Game Engines

Economising on game engines by reusing and adapting them to produce different games is common practise in the industry. Once in a while a developer may feel that they want to develop their own engine as none of the available ones suit their needs. This is all good and well except this is time consuming and costly. However, once made it can be licensed to other developers recovering some of the original costs.

When choosing which game engine to use, it is worth considering all your available options. The engine provides the core functions of a game including - graphics, sound, scripting, physics etc. The best way to choose an engine would be to look at what games it has produced in the past, outline the key functions which make each engine unique and to then compare this with key requirements identified in the game you are making.

An example of this principle would be if you are making a first person shooter then it would be unwise to use a game engine developed for and primarily used for platform games. That isn't to say you should never consider it just that certain engines are designed from the ground up with different genres in mind.

FPS game engines have been notable for their continuous increase in technical power over the years and a common feature of modern engines is the photo realism that is now achievable. Many companies created engines years ago and simply upgrade them and release a new version as new technologies become available. Id tech 6 has been spoken about despite id tech 5 literally only surfacing in 2010. This is due to the developer planning to implement such features as mixing ray tracing and raster graphics once the hardware becomes available to do it.

The engine favored by this course is the UDK (free version of the unreal 3 engine) and from what i read i have gleaned that it's rather popular! Although i have yet to find anything detailing exactly why it's just so damn successful i can at least speculate for myself having just checked out some examples of games made using it. It looks to me to be incredibly versatile despite being geared mainly towards third and first person shooters. A game example on the Unreal site is called 'whizzle' which is a funny little 2d underwater type game. The graphics are awesome - it's that 3d 2d which is always good. Watching the interview with the developer below also gave the strong impression that it is easy to use and allows developers to focus on designing the game rather than the technical side of things.

I am willing to believe that it must be easy to use if it's been ripped apart and used for all sorts of games because of course those that have done this could have just used a different engine tailored nearer to their needs. But no, they have used Unreal and for the life of me i can only assume that is because it is versatile and easy to use as i have previously mentioned.

I guess I'll find out in semester 2. Hopefully i'll can report back positive findings. From everything I've heard it sounds to be quite accessible so hopefully i pick it up fast!!

Watch this space.