance and stability, and speed of the car, steering feel is directly related to these indicators and drivers are based on the engine Up.
Game too, players experience the story content, levels, art, music, and other operations are controlled directly by the game engine, it plays the role of an engine of the midfield, the game all the elements bundled together, directing them to the background while orderly work. Simply put, the engine is the "main program is used to control all functions of the game, from the relative position of the collision calculation, physical systems and objects, to accept the player's input, as well as the correct volume of output sound, and so on
2D Game Engines
2D game engines are used to create 2D games across a range of platforms but wouldn’t include touch mechanics for these games, these would be purely for button games, like for PC or maybe Xbox Arcade. To add touch for mobile games, you would have to use a mobile game engine. These types of games can be found on consoles, mobile devices and on the internet. These game engines will always incorporate flat images, also known as sprites. Now due to the style of the engine everything in 2D always tends to be fairly simple. Controls are limited to a few keyboard controls or mouse movement, AI characters in a game tend to be easy and the design just revolves around being a simple game.
3D Game Engines
3D game engines are the most complicated game engines currently available at the moment, they're mostly used for the development of triple A titles. With the evolution of technology ever expanding, anything is achievable within the limitations of a 3D environment. 3D game engines are by far the most complex to use and this is down to the amount of factors there are for a single action. For example, you might be importing a mesh into the 3D space. That might be simple on a 2D engine like Game Maker where you only have to worry about 2 dimensions but for 3D, you have to worry about more dimensions. This is just one of the factors that differs the two engines; 2D and 3D.
The assets tend to require a lot more talent and skill to pull off and most professional companies will only take on staff with experience of creating the assets, such as the 3D animation of a character or the model of a car. A lot more time is also spent creating a 3D game, meaning the development will be dramatically increased.
Mobile Game Engines
Mobile game engines are the newest engines to shed light in the industry. They exist to incorporate senses into games, such as touch for smartphone games. They make great use of the technology in the device, such as tilting actions to create controls for the game. This is a factor for mobile game engines, as they rely on other ways to control aspects of games. You could tilt your tablet forward and that could be the control for acceleration for a car or even the speed you're travelling whilst running.
While the games created in these engines are fairly simple to create with assets such as animations and sounds, it becomes a lot more challenging when it comes to controls. Although in these engines, the common controls in mobile games are pre-made like walking and jumping, however if you wanted to create a new mechanic or control for a game, you would have to use the devices technology and write the code/script for yourself.
History of Game Engines
Before game engines, games were typically written as singular entities: a game for the Atari 2600, for example, had to be designed from the bottom up to make optimal use of the display hardware—this core display routine is today called the kernel by retro developers. Other platforms had more leeway, but even when the display was not a concern, memory constraints usually sabotaged attempts to create the data-heavy design that an engine needs.
Unreal was another great game engine that was created in history of the gameing industry. Widely known for its own Unreal and Tournament games, it started off as strictly a FPS game engine. Eventually it became the base of many RPG titles, including Mass Effect. It was also one of the popular game engines among the modding community, it was the first game engine to be packaged with a map editor alongside the game itself, In which it allowed the community to show their creativity and create their unique custom levels.
The final game engine I will mention is the Frostbite engine. With the most recent one, Frostbite 3, coming into play with Battlefield 4, I find it will be another benchmark for game engines to come. Concentrating on the physics, Frostbite 3's most popular feature is its destruction realism. The effects and detail that comes along with this engine is outstandingly amazing and is one of the best game engines that exist currently.