Game Engines :Unit 70

Game Engines

The definition:

A game engine is what powers what you see inside a game. Whether it is a building you see or an enemy what you face. One of the major things a game engine will do is rendering. Rendering controls what you see on an image (such as a rock texture). The rendering engine also controls lighting and shading. Aside from these a game engine is in charge of sounds, physics and AI however these are split into different areas within the actual game engine itself.

                        A screen shot of Vampyr which is being released on the unreal engine 4

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HtviMtk0OXg

This is a video of a simulator called BeamNG it has one of the best physics engines out so far.

The difference between open and closed game engines

Many game engines are available to download and use to make your own games for example the unreal engine. However there are also many where they’re impossible to use unless you are an employee. A famous example for this would the Creation engine which is used to make Elder scrolls: Skyrim and fallout 4

The unreal engine 4 is a recently developed engine and it promises to bring some very nice visual effects into new games. This engine has a very large emphasis on lighting effects. The upcoming game “vampyr” shows this. As you can see in the image (first page) this looks to be a deeply atmospheric game and the lighting greatly adds to the effects. I believe that this specific game engine may be used for photorealistic games to greater effect than what could be achieved in an exaggerated or any other style. (This is my opinion). I feel this way because I believe that with a photorealistic game it tests the capabilities of the game engine more. A few games what will be released using this engine will be Dead Island 2, Gears of war 4. This game engine works well with Maya as you can import your models very easily into it.

This is a screenshot of the new unreal tournament game using the unreal engine 4

The Rage engine is a closed game engine only Rockstar employees can use this. It was used to make the grand theft auto games (from grand theft auto 4 onwards) and Red Dead Redemption. This engine has been used on the Xbox 360, Xbox one, PS3, PS4, Nintendo wii and PC.  This game engine is primarily used for photo realistic games. Rockstar use a separate engine for some other parts of their games. For example for their character animations they use the open source “bullet” engine

A screenshot of Grand theft auto 5 on the PC

Bioware has been in use since 1995 and has been used to create a multitude of games since then including the effect series (except mass effect Andromeda) and the dragon age series (additionally Star wars the old republic and the baldur’s gate series).  Since 2007 EA own this engine. This made Bioware a subsidiary company (a company owned by another company). Many of the games combine the art styles of photorealistic and exaggerated. Typically this game engine is used in RPG games

Dragon age inquisition screenshot

CryEngine is a game engine created by Crytek and it has been used to create games such as Crysis, the first far cry game and a modified version of CryEngine has been used to create the game Star citizen. In 2015 Cryengine was licenced to amazon ad in February 2016 amazon released the Amazon lumberyard (it’s a reworked Cryengine). The cryengine has mainly been used to create photo realistic games. The first crisis game (released in 2007) was one of best looking games (in terms of graphics) out at that time and was still considered a good looking game at the end of the xbox 360, and pa3 generation of consoles.

A screenshot of the first crysis games

(gamemaker)

Gamemaker has been in use since 1999 and has been widely used to introduce people into creating games. Since this is mainly designed for novices, you don’t need any skill or experience with programming. In order to make more complex coding there are also many tutorials to guide you into using the coding effectively. Gamemaker is primarily used for making 2d pixelated games, however it is possible to make a 3d game.

This is a screenshot of a game made in Gamermaker

Unity is an open source game engine. It has seen use on PC, consoles, Mobile and web games. One of the reasons Unity is so popular is because of its ability to be used on many gaming platforms. Unity has been used since 2006 and the majority of mobile games now use unity because of its availability which greatly adds to its popularity since at this current moment mobile games is the most popular gaming platform. Unity earns its money by having you have to buy some of the features but the majority of the features are free to use.

This is a screenshot of a game made in Unity

This game engine was used for the creation of Witcher 2 and Witcher 3. This particular game engine was designed specifically for these games by the CD projekt red. The witcher games are photo realistic. When playing the games you would be able to tell that the objects in the game render at a further distance than most other games. One of the things I enjoy most with game engine is the hair animations and facial expressions in the witcher games.

A screenshot of witcher 3