Game engine drive development of games

Manasbansal
The Epiko
Published in
5 min readSep 20, 2021
Image Source — https://bit.ly/3zrDKng

Games are indeed the fascinating innovation that inspires a large section of youth in Today’s life. Today, everyone is busy playing games, but the different concepts related to gaming should be noted and kept in mind since it plays a vital role in playing games.

A game has a very complex but yet interesting technology working at its backend. One should have a little knowledge regarding all these technologies since it improves the performance and efficiency of the player.

There are many concepts behind the formation of a game. And all these things work hand in hand to produce the best output. The most important part of the game is the Game engine.

Image Source: https://www.slideshare.net/protozord93/game-engines-and-their-influence-in-game-design

WHAT IS A GAME ENGINE?

A Game Engine is a software development environment that is designed to build video games. It possesses many applications such as in building architecture models, automobile, and 3D models. In Today’s world, the game engine is driving the entire gaming industry and will have an impeccable future due to the rapidly growing technology in the respective domain.

Developers widely use these game engines to construct games for mobile games, PCs, and Mac. The game engine has a vital role since it controls many essential aspects, including animation, audio, networking, Artificial intelligence, Memory management, and physics engine, which covers all the elements related to physics such as collision and explosion.

Game engines provide a suite of visual development tools usually provided in the IDE Integrated Development Environment to simplify the game and give the users an enriching playing environment.

History of the game engine

Although the game engine is not a much-familiarized concept for many people who play games, the main reason behind this can be that till 1990. Only 2D games were in place, and many people did not have enough resources, and some who possessed the resources were refrained from playing the games.

Image Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine#/media/File:Quake_-_family_tree_2_Simplified.svg

In the 1990’s the concept of the game engine had come into place when 3D games were invented. Since 3D games accompanied many fascinating features, including animation, multiplayer gaming, and music, this has completely revolutionized how everyone used to play. There was no stopping for this, and it has shown tremendous growth.

The first game invented using the game engine was first-person shooters, made through the first-person shooter engine. Then it had eventually become the reason for the development of many popular games such as id Software’s Quake III Arena and Epic Game’s 1998 Unreal.

The architecture of Game Engine

Game engine architecture is the essential topic for understanding all the significant aspects of a game. It majorly includes all the principles which need to be kept in mind. These principles enhance the game’s performance and enable a smoother and enjoyable experience for the player.

Image Source: https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Detailed-game-engine-architecture_fig2_323179176

This includes the study of various concepts such as

1) large-scale C++ software architecture in a game’s context

2) mathematics for game programming

3) game development tools for debugging, source control, and profiling

4) engine subsystems, including engine foundation systems, rendering, collision, physics, character animation, and game world object models

5) multiplatform game engines

6) computer and CPU hardware and memory caches

7) hardware parallelism and concurrent programming

8) Tools pipelines and the game asset database

TOP GAME ENGINES

UNITY

Unity is a widely popular game engine that Unity Technologies developed in the year 2005. Initially, when it was first released, it came exclusively for MAC operating system. Now it has been so widely spreading that it is currently available for 25 different Operating systems.

Unity supports C#, Boo, Unity Script programming language, among which Unity Script is a unity version of JavaScript.

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GameMaker

GameMaker is quite unique from all other game engines. GameMaker: Studio has been widely used because it doesn’t require any programming skills. Besides this users can “point-and-click” to create games which makes it much easier and faster than coding with native languages.

Some of the widely popular made games with GameMaker include Spelunky, Hotline Miami, Super Crate Box, and the upcoming Hyper Light Drifter. GameMaker is immensely popular among everyone because you can make a game without learning any programming language first, and those that do have coding experience can excel in their game.

The limitation of GameMaker is that developers are much more limited than with other engines. And while there is a free version, getting the most out of GameMaker requires you to buy either the Professional or Master Collection versions.

Godot

The Godot engine is great for making both 2D and 3D games. The engine “provides a huge set of common tools, so you can just focus on making your game without reinventing the wheel.”

It’s free to use and it’s open-source through the MIT license. No royalties, no subscription fees, no hidden strings — whatever you develop through the Godot engine is yours.

Image Source: https://bit.ly/3lDuwQg

Godot has a community that’s constantly fixing bugs and developing new features, which is always a good sign. An active community means answers to even your most specific Godot-related questions. Godot also links out to its other internet HUBS, including Reddit forums, Facebook groups, steam community, the Godot forums, and more.

AppGameKit

“AppGameKit is an easy to learn game development engine, ideal for Beginners, Hobbyists & Indie developers.” Does that sound like you?

AppGameKit focuses on quickly coding and building apps and being able to share them across platforms. This rapid iteration and cross-platform sharing is geared towards mobile game development but handles most platforms:

§ iPhones and iPads

§ Linux

§ HTML5 Browsers

§ Raspberry Pi

§ macOS

§ Windows

§ Android

CONCLUSION :

Image Source: https://techblogcorner.com/2020/02/06/most-popular-game-engines-for-game-development/

Game engines are the future of the gaming industry. They are continuously growing and will further expand in the future due to rapidly evolving technology. Game engines enhance the playing environment for the user and give a much smoother experience. That also increases the competitive environment among the players since the game engine leads to more exciting and brain-smacking games.

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