Game Engines
In this assignment I will research different open and closed game engines that are used to build the games that we are playing now and compare them.What is a Game Engine?
A game engine is what runs the game and keeps the experience the same for all platforms regardless of the operating system used by each platform an example being a game released on Xbox, PlayStation and PC would all play roughly the same barring things such as controls, performance and quality of the graphics for example the Console port of a game may be locked at 30fps due to hardware limitations whilst the PC port of the game may run at 60fps and have a higher resolution as there are less restrictions on more powerful PCs, the reason this works is because the game engine acts as a way to "hide" the operating system which would normally prevent the game from working on all platforms. The game engine is where all the game assets will be located such as the physics engine(Such as the "Havok" engine), audio engine(Such as Miles Sound System), models, AI(Artificial Intelligence), code and textures. Some of these assets will be made outside the engine such as the models which could be made in programs such as "Maya" but will then be imported into the engine to be used in the game.
Open Game Engines
Open game engines such as "Unreal" and "Unity" can be used by anyone and are generally free to use. These are good engines to begin with as they are used often within the industry and are easy to access. Unity is well known for being the game engine used for a lot of mobile games however it can be used for other platforms too, the free version isn't quite as advanced as most popular engines but the paid versions have been used to make some very well received games such as "Thomas was alone" and "Temple Run". Unreal has been used for many popular games on Consoles and PC such as the "Borderlands"series of games and "Bioshock Infinite" as well as other diverse genres such as RPG's and stealth games.
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| Bioshock Infinite: Made in Unreal Engine |
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| Frostbite Engine Logo |
Closed Game Engines
Closed game engines are owned by a specific company and can only be used by that company such as Rockstar's "Rage" engine which is used in the "GTA" series and EA's "Frostbite" engine which is mainly used for the "Battlefield" games. As these engines are specific to big companies they are generally used by more experienced developers. Some of the closed game engines are built off of other game engines such as the "GoldSource" engine used by Valve to make games such as Team Fortress Classic, Counter-Strike, and Half-Life which is a modified version of the "Quake" engine Which then was modified further to create the "Source" engine which was used to make games such as Team Fortress 2 and Half-Life 2. A "Source 2" engine has since been made but currently only has one game released for it, "Dota 2".
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| Battlefield 4: made in Frostbite Engine |
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| Rage Engine Logo |
Notable examples of game engines
Cryengine was produced by Crytek, a German development team, Cryengine supported the PS3 and Xbox 360 and has since been updated up to Cryengine V which supports the latest generation of games consoles (PS4 and Xbox One) and has access to the DirectX 12 API allowing for more realistic 3D graphics , it is home to the very popular Far Cry series and the Crysis games. Cryengine was modified by many third party developers, one example being Cloud Imperium games who made Squadron 42 and Star Citizen using a modified version of the engine. The official build of Cryengine was also used to make some third party games under Crytek's licensing scheme such as Sniper:Ghost Warrior 2.
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| CryEngine Logo |
Quake was produced by id software and was home to the game of the same name. The engine featured full 3D environments and models which were used to make multiplayer first person shooters and uses the Vérité 1000 graphics chip with OpenGL support coming later on it was later modified to make the Goldsource engine and later Source engine 1 & 2 were made. These were home to many famous valve games such as the Half-Life and Team Fortress games (which still have active fanbases to this day). The official Quake 2 engine was changed to be called the id tech 2 engine which led to id tech 3 which was later modified by Infinity Ward to create the IW engine which is still being used to this day to create the Call of Duty games . The Quake engine has been one of the most modified engines to date.
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| Quake logo |
IW engine is a closed engine made by Infinity Ward and is home to the insanely popular Call of Duty series, it was built from the id tech 3 engine and supports the current and last generation of games starting with the Xbox360, PS3 ,Wii and PC then upgrading to the Xbox one, PS4 and Wii U, the engine was first used to make COD 2 and has been used in every COD game to date as it upgraded over time to create IW engine 5.0. The games haven't necessarily used the engines in order as they tend to use a modified version of the engine the previous entry in that series used for example, Black Ops 2 used a modified version of Black Ops 1's engine and Black Ops 3 used an even more modified version of Black Ops 2's engine. The engine supports DirectX 11 and HDR lighting.
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| IW logo |
Unreal Engine is a game engine made by Epic Games and was originally the home to Unreal tournament in 1998. The engine is currently open and is a very popular choice for new developers and students. It was primarily used to make first person shooters but has been used to make many other game genres such as stealth games, RPG's and MMORPG's. In 2002 Unreal Engine 2 was released which added support for the Gamecube and Xbox, Epic only officially supported the Xbox and so the Gamecube and PS2 were left to Secret level to support, . Unreal Engine 3 was released in November of 2005 with support for Windows, Xbox 360 and the PS3 (and Android and IOS later in 2010). The first Console game to be released in Unreal 3 was "Gears of War". It wasn't until 2012 that Unreal 4 was released which offered support for the Xbox One, PS4, Windows, Mac, Linux, IOS, Android, SteamOS, HTML5 and a variety of VR systems. Currently Unreal engine 4 is the latest version but the game engine is still being updated to fit each new generation.
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| Unreal Engine Logo |
Gamebryo was produced by Numerical design limited(in 1991)which then was merged into Emergent game technologies in 2004, the engine has been used by many different developers such as Bethesda and Rockstar Vancouver(which closed its doors in 2012 to merge with Rockstar Toronto) to create games such as the Fallout franchise, The Elder Scrolls franchise and Bully:Scholarship Edition. Gamebryo is currently on version 4.0 and has been updated to support each generation of games. The engine supports Windows DirectX 9, 10 and 11 as well as OpenGL.
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| Gamebryo logo |
Sources:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_game_engine
Cryengine
https://www.cryengine.com/showcases
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CryEngine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_CryEngine_games
Quake
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quake_engine
IW Engine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IW_engine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IW_engine#Games
Unreal Engine
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_Engine
https://www.unrealengine.com/what-is-unreal-engine-4
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Unreal_Engine_games
Gamebryo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamebryo
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gamebryo#Games
