Question about game engine technology
June 5, 2010 1:43 PM Subscribe
Question about game engine technology.
1. Is there a game engine that's widely considered "the best" (if so, what is it)?
2. Are there any good, somewhat technical, magazine-length articles that cover the advancements in game engine technology over the last ~10 years. I have a BS in CS, but am not super familiar with graphics software.
Thanks in advance.
1. Is there a game engine that's widely considered "the best" (if so, what is it)?
2. Are there any good, somewhat technical, magazine-length articles that cover the advancements in game engine technology over the last ~10 years. I have a BS in CS, but am not super familiar with graphics software.
Thanks in advance.
I had a look around for an article that answers your second question but couldn't find anything so specific, this is as close as I got and in fact, just having a browse through the feature archives of Gamasutra will probably get you what you want. Good luck!
posted by ham at 2:19 PM on June 5, 2010
posted by ham at 2:19 PM on June 5, 2010
Best for what? You'll have to narrow the question a bit. For example, I assume you mean 3D game engines.
Beyond that, engines are optimized for different things. Some engines are designed to work well across a broad range of platforms. Others are designed for a particular kind of game. Some are designed to be highly extensible. Some are free, others cost money, some cost a lot of money (e.g., id Tech 4 costs a 5% wholesale royalty, $250,000 upfront minimum).
Anyway, Unreal Engine and Source get a lot of use outside of the companies that developed them. Unity is an up-and-comer for smaller studios and cross platform games. Valve is in the process of repositioning Source as a multiplatform engine for Windows and OS X (and maybe Linux).
posted by jedicus at 2:20 PM on June 5, 2010
Beyond that, engines are optimized for different things. Some engines are designed to work well across a broad range of platforms. Others are designed for a particular kind of game. Some are designed to be highly extensible. Some are free, others cost money, some cost a lot of money (e.g., id Tech 4 costs a 5% wholesale royalty, $250,000 upfront minimum).
Anyway, Unreal Engine and Source get a lot of use outside of the companies that developed them. Unity is an up-and-comer for smaller studios and cross platform games. Valve is in the process of repositioning Source as a multiplatform engine for Windows and OS X (and maybe Linux).
posted by jedicus at 2:20 PM on June 5, 2010
A decent overview of the improvements in game engine technology can be had by looking at the progress of the id engines (as used in Quake, Quake 2, Quake 3, Doom 3, Rage, and a whole host of others) and the Unreal engines.
posted by jedicus at 2:23 PM on June 5, 2010
posted by jedicus at 2:23 PM on June 5, 2010
Unity is a newish up and comer that though not as technically accomplished as Unreal but is far, far cheaper and can be used to create games on the big consoles like 360 and Wii as well as web and iphone
It's POSSIBLE that the Unity-developed iPhone apps will, in the future, get rejected by Apple. Unity is optimistic but unsure how things will play out.
posted by grumblebee at 2:42 PM on June 5, 2010 [1 favorite]
It's POSSIBLE that the Unity-developed iPhone apps will, in the future, get rejected by Apple. Unity is optimistic but unsure how things will play out.
posted by grumblebee at 2:42 PM on June 5, 2010 [1 favorite]
Michael Abrash wrote a number of articles on the Quake engine for that were later collected in the Graphics Programming Black Book. It's 1990-2000 technology, not 2000-2010, but it's online and it's free.
posted by zanni at 4:04 PM on June 5, 2010
posted by zanni at 4:04 PM on June 5, 2010
As far as pure eye candy and realism, I would say th e CryEngine is probably regarded as "the best", at least by gamers. For extensibility and adaptability, The Gamebryo engine was used by Bethesda to create Oblivion and Fallout 3, as well as by Firaxis for Civ IV and Mythic for Warhammer Online and many others. There is also the Torque engine, which is similar but cheaper. Both support PC and console development. Ogre is one of the leading open source engines, although it is more of just a graphics engine than the others.
