Unit 70

Unit 70: Computer Game Engines

A game engine  is a bit of software that is the main base of the game that runs the sounds and the graphics using code nearly every game uses a game engine but some engines are not free for the public to use as they are private to a company all game engines are different but all do the same thing run games. some people use game engines to create mods for games and are mainly created by the public. there are some games that dont run off game engines but they have many problems. the game engine over all puts together environments, characters, props, sounds, ai and physics.

a physics engine is the part of the game engine that runs the animations body dynamics and fluid dynamics in a game.

a sound engine is the part of the game engine that runs the sounds in the game but when they are needed this can be music or sound fx

a graphics engine is the part of the game engine that draws the meshes of a game which can be characters or interact able objects and many more.

the AI control's the npcs of a game the way they move act and interact with there surroundings.

all of these work together to make the game run and create a experience for people but some game engine will run them in different ways.









examples of closed game engines.




FROSTBITE

the frostbite game engine is the engine used and owned by DICE the games made on the frostbite are mainly for consoles and pc the games mainly made on the frostbite engine are either first person shooter or racing

frostbite 1

this is the first version of the frostbite engine which ran battlefield bad company which was the first game made using frostbite but the only to use frostbite 1. this version ran games for PlayStation 3 and xbox 360.
battlefield bad company

frostbite 1.5

this was the second version of the frostbite engine to run games for pc aswell as PlayStation and xbox and also brought battlefield bad company 2 along with a few other games.
battlefield bad company 2

frostbite 2
this was the third version of the frostbite which brought the first need for speed powered by the frostbite engine and the updated battlefield 3 with better graphics.

battlefield 3

frostbite 3
this is the latest version of frostbite which has most of the dice games running off it. including battlefield 4 and 1 and the newer need for speed.

battlefield 4

battlefield 1

R.A.G.E




R.A.G.E (rockstar advanced game engine) is used by the company rockstar games and is a closed game engine which has many games that have been created on it. The engine has been used on several different platforms such as Microsoft Windows, Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and the Xbox One.
gta iv

gta v

CREATION



this is the game engine for Bethesda games studios it is for 3D games and is based on the game bryo engine the game made on this engine are mainly role play games like fallout 4 or skyrim this game engine was developed after Bethesda found that the game bryo engine was abit outdated with there graphics the creation engine allows more detail on distant objects. this engine has a upgraded ai and many other features also is the one of the only game engines that has its on mod kit which is known as creation kit. this tool can be used to crreate any thing to add to the game. there has only been two games that have been made on the creation engine which are fallout 4 and The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim.

fallout 4

the elder scrolls v skyrim

cryengine


the cryengine is desgined and used by devleopers called crytek which houses alot of game that people play on console for example it housed the first generation of the far cry franchise. the cryengine has many versions of which improve the speed of the engines frame rate grapics and phyisics engine. cryengine makes games for mobile console and pc.

cryengine 1

the cryengine was used to create the first far cry fps game but in the first version of the game engine they udated a fw features before releasing the second which was the garphics and HDR lighting.

cry engine 2

CryEngine 2 is used in Crytek's game Crysis, and an updated version in Crysis Warhead, a side story of Crysis there wasnt much that changed in this version apart from a few bugs and fixes.

cryengine 3 and 4
in the third version of the engine brought light illumination and mod tool to create maps for crysis 2 crytek realeased a free version of the game engine which was for modding perposes for crysis 2.
going into cry engine 4 added a development kit for modders.

cryengine 5

cryengine 5 was a small update to the game engine it only added the vr feature to the game engine.

free to use game engines

unreal
the unreal game engin was created by epic games in 1998 although it was created for first person games people have made quite a variaty of game the code is witten in C++ and the engine is used by many game developers today. this game engine has may versions that have been realsed and the lates is unreal 4

unreal 1
the first generation Unreal Engine integrated rendering, collision detection, AI, visibility, networking, scripting, and file system management into one complete engine.From the start, the engine was designed in a way to be extensible and improved over multiple generations of games, as creator and founder of Epic Games Tim Sweeney stated in a 1998 interview with magazine Maximum PC.

unreal 2

the second version of the unreal engine was released in 2002 this generation saw the core code and rendering engine completely re-written. UE2.5, an update to the original version of UE2, improved rendering performance and added vehicles physics, a particle system editor for UnrealEd, and 64-bit support inUnreal Tournament 2004. A specialized version of UE2.5 called UE2X was used for Unreal Championship 2: The Liandri Conflict on the original Xbox platform.




unreal 3
Unreal Engine 3 was designed to take advantage of fully programmable shader hardware All lighting calculations were done per-pixel, instead of per-vertex. Unreal Engine 3 supports a gamma-correct high-dynamic range renderer. the first realesed console game was gears of war.

unreal development kit
udk was realesed to the public as a open game engine and in December 2010 UDK release added support for creating iOS games and apps. As of the September 2011 release, iOS, OS X and Windows platforms all support UDK-created games.


unreal 4
unreal 4 was revealed to limited people at a comfrence in 2012 but the engine wasnt open to the public till 2016 this version has better coding system which they call blueprints and a better redering preformance.

game maker
this is a game engine that is good for making 2d games and features a form of codeing called drag and drop which is an easyer way of coding for people that cant do script. all of your objects are organized in a resorce tree. there are many versions of this engine but the most of the changes are a few new features but alot of bug fixes. the game engine was orriginaly named animo when it was first realesed in 1991

unity




this is the leading game engine for mobile games and pc's Unity allows specification of texture compression and resolution settings for each platform that the game engine supports. the game engine feature loads of new features like a good frame rate, rendering power and animation edits.
unity has released 5 major versions of the game engine each improving the quality of the graphics and the physics engine the current one used today is the unity 5 engine. unity makes games for multiple platforms which include console, pc's, mobile and websites. unity deals with multiple licences which control mainly the outputting of the game you created.

all the latest versions of these game engines have good physics engines and graphics support but some are better than others the game engines that are free to use for example unity and unreal are quite good for running graphics and phyisics but the ones that you cant use which are rage and frostbite are more advanced for the companys to make better games which include alot of photorealistc art with most of the frostbite games but the rage and frostbite engine do have their faults for example because they both make high quality games they make multiplayer which the push the boundary with the amount of people which makes the good parts of the engine run abit bad however unity and unreal uses all of its features to improve players experience.

unreal and unity are very similar. unity was announced the best game engine 2012 but unreal had upend there game as they brought out unreal 4 they both are quite good with rendering and physics but unreal is slowly becoming better as they update there engine both of these are becoming more advanced than game maker and are about as good as cryengine and creation.

frostbite and rage are two advanced engines with different aproches to games where frostbite do photorealisic but rage do the same but abit less detail to their games. frostbite run graphics alot better as you can see in the game battlefield with is world destruction and effects left behind by it but rage has better Artificial intelligence as seen in gta v with the interaction between npc's and the player. both of these engines are about on the same level with creating fantastic.