Games and engines

This article is intended for developers who are new to game design and hope to help them understand the game and engine well.

1. What is a game?

There are many types of Games. Today we are talking about electronic games.

For general developers, a game is nothing more than a synonym for a program. In the eyes of developers, a game may not be the same as general software development. However, is the meaning of a game really just that? In the game process, we can control people or things in a two-dimensional or three-dimensional virtual world so that they can interact as required for fun, this is the unique charm of the game-simulation and interactivity.

From the characteristics of the game, it is not difficult to find that video games are actually a virtual reality, which is also the reason why video games are called the ninth art after the eight arts. It has the common characteristics of the eight arts, but has its own unique artistic style. It can enable the appreciation of the work itself, not limited to the identity of a third party, to feel the breath of the work itself, so as to achieve a sense of immersive experience. Whether it's drama, film, literature, or music, when each of us, as a viewer, tastes the art of these creators, even if the work itself is perfect, different people will have different feelings, because each of us is different from the Creator's perspective, so that the viewer will be limited by itself and cannot truly restore the soul of art. The interaction of electronic games can truly integrate people into their work. At least for now, this is beyond the reach of any other art. It is precisely because the simulation and interaction of the game itself are doomed to the ultimate trend of its development-virtual reality.

2. What is an engine?

The game engine is defined as the main program used to control all game functions. In a game development team, engineers are usually divided into engine programmers and game programmers. The former is responsible for the functions of the engine system, such as real-time rendering in the game, light and shadow computing, artificial intelligence, and physical systems, animation Technology and music, while the latter is responsible for the realization of the game's logic, that is, the gameplay of the game itself. Through this, we can find that the game engine is actually a game framework, which provides front-end developers with a variety of components required in the game. Some people think of the game engine as a racing engine. From the perspective of game performance, this metaphor is very appropriate. The engine is like a director who directs the coordination of various functional modules, however, the final rendering effects of the game and the smoothness during running are also closely related to the engine (of course, some games are called graphics card killers because they are not engine-related ). Some people may think that engine engineers are much more powerful than game R & D engineers. This is not the case. Engine engineers are more concerned about the implementation of engine system component functions, the game R & D project focuses on the abstraction of the game logic, with different focuses, but there is no distinction between the levels, because the division between the game and the engine is vague.

3. Engines

In the early stages of game development, there was no engine concept. Every game that people developed would write code from scratch, which wasted a lot of time and money. Later, people sorted out some game code with similar themes as the basic framework for the next type of games. Therefore, good game engines are designed for a specific type of game. The more general the engine is (the engine that can make many types of game content ), it runs a specific game on a specific platform with average performance, do not expect that the engine performance of a game that can be created across N or more platforms will be very good (in fact, the engine that can run any game content on any platform will never appear ), because efficient things always need to be chosen.

4. Brief History of engine development

There are different arguments about the world's first game engine, but we usually agree with 3D realms in 1992 (the company is an independent development department of apogee software) the released Wolfenstein 3D (German command) is the originator of the first person shoot (first person shooting game) game, this is why the 3D Game Engine is inseparable from the FPS game. Wolfenstein 3D successfully introduced the concept of the Z axis in the game, increasing the depth of the plane. The engine was written by John carmark (John carmark), co-founder of id software, a video game programmer named as the god of Games. Shortly after Wolfenstein 3D was released, id software has released another project of great significance in engine history-doom (Destroyer ). The Doom engine is the first engine in the world to be used for authorization, and John carmark's position has gained a firm foothold in the Game Industry (currently, Mark has resigned from id software, R & D of virtual reality ).

Another game that matches doom in the history of engines is Duke nukem 3D (Duke of destruction 3d), which was created by the build engine developed by apogee software in 1994, duke destruction already has the vast majority of the first-person shooting game that we are currently exposed to, but the build engine cannot become a real 3D engine, it is because the engine itself does not have any substantial breakthroughs. However, after the release of quake in 1996, the situation was broken. Raytheon not only fully supports particle effects and animation, but also makes online games popular and brings online games to the crowd.