The major advancements in game engines that I know of has been around support for better lighting, vertex shaders, foliage algorithms, physics, custom scripting languages, and extensibility (plugin architecture). As DirectX/OpenGL and graphics cards grow more complex, they present more full features APIs that the engines can leverage, and newer game engines take full advantage of that. The editors are also much easier to use, enable you to do more from the GUI, and support many different import/export formats. One of the key improvements in the last 10 years seems to be the idea of multi-purpose engines at all. I think many game engines in the past were pretty hacked up and integrated tightly with the game code itself. These days you can take an engine like Source, Unreal, or Gamebryo and create a First Person Shooter, an RPG, an RTS, or even an MMO on it. Similarly, it is now possible using some engines to take code that was written for the PC and generate code for the XBox or Playstation. It is also much more common to take a graphics engine from one place, roll in support for Havok physics, and maybe even a third party AI plugin. On the PC, support for player made mods was popularized by Valve about 10 years ago with the development of Counterstike, and games like World of Warcraft have really leveraged this idea in a whole new way. All these ideas were only in their infancy 10 years ago.
On a more technical level, I think there has been a big move away from the model of a single "game loop" than runs everything in series. With multiple cores common in PCs and consoles, the rendering, AI, and physics are all run in parallel. I would imagine there has been a lot of improvement in netcode as well. Almost all big games these days support multiplayer, while 10 years ago that was not necessarily the case. Massive lag spikes, shooting through walls, rubber banding, and server downtimes have certainly decreased thanks to more focus on this area. If you are interested in this stuff, I have found Gamasutra to be a great resource for learning about the technical side of the industry. Here is an article from them on the current state of game engines (from 2008 but still pretty accurate).
posted by sophist at 5:05 PM on June 5, 2010 [5 favorites]
The major advancements in game engines that I know of has been around support for better lighting, vertex shaders, foliage algorithms, physics, custom scripting languages, and extensibility (plugin architecture). As DirectX/OpenGL and graphics cards grow more complex, they present more full features APIs that the engines can leverage, and newer game engines take full advantage of that. The editors are also much easier to use, enable you to do more from the GUI, and support many different import/export formats. One of the key improvements in the last 10 years seems to be the idea of multi-purpose engines at all. I think many game engines in the past were pretty hacked up and integrated tightly with the game code itself. These days you can take an engine like Source, Unreal, or Gamebryo and create a First Person Shooter, an RPG, an RTS, or even an MMO on it. Similarly, it is now possible using some engines to take code that was written for the PC and generate code for the XBox or Playstation. It is also much more common to take a graphics engine from one place, roll in support for Havok physics, and maybe even a third party AI plugin. On the PC, support for player made mods was popularized by Valve about 10 years ago with the development of Counterstike, and games like World of Warcraft have really leveraged this idea in a whole new way. All these ideas were only in their infancy 10 years ago.
On a more technical level, I think there has been a big move away from the model of a single "game loop" than runs everything in series. With multiple cores common in PCs and consoles, the rendering, AI, and physics are all run in parallel. I would imagine there has been a lot of improvement in netcode as well. Almost all big games these days support multiplayer, while 10 years ago that was not necessarily the case. Massive lag spikes, shooting through walls, rubber banding, and server downtimes have certainly decreased thanks to more focus on this area. If you are interested in this stuff, I have found Gamasutra to be a great resource for learning about the technical side of the industry. Here is an article from them on the current state of game engines (from 2008 but still pretty accurate).
posted by sophist at 5:05 PM on June 5, 2010 [5 favorites]
Unreal Engine is by-far the industry leader in commercial game engines. Very full feature set, great support material, and unlike most of its competitors it comes with a very robust game editor and content tools. If you're looking for something to dabble in, they have a free non-commercial-use version of their SDK that (I think) limits you to their scripting system.
Gamebryo is probably the next most popular, but it's a very different product. Where Unreal gives you a nearly complete FPS game and tool-chain out of the box, Gamebryo is more bare-bones and licensees are expected to put a lot more work into extending it in order to get it off the ground. But some studios want that. If you're not making an FPS, making additions to Gamebryo may be a lot less work than changing some of the central frameworks of Unreal Engine. Gamebryo also supports more platforms than Unreal.
