Examples of video game engines

2D Engine: RPG Maker.

RPG Maker is a fairly cheap game engine that can be downloaded from the internet to make games for windows, RPG ones to be specific. The RPG maker has been around since its first appearance in 1992 for PC in Japan, it see’s the user of the engine using its premade landscapes and entities to create their very own Role Playing Game. All though most of the entities are premade for the user to freely place where ever they should feel the need to, but the engine also includes other editable things such as the capability to input and edit text boxes and edit battles. And at any time (as long as the user is using the PC version of the RPG maker engine) the user can also create/add new characters, events and tile pieces He or She wants. The RPG maker has had some published video games using its engine, a list of just a few of its 2D games are:

Dungeon Manjirou – MSX2

 Dungeon RPG Tsukūru Dan-Dan Dungeon- PC-9801

Chimes Quest-PC-9801

Dante 2- MSX2

(Note these games and consoles were released in Japan only and have not seen a worldwide release)

3D engine: Cry engine

The original Cryengine was designed and developed by Crytek to use in their original FarCry games, a huge open world FPS which takes place in a tropical setting. Some of the features of the first engine were: The Fully flexible day and night system (meaning the time of day changes naturally), Lots of dynamic shadows and very natural looking lighting, motion blur, Pathfinding, Deformables and body physics, facial animation editor and much more.

The use of the Cryengine was first seen in the fairly popular at the time game; Far Cry. The use of what the engine had to offer in combination of how the game was played and set came out for a very smooth and good-looking experience. A few of the games that use the Cry engine are:

Far Cry – Windows

Far Cry instincts – Xbox

Far Cry vengeance – WII  

Aion: The Tower of Eternity (an MMO) – Windows.

The Cry Engine has also updated twice, once to the cleverly named Cry engine 2, an engine that was essentially the same engine but with enhanced graphical capabilities and physics, this version of the engine also happened to be the engine that Crysis ran on. A game that for a fairly long time was the PC specs for most gamers, for whenever they asked the question; “can my PC run ___” they were asked the question “Can it run Crysis?”   

The third Cry engine simply improved on all the previous models of the Cry engine most noticeable of which is the graphics. 

  

Source engine

The source engine is an engine developed and made by valve for their various popular games such as Half-life 2 and Left 4 dead. The source engine isn’t just made with FPS’s in mind (despite the amount of first person games valve make) the engine can and has been used to make MOBAS, valve has shown this with the creation of Dota, but where the engine really shines is with how incredibly friendly it is will modders, happily letting them into the code so they can create their own wonderful games and modes. The mod Garry’s mod (or Gmod) is a clear example of this, as it takes everything inside of the files or every valve game and lets you do whatever you wish with them, you can even create your own mods and game modes within it. Making it one of the best mods ever created. A few examples of games made with the source engine are:

Team Fortress 2 – Windows, Ps3, Xbox 360 & MacOSX

Left 4 dead 1/2 – Windows, Xbox 360 & MacOSX

Dota 2 - Windows, MacOSX

Half life 2 /ep1 / ep2 / lost cost – Windows, Xbox, ps3, Xbox 360 & MacOSX

Portal 1/2 – Windows, Ps3, Xbox 360, MacOSX

  

The silent storm engine

The silent storm engine is an engine created by Nival interactive to originally be used on the game the engine is named after; silent storm. The engine was created to be used on silent storm for its turn based tactics system, the engine itself has the capabilities to quiet happily let the player enjoy how you can take cover anywhere they please, witness how nearly all character models and environment models can be destroyed, how bullets can ricochet off of things, how lighting will affect how well either the enemy can see the player or how well the player can see the enemy and many more cinematic experiences that were praised by media and players. The graphical system was also a very enjoyable part of the engine, and of course over the years the engine has been updated to make everything already in the engine better. The engine has been featured in other games after Nival noticed the potential; some of these follow as:

Silent storm: Sentinels –Windows

Hammer & Sickle – Windows

Day watch – Windows

Night watch – Windows XP

Jagged alliance 3 – Windows

Heroes of might and magic 5 – Windows, MacOSX

  

Video game engines (what they have) Assignment 1/2

Purpose of Game engines

A game engine is a form of system designed to develop and create video games. Game engines are a form of frame work that the video game developers use to code their games without having to create absolutely everything from scratch; this includes lighting, physics, AI, collision detection, rendering, cameras and lots of other tools for the company’s game to use. It is safe to say that more or less every video game of today’s generation uses some form of game engine, these can be ones constantly re-used over many different games or, alternatively, a development team can create their own game engine from mostly scratch for one game specifically. A game engine includes certain things, here is what they do:

Graphic rendering – Graphic rendering is how the game (quite clearly) renders itself, what you see on the screen from enemies to obstacles the game’s engine has had to graphically render it as you see it, this is why we get texture pop-ups when it has loaded quick enough. This is normally found in 3D games more so than in 2D games, as 2D games (take the legend of Zelda for example) only have to render one cube of information at a time, giving it a much smoother outcome then a PC game running on high specs with a low graphics card. In some games it has to use real-time rendering for shadows as the day goes by, like how in red dead redemption everything will cast some form of shadow eventually as the sun move across the sky.

 

Collision detection- Collision detection is simply the game engine realizing what has been hit, by what and in some cases where. Examples would be how in super Mario brothers jumping on a goombas head will result in its death but running head first into the goomba will result in Mario’s untimely demise. Projectiles in games normally affect certain things; like in Grand theft auto IV when shooting a gas canister it will explode but when walking into it the canister simply falls on the ground, Or how in super Mario kart hitting a boost ramp will make the car go faster for a short time because it detected the collision between the two necessary objects. 

 

Artificial intelligence (or AI) - Artificial intelligence is in every single game that contains something the player has to do or has to face , pong’s other paddle had a form of AI when going near the ball, every game with any enemy in it has AI, be it some more advanced than others like left 4 dead’s “advanced zombie AI” which see’s it so that the zombies of the game (no matter what is in their way) will always find a way to intercept the players constant movement. The game itself will also use it’s AI to try and guess where the player is going to go, like how upon receiving a quest or objective that’s in another place, the game will try and render the world or level going to the quest to save time.

 

 

Sound- Every game that isn’t some form of art game normally comes with sound, and the games engine provides preset ones (like the sound of gun fire and such) or has the ability to accept developer created ones and know under what circumstances to play them. Like how is the Metal gear solid series the alert noise will only ever play if snake has been spotted by the enemy to let you know you’ve done something wrong, or when you collect a ring in sonic a small ‘chime’ sound will play. Sound in video games also, quite logically, gets louder the closer you get to a noise, like in assassin’s creed how you can hear the muttering of people who are right next to you quite clearly and you can only hear the merchant yelling in the distance as if he was doing just that; yelling thing the distance. 

 

Physics- Game engines also come with a form of preset physics, be it rope physics, vehicle physics or whatever type of physics that game engine has, physics can cover say, how a car can crash into something at different speeds in a racing game like in Need for speed can have an immensely different effect depending if the car goes into the object at 80 miles an hour rather than 2 miles an hour. But in most cases game developers will simply get a separate engine for physics, like the havock engine or PhysX are some of the most common ones for game physics. These physics engines are specifically designed for advanced physics; such as thing like water flow, and how being next to an explosion will take you right off your feet and send you flying into a wall (much like in grand theft auto IV) but seeing the explosion at a distance will have no effect on you other then hearing a small noise as if it was in the distance.