At the same time, let's take a look at the situation in China during the same period. In 1995, the legend of xianjian Qixia, developed by Daewoo's mad man studio, was born. In 1996, the legend of Jin yongqun, developed by helo studio, came out, there is no game engine in China, and these dos games are also completed based on assembly languages, although the functions and pictures of the game itself and the technologies used are not similar to those of foreign products in the same period, the two games are still of extraordinary significance in the history of Chinese games, it is also a permanent memory of countless people.

Following Raytheon hammer, id software quickly launched Raytheon Hammer 2, serving as the dominant player in the 3D engine market. However, after epic games's unreal (illusory) broke into the FPS world in 1998, a powerful competitor appeared. Two other engines emerged simultaneously in 1998, one of which is the dark engine developed by the looking glass Studio (which was subsequently unable to continue development due to the collapse of the studio engine ), the other model is half-life. In fact, it is not difficult to find out when we play CS in the later stage that this game has always had the shadow of the thunder hammer, this is because the half-life engine is built based on Raytheon Hammer 1 and Raytheon Hammer 2.

After the 21st century, the engine differentiation trend began gradually. in the 2000 s or so, many game engines were born in China, for example, the famous fantasy westward journey and westward journey series were built through a graphic engine named fengsoul. The fengsoul engine is a work of Yunfeng in university, although it seems that this engine is not perfect, it was a hit at the time. One of the games that I have played in my early years is the adventure of Happy Bar (now renamed the city of adventure). In fact, this is the first online game I have ever played, this game is built using the fancybox engine of Happy Bar. At the same time, some domestic studios that make stand-alone games have also started engine R & D, such as xianjian 2, xuanyuan Jian 3, and monopoly 4, they all use the game engine independently developed by Daewoo's domo studio, in those days, Jinshan's xishanju studio was also built on its self-developed overmax engine to create dark horse-level games such as the Resurrection and Qin Dynasty. There were many classic games in the same period, the 2002 s were the final peak of standalone Games in China, and then completely entered the online gaming era.

Most of the engines that came into being after the 2001 s are primarily pursuing the authenticity of images and content. They are also exploring the Internet. After the 2005 S, in the past, the younger brother engine eventually became a giant in the engine industry. epic game company unreal 3 came out in, cryengine 2 came into play in, and frostbite engine (frostbite engine) was the first engine in) the battlefield of engine creation: the arrival of the new engine era is marked by the release of rebellious companies.

In China, most of the engines are abandoned due to unattended maintenance and technical backwardness in the future. The domestic standalone game market is also gradually shrinking under the impact of European and American masterpieces, and only a few studios support it, most of the engines used are introduced into foreign engines, such as the RenderWare engine used by xianjian 4, xianjian 5, xianjian 5, and xuanyuan sword (used to create Battlefield 2, GTA series games). In addition, most companies have already transformed and stand-alone games have not warmed up until the last two years. In the past two years, blood rain has been a success in standalone games, and only the performances of the four Chinese sword games can be regarded as hard work, the pictures of the ancient sword 2 can already be regarded as a fairly high level in domestic games, and xuanyuan Sword 6, one of the three swords released in the past 13 years, was once called a hero of unity, in my opinion, it is more appropriate to say that unity has broken the xuanyuan sword. After all, the current unity 3D engine is barely used for large-scale PCs; in the past 13 years, another highly-watched standalone PC masterpiece has been a fan shexan secret built by xuanhuang studio. This masterpiece, known as the first arpg game in China, was listed after three years of careful preparation, xuan Huang disbanded shortly after the listing. The reason is self-evident. In the past 14 years, the author was excited about the reorganization of heluo's studio. This year, he created the jinyongqun and Xia Chuan, And the martial arts and Xia Chuan's studio finally returned to the vision of a standalone game, in July 18, the legend of the new swordsman in the west mountainous area will also go public (is this game's character model jiannet 3 ??), Although the promotion film looks general, I believe this game can continue the classic series of swordsman sentiment.

In addition to standalone Games in China, the development of online game engines in China is also a rapid improvement. Among them, the works are represented by Kingsoft's jiannet 3 and the perfect world, however, the two engines are still quite different from those of the rich and handsome engines outside China. Fortunately, in 2012, there were two sub-era engines in China: akengine, which was independently developed by Fangzhou studio, as the masterpiece Wu soul. The other one was the dark engine of Sohu Changyou, the dark engine once released a promotional film