The remaining commercial engines on the market (Source, CryEngine, id Tech4, etc) each have some specific strengths, but haven't had much widespread success.
posted by dodecapus at 6:16 PM on June 5, 2010
Gamebryo is probably the next most popular, but it's a very different product. Where Unreal gives you a nearly complete FPS game and tool-chain out of the box, Gamebryo is more bare-bones and licensees are expected to put a lot more work into extending it in order to get it off the ground. But some studios want that. If you're not making an FPS, making additions to Gamebryo may be a lot less work than changing some of the central frameworks of Unreal Engine. Gamebryo also supports more platforms than Unreal.
The remaining commercial engines on the market (Source, CryEngine, id Tech4, etc) each have some specific strengths, but haven't had much widespread success.
posted by dodecapus at 6:16 PM on June 5, 2010
It has been my opinion for some time that the best multiplayer game engine is absolutely the Quake 3 technology.
You can tell because at their core all of the Call of Duty games are using it. Even MW2 still has an id tech 3 license.
Single player? hard to say.
I might be a bit biased since I run ioquake3....
posted by TimeDoctor at 9:52 PM on June 5, 2010
You can tell because at their core all of the Call of Duty games are using it. Even MW2 still has an id tech 3 license.
Single player? hard to say.
I might be a bit biased since I run ioquake3....
posted by TimeDoctor at 9:52 PM on June 5, 2010
The Unreal Development Kit has been released for free use. I don't know the specifics, but as people have said it is the most common and mature engine at this time. CryEngine is great...but not open...Source is good, but aging.
Just my $.02
posted by AltReality at 12:10 AM on June 6, 2010
Just my $.02
posted by AltReality at 12:10 AM on June 6, 2010
"It has been my opinion for some time that the best multiplayer game engine is absolutely the Quake 3 technology.
You can tell because at their core all of the Call of Duty games are using it. Even MW2 still has an id tech 3 license."
If I understand it correctly, Infinity Ward adapted this engine for Call of Duty 1 and have been modifying it further and further ever since. I think it would be hard to say now how much of the engine is id's and how much is IW's. And while Modern Warfare 2 is a great technical achievement, its graphics are far inferior to, say, Gears of War, which of course uses the Unreal engine. See a recent interview with Epic's Mike Capps in Edge magazine for a little insight into the state of play in the marketplace, specifically Unreal Engine 4 versus CryEngine 3.
Half Life 2's Source engine is worth a mention, and though it's a bit long in the tooth now it still powers new releases, notably Left 4 Dead 2.
You might also be interested in engines designed to handle specific tasks. Havok's physics engine is a prime example.
posted by nthdegx at 1:02 AM on June 6, 2010
You can tell because at their core all of the Call of Duty games are using it. Even MW2 still has an id tech 3 license."
If I understand it correctly, Infinity Ward adapted this engine for Call of Duty 1 and have been modifying it further and further ever since. I think it would be hard to say now how much of the engine is id's and how much is IW's. And while Modern Warfare 2 is a great technical achievement, its graphics are far inferior to, say, Gears of War, which of course uses the Unreal engine. See a recent interview with Epic's Mike Capps in Edge magazine for a little insight into the state of play in the marketplace, specifically Unreal Engine 4 versus CryEngine 3.
Half Life 2's Source engine is worth a mention, and though it's a bit long in the tooth now it still powers new releases, notably Left 4 Dead 2.
You might also be interested in engines designed to handle specific tasks. Havok's physics engine is a prime example.
posted by nthdegx at 1:02 AM on June 6, 2010
This thread is closed to new comments.
Unreal is used mostly for big budget action games and has probably the best all round set of features and tools. Other engines can beat it in one or two areas but no one else has anything near the quality across the board.
posted by ham at 2:13 PM on June 5, 2010 [1 favorite]