Engine
From DmWiki
An engine is a sort of a framework on top of which one can build a game. Typically, modern games are divided into the content, which includes levels, textures, models, and so forth, which are specific to the game; and the engine, which is the technology that is responsible for providing rendering, sound, physics, and other parts of the actual player experience.
An engine can be re-used for multiple games; this was first demonstrated by the Doom engine by id software (http://www.idsoftware.com/), in which it was possible to create a mod (then called a "Partial Conversion" or "Total Conversion") by replacing the WAD file that contained the textures and levels. Modern engines are often designed explicitly with modding in mind; for example, the Source Engine by Valve Software (http://valvesoftware.com/) was designed to be completely separable from the game content of Half-Life 2 (http://half-life2.com/). Many game studios, rather than building their own engine, choose to use an existing engine (and pay a license fee to the engine's creator) to save substantial development time and costs.
Licensing fees for a commercial engine can be quite substantial, but there are also many low-cost and open-source engines for hobby developers to play with. Some of the most popular are:
- Torque (http://www.garagegames.com/makegames/) ($100 - $150)
- Truevision 3D (http://www.truevision3d.com/) ($150)
- OGRE 3D (http://www.ogre3d.org/) (open source)
- Crystal Space (http://www.crystalspace3d.org/) (open source)
- Irrlicht (http://irrlicht.sourceforge.net/) (open source)
A large, searchable list of engines can be found at the DevMaster Engines Database (http://www.devmaster.net/engines/).
See also
This article is a stub. You can help improve the article by expanding it.
