What Is a Game Engine?

The game engine refers to the core components of some edited computer game systems or some interactive real-time graphics applications. These systems provide game designers with all the tools they need to write games. The goal is to allow game designers to easily and quickly create games without having to start from scratch. Most support multiple operating platforms, such as Linux, Mac OS X, and Microsoft Windows. The game engine includes the following systems: a rendering engine (that is, a "renderer", which includes a two-dimensional image engine and a three-dimensional image engine), a physics engine, a collision detection system, a sound effect, a script engine, computer animation, artificial intelligence, a network engine, and scene management. ^[1]

Game Engine

The game engine refers to the core components of some edited computer game systems or some interactive real-time graphics applications. These systems are

It can be seen that the engine is not mysterious, whether it is a 2D game or

A game engine is a collection of code (instructions) designed for a machine running a certain type of game that can be recognized by the machine. It acts like an engine and controls the operation of the game. A game can be divided into two parts: game engine and game resources. Game resources include images, sounds, animations, etc. A formula is: game = engine (program code) + resources (images, sounds, animations, etc.). The game engine calls these resources sequentially according to the requirements of the game design.

There are commercial and open source game engines. Commercial game engines need to pay a certain fee to use. Open source game engines can use the source code to develop their own games.

The cost of a commercial game engine generally consists of one or more of the following:

(1) Basic expenses

When an engine developer purchases an engine, the price may vary depending on the version of the engine.

(2) Royalty based on the number of games sold.

Especially those middleware companies, such as: EPIC and ZerodinGames, the engine costs are paid in two ways: one is the relatively low cost of purchasing the engine plus the copyright fee for the number of products you sell (online games are based on monthly games Calculated by income, it is generally 5% to 10% of total revenue, and the share will be different according to different license fees), and the other is a higher purchase cost of the engine without paying additional copyright fees.

(3) The cost of supporting multi-platform functions.

The more platforms a game wants to support, the more you have to pay.

(4) Charge based on developer.

Some engine creators require companies that purchase engines to pay based on the number of developers who will use this engine development environment.

(5) The cost of engine updates or services.

For example: ZerodinGames purchase cost of the Zerodin engine is approximately $ 350,000 to $ 700,000, but if you want to continue to get the updated technology of the engine in the future, you will need to pay $ 50,000 to $ 100,000 annually for new technology after the engine update.

(6) Requires the support of specific expensive other software.

For example KA3D requires very expensive 3D

The 3d game engine should be a module that integrates various algorithms including 3d graphics and provides a convenient SDK interface to facilitate others to develop games on this basis.

Excellent 3d game engine. Complex graphics algorithms are stably and efficiently packaged inside the module, and a simple and effective SDK interface is provided to the outside. People can

Well-known MMOG dedicated commercial engines are:

EA DICE's Frost Engine, Frost 2 Engine, Frost 3 Engine. (Battlefield series games use this engine)

BigWorld's BigWorld engine.

Emergent's Gamebryo engine.

EPIC's Unreal Engine, Unreal Engine 2, Unreal Engine 3, and Unreal Engine 4.

Crytek's Cry Engine 1 engine, Cry Engine 2 engine and Cry Engine 3 engine. (Island Crisis Series, Frontline of War, etc.)

Torage 3D engine from Garage Games.

Hero's Hero Engine.

Beijing Target Software's OverMax engine.

Quantumas engine (Chinese development)

Valve's Source Engine

IW engine from Infinity Ward Studio. (Among them are IW 2.0, IW 3.0, IW 4.0, and IW 5.0 versions. The famous Call of Duty series game works adopt this engine, and the Chinese translation is endless engine )

Phantom game engine (domestic, supports PC, IOS, Android 3D and 2D game development, also supports Web2D), supports programming languages: C ++, Lua, VB, C #, Easy Language, Objective C, javascript.

Sohu Changyou's Blackfire Engine

Athena Engine of Perfect World

Unity3D engine developed by Unity Technologies

Orochi 4 (Mizuchi graphics engine) of SiliconStudio, Japan (the engine used by the square-enix company Gunslinger Stratos series) ^[3]

Luminous (Luminous Engine) from Japan Square Enix (the engine used in Final Fantasy 15) ^[4]

Croatian Croteam s Serious engine (representing the game Hero Sam, Hero Sam: Second Encounter), and the Serious II engine (representing the game Hero Sam 2)