We're group of students at DigiPen Institute of Technology who are passionate about the technology that drives games. Our goal is to create meaningful and in. Game Engines What is a game engine?. A game engine is the core software component of a computer or video game or other interactive application with real-time graphics (taken from Wikipedia). The term “game engine” was coined in the mid-1990s due to the development of first.
Without guts, there can be no glory: from Anvil to Unreal.
By Chris Stead Webster's Dictionary defines a 'game engine' as 'the word you've entered isn't in the dictionary,' but if it were to define it, it would probably explain that a game engine is used as the overall architecture to develop and run a game – it gives developers tools to create the disparate elements of a videogame and then pull them together to create a functioning whole. From the renderer to the physics system, sound architecture, scripting, AI and networking, game engines either natively power every aspect of a game, or they allow other specialised middleware to slot into the game's framework. In any case, game engines are the workhorses of modern videogame development.
As you'd expect, there are plenty of engines out there, from very well-known names like Quake and Unreal, that developers and publishers can license at considerable expense, through to in-house proprietary engines created by studios specifically for their own titles.
Over the following pages we'll take you through the very best engines in next-gen gaming. These are the big guns, proudly championed by their creators and delivering to you the finest gaming experiences on the planet. These are what turn good creative ideas into great gameplay.
Note: It is important to understand that not all developers are vocal about their game engines and instead play their cards close to their chests. Quite a few of the in-house engines have no public personality and thus are not included on this list. Great games to run off such engines include Metal Gear Solid 4, FIFA and God of War III.
RAGE Engine
As Seen In: Rockstar Presents Table Tennis, GTA IV + Episodes, Midnight Club: Los Angeles, Red Dead Redemption, L.A. Noire (rumoured)
GTA III, Vice City, San Andreas and Bully, for all their awesomeness, did not run off publisher Rockstar's own tech, but were instead facilitated by Criterion's Renderware engine. Yet it was the less commercial Red Dead Revolver that made up the publisher's mind to pursue its own middleware solution for the next generation. With dreams of a grand sequel that no available engine could facilitate, Rockstar San Diego began work on RAGE (Rockstar Advanced Game Engine) in 2004 with a view to Red Dead Redemption. And according to our conversations with the developer, the three games already released this generation using RAGE were all warming-up to this epic 2010 release.
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Click here to see just how stunning Red Dead Redemption looks. RAGE's strengths are many. Its ability to handle large streaming worlds, complex A.I. arrangements, weather effects, fast network code and a multitude of gameplay styles will be obvious to anyone who has played GTA IV. It's also incredibly welcoming of partner middleware. Euphoria from NaturalMotion, a dynamic animation engine, bonded with RAGE like they'd been split at birth (a feat LucasArts were unable to achieve with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed), as did the Bullet physics engine from Erwin Coumans. And it is still so young: accurate physics, ecosystem A.I. and improved draw distance are just some of the improvements we'll see in RAGE over the coming months.
CryENGINE
As Seen In: Far Cry, Crysis, Crysis Warhead, Crysis 2, Aion: Tower of Eternity
It didn't take long for the German developer Crytek to make a name for itself. The developer's 2004 debut game, Far Cry, was nothing short of a revelation. While the world had waited expectedly for Half-life 2, Doom 3 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. to usher in a new generation of PC gaming, Crytek beat them all to the punch with a stunning, tropical set FPS game powered by its own brilliant CryENGINE. Three years later it did it again, when Crysis – running on CryENGINE 2 – set a new standard for gaming visuals. For its next outing, Crysis 2, Crytek is bringing the middleware to consoles with the new CryENGINE 3.
Click here to see the CryENGINE 3 GDC demo. According to Crytek, 'CryENGINE 3 is the first Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, MMO, DX9 and DX10 all-in-one game development solution that is next-gen ready – with scalable computation and graphics technologies.' Unlike many of its competitors, this engine does not need additional support from niche third-party middleware and can handle its own physics, sound and animations, as well as produce the outstanding visuals for which Crytek's games are famed. If Crytek's own games weren't reason enough to include the CryENGINE on this list, then the fact that the developer is doing all it can to push CryENGINE 3 as a middleware solution for other developers is great news for gamers, and a big threat to Epic Games and Unreal Engine 3.
