Week 17: Game Engines

Game Engines are the core of a game, it deals with the technology part of a game due to the fact it works with animations, scripts, physics and rendering. Using a pre-existing game engines makes things a lot more cheaper for developers to work with as create a game engine from scratch will be extremely time consuming and not cost effective and if it’s already been made and works extremely well then it makes more sense to buy this little boxed game engine and make the art for it.

These Game engines also allow a game to be released on a range on consoles and operating systems thus maximizing market potential. There are also many other engines that work towards creating components like architecture, sound and trees (FMOD, SpeedTree). A game engine can have many uses and in some cases aren’t always used for games exclusively, it can be used for architectural purposes and demos. However the extremely highly sought after engines include the Unreal Engine, Doom and Havok however these engines being so popular and all, come with a hefty price tag, the cost for the Unreal engine is estimated to be more than $700,000, yet still cheaper then making your own and chances are it won’t be as polished and bug free as this engine.

So here’s a link of all the goodies that you’ll receive for blowing $700,00 (or £356,433)

http://www.devmaster.net/engines/engine_details.php?id=25

oh and for further reading into engines

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engines


The Warcraft 3 engine will set you back a nice $3,750,000 and it is an interesting note that World of Warcraft (<3) uses the same but improved engine. Having the game components and the engine separate means that it can be sold to other developers for well…a hell of a lot of money.

A growing trend in games, though mostly PC is to include level editors so that users can create their own custom content and levels such games include Unreal, Neverwinter Nights and perhaps the most popular user content heavy game; The Sims. Providing an editor of such adds a different and more create aspect of playing a game and will hold the interest of a player for longer.