Waynes Work year 2

What is a game engine?

A game engine is foundations which a game is built on. Game engines most often include the Graphics, physics, sounds, scripting, AI, collision detection networking and handle the difference between different platforms. Most Games are created using a game engine and many games share the same engines. This means the engine is often reused between different titles and lead to the developers looking for different ways to use the engine to make new and interesting way to create and enjoy games.

Parts of a game engine

The operating system of the engine: This controls how the different parts of the engine interact with each other and the main underling code holding the engine together.

Graphics: The graphics of a game is what the user sees on screen. The graphics are rendered on screen using a chosen technique from the engine developer. While most engines allow for some level of graphics, certain engines like Unreal 4 and the cry engine are known for allowing the more cutting edge look to a game.

Physics: the physics engine in a game is what determines how objects collide and interact with each other within the world. This can be from the most basic things to if and how much gravity is felt within the game to the impact of a punch on an object or another player. The physic engine in a game can be specific to an engine of shared through multiple engines

Sound: The sound of the engine is processed and created through small engines packaged within the title just like the physics of an engine the sound engine can be shared.

AI: Is how the computers perceived intelligence reacts within a game. This can be bots a player must fight or challenge within a title, the pathing of a bird or change in difficulty of a chess opponent. The AI is how the engine “thinks” and approaches the user.

Access to game engines

As game engines are far harder to create than games this makes the ownership of and engine very important. If a company has create or owns and engine developers need permission from the company to create and sell games made on the engine. For a game developer looking for and engine to make his or her game on this leads to three different approaches.

One. To use a free engine like unreal or unity to develop on and once developed pay the owner large amounts of royalties fees on the sale of their title if successful.

Two. To pay for an engine from a company to use. This may be a onetime payment but often can include royalties from the company once the game is released.

Three. Either create or pay someone to create them a new game engine which their company will own. This may be the most time consuming and cost the most money but this will give the developer the most creative freedom as it will allow them to make the engine fit the needs of their games. It will also allow them to sell their engine to other companies.

Middle-ware:

Middle-ware is components of an engine which have been sourced for outside of the code written by the developer. Middle-ware is bought by companies to add to their engine. The most common of these is the physics engines of games as they are often some of the most complicated parts of and engine to code. This can save a company time trying to create the perfect physics engine for their game by buying one from another company. The downside to this is apart from the obvious cost to the developer is the fact the engine won’t be as tailored to the game the developers is creating as may by desired.

Different game engines

 The unreal engine the unreal engine is arguably the biggest game engine at the moment tied with unity. The unreal engine has the monopoly on first person shooters. The unreal engine is an open engine mean people are free to download the engine at will. However a game developed on the engine will need to pay royalty fees to epic games the company which owns the unreal engine.

The unreal engine was developed for epic games first shooter unreal in 1998 however is now in its fourth instalment. Unreal 4 was originally shown off in 2012 and was sold on its cutting edge Volex cone tracing however changes have be made to the original engine after worries of performance on the next generation of consoles. The main selling point is now the “blue prints” section of the software which allows for coding and editing of the engine with C++ while developing this allows for easier interaction and collaboration between programmers artists and level designer while in development

The unreal engine has come a long way in the past 18 years as has just released its most current patch 4.13 which has branched out to the latest VR technology .The unreal engine is free to use, with access to source code however epic games must be paid 5% of gross revenue after the first US $3,000 per product per quarter. https://developer.nvidia.com/unrealengine

Unity

The unity engine is the other largest engine on the market. While the unreal engine is used to create more first person shooter and action game unity is the engine used by the more indie and alternative games. Unity is easier for budding developers and often hosts smaller projects. Unity hosts the monopoly on phone games and almost all smartphone titles are created with a version of unity. This is because unity physic engine is easy to work with and does not require such a deep level of understanding to manipulate. While unity has been used to create some beautiful titles such as fire watch, Ori and the blind forest and Verdun. None of these game brag the most cutting edge graphics however they do look good.

 Unity however is great for cross platform development and is very well optimised for all types of systems. The other reason unity is heavily used is that developers are not required to pay royalties per say but are expected to pay a subscription fee per month on the software once and game has earnt $100000 in one year the game will be expected to upgrade to the pro version of unity costing $1,500 or $75 per month on a 12 month contract. This is a tiny amount compared to unreal 4 which takes a flat 5% off the top of a game.

Unity released unity 5 last year its easy access and quick to grasp systems have been accused of leading to an influx of underdeveloped titles made by inexperienced developers, also known as “cash grabs”.  https://unity3d.com/learn/tutorials/topics/physics 

Unity is one of the few big engines including unreal engine which uses the PhysX physics engine. This means both companies while have access to the code for their physics engine don’t own the engine its self. A problem with using middle-ware like Phys X is reduces developer’s ability to make big changes within their own engine. However using middle-ware can save money and time and allows companies to not spend resources updating their own physic engine.