Let's hope rumours of a TimeSplitters 4 on CryENGINE 3 come to fruition.
Naughty Dog Game Engine
As Seen in: Uncharted: Drake's Fortune, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves
![Game engine architecture free ebook Game engine architecture free ebook](/uploads/1/2/5/2/125296830/924367841.jpg)
Without a doubt the graphical marvel of E3 2009, Uncharted 2: Among Thieves shows just how much potential there is in the PlayStation 3 when the game engine is done right. The Naughty Dog engine – named after the developer behind not only Uncharted, but also the Jak & Daxter series – was developed specifically for the PS3 and provided some spectacular results in the 2007 release Uncharted: Drake's Fortune. Stunning animations and character models, spectacular lighting and sound, rich colour palettes and Hollywood-like cutscenes were its calling card.
For Uncharted: Among Thieves the developer has put two years of hard work into creating the Naughty Dog 2.0 engine, and the results are nothing short of sublime. Crisp environments filled with countless dynamic objects with independent physics, smoother and more diverse environment-animation interaction, astounding improvements to lighting and A.I., seamless transitions between engine-driven cinematics and gameplay, as well as full support for co-op and competitive multiplayer. Nothing short of a beast!
Click here to see the last Uncharted 2 trailer. It is also our understanding that Naughty Dog is sharing some of its knowledge with The Ice Team, the secret Sony studio working on the base Edge Tools kit for the improvement of all PS3 games. The developer also dropped a hint our way at E3 that there might be a new Jak & Daxter next year.
So I am trying my hand at some new skills, and want to build a simple game.
I am
C#
programmer by occupation and as with all projects, be it web or forms development, they all have some sort of structure to it.I like doing things right the first time, and want to know if there are similar structured approaches to Game development using MonoGame. I tried searching, but I obviously do not speak the lingo.
The only things I have figured so far are separating assets using the content pipeline projects, but it all kinda feels a bit messy doing everything else in the one Game Application.
Ideally I would like to have a Windows Game, but easily ported to other OS's, and obviously in doing this I need to separate certain logic.
I found that there are may tutorials out there teaching me about sprites and 'hello world' games, so I reckon that I will find all the help I need, if only I knew what to search for.
Any ideas, suggestions and links would be appreciated, I'll even up-vote answers that will give me terms used in the gaming development arena.
UPDATE
I came across the following so far:
- http://xnagpa.net/xna4rpg.php (nice read and well laid out)
stoic
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2 Answers
Not sure If I'm an appropriate person to answer this question but you can check that:
- Game statesUse state pattern for managing game states - it will make transition between states (like from menu to game started state etc.) and pausing/unpausing easier - some kind of
GameStateManager
which call properIGameState
:Update, Render, LoadContent
methods. - Game CameraLearn about transformation matrices and use game camera (
SpriteBatch.Begin
has one parameter called matrix). With game camera you can draw using 'internal coordinate system' - that means all your drawing points are in 'imaginary screen of resolution for example 1024x860' and later it could be scaled to fit user display. You write for one resolution and with few lines you can handle other resolutions. Game camera could be also useful when you would like to rotate all your enemy objects (let say 1000 monsters) - instead of rotation each object one by one you just rotate your coordinate system (game camera). For more check: http://www.david-gouveia.com/portfolio/2d-camera-with-parallax-scrolling-in-xna/, http://www.david-amador.com/2009/10/xna-camera-2d-with-zoom-and-rotation/
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I've been using MonoGame for about 3 months now and have a simple 'framework' that renders 3D and 2D objects.
I think the best way to get some sense of structure would be to have a look at Unity3D, which uses Scenes and GameObjects.
Keywords would be: Scenegraph, GameObject.
JantimirJantimir