Rage

The Rage engine or (Rockstar advanced game engine) is a closed engine owned by the company Rockstar and was released in 2006. The Rage engine has hosted a range of Rockstar titles but the most notable is the latest instalment in the GTA franchise GTA V which runs on the latest version of the Rockstar engine. 

https://support.rockstargames.com/hc/en-us/community/posts/200739603-Where-can-I-get-

the-RAGE-engine-

https://www.quora.com/How-are-large-open-world-games-like-GTA-V-made

The Rockstar engine is heavily made up of third party middle-ware components such as the physics engine Bullet and Euphoria the character animation engine. The engine is focused heavily on allowing large amounts of assets and is well optimised or the computer and next generation consoles. Because the Rockstar engine is closed this mean Rockstar doesn’t allow people to download or use the engine. Rockstar also doesn’t sell the engine to any other companies like some closed engine owners. This a screen shot from red dead redemption a Rockstar title which runs on the rage engine

CryEngine

The cry engine is an engine owned by 
Crytek.
a German game developer. The cry engine is the biggest contender to unreal in terms of the most cutting edge graphics as an open development engine. The cry engine is currently in its 4^th instalment however a fifth was announced on March 22nd 2016. The software was originally as a tech demo for NVidia. However was then used to create the first Farcry game. The Third version of the engine is when it made its biggest break through. It was announced in 2009 and was set for the next generation of consoles. The engine and games sold with it often game with editors available in the game this allowed players to make and create their own levels and use the WYSIWYP, "What You See Is What You Play" feature which allows players to hop into what they have just created.

The Software Development kit or SDK allows payers to make huge landscapes this means where other game would hide the edges of their maps with 2d backdrops. The Cry engine offers the potential to make huge 3D back drops and environments. The cry engine is currently being used for the biggest crowed funded title ever star citizen razing 124 million pounds. The release of this title will be a huge boost to the engines owners’ Crytek which have currently been in the shadows after the unreal engine recent success.  The cry engine uses its own physics engine this gives each game created on it a certain feel.

The biggest difference between the Cryegine and its competitor unreal is the approach to managing the engine. While unreal are taking a more open approach allowing user more and more ability to make changes to the engine, Crytek are looking to hold more control over how their engine is used "At the core, Crytek is building advances in that engine and controlling where that engine goes -- that's where we think we get the best results from," (Crytek Jones)

The cry engine was recently leased to amazon $50-70 million. This was to create Amazons most recent game engine lumber yard and more user friendly version of the cry engine and is currently in alpha.

http://www.gamasutra.com/view/news/218947/What_separates_CryEngine_from_its_competition.php

Gamemaker

Game maker studio is a game engine owned by YoYo games game maker is a 2D game engine and doesn’t support 3D graphics this leaves game maker to being fairly limited and therefore not really used to create anything but low budget indie titles. The positive of game maker is there’s an easy access and usable version of it open to the public. Game maker is a good for new game developers looking to learn and pick up some basic skills to use later in their careers or companies looking to make low budget 2D titles. Game maker is designed to be as easy as possible to code its uses code similar to C++ called GML

Game maker was created in Delphi programming language by a man called Mark Overmars and has produced some quite big steam indie titles

·         Spelunky

·         Hyper Light Drifter

·         Gunpoint

·         Nuclear Throne

·         Undertale

·         Super Crate Box

·         Hotline Miami

·         Nidhogg

Id tech

Id Tech is a game engine designed and developed by id Software. Id tech is currently in its sixth instalment Prior to the presentation of the id Tech 5-based game Rage, the engines lacked official designation and as such were simply referred to as the Doom and Quake engines, from the name of the main game series the engines have been developed for. Id tech 2 to 4 have been released for free, along with the source code to titles such as Doom and Wolfenstein. The game engine is well used is Bethesda titles, the sister company to Id tech.

http://www.idsoftware.com/?/age_gate

Id tech is well known for being one of the very first game engines ever created and was one of the big companies to make creating a game engine popular. However Id Tech 4 had far fewer licences than the Unreal from Epic Games, and Id planned to regain the momentum with id Tech 5 by releasing it as an open engine , until they were bought out by ZeniMax Media which intends to keep the id Tech engines exclusively for Bethesda’s studios.

Source engine

Source is a 3d game engine made by valve.  It was first used in counter-strike: source. Then one of valves biggest titles half-life 2.  Valve have since released source 2 the first game to get transferred over to the new engine is Dota 2. The biggest and most notable thing about the source engine is how it was designed to have no problems with backwards compatibility. The source engine is set to be modular.This Makes it easy for valve to upgrade between titles and have no problems changing the engine for different titles .This helps valve keep moving assets between titles without issues from changing versions of the engine.

The source engine is well known for its good physics engine. This engine is a middle-ware component called Havok. The Havok engine is the biggest Middle-ware physic engine on the market at the moments and many game engine use it as the Physics engine for their Game engine.  HDR and colour correction was added to the source engine in 2005 for the title day of defeat. The release of the orange box came with many things such as the source filmmaker which allowed users to create source film videos. It also removed inbuilt effects in the engine replacing them allowing codes to modify and edit to their choice.

https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/SDK_Docs





There are many different engines on the market and held by companies. While the best one is subjective to the people using and playing games within it. Arguably the "best engines" at the moment are the most popular engines. Obviously this gives closed engines a disadvantage. However I still feel both theses titles deserve there place over any closed engine at this point in time . Both engines I have picked hold something in common as they give the community the most creative freedom and hold the most opportunity for freedom while creating which is what game engine should aim to do. Id say for 3D development of game the Unreal engine is the best on the market at the moment just to the shear openness of the engine. Its highly impressive that an engine this advanced is so user friendly. The unreal engine has way more accessibility than its competitors the cry engine or Id tech.
The other most successful or "best engine at the moment is probably unity as it has the monopoly on phone games with nearly 90% of smartphone games being developed on unity and a large portion of indies games for PC being made with it to. Unity strong point is its cross compatibly between platforms and its quick to create systems.
This is why I think Unreal 4 and Unity 5 are the biggest and best engines out there at the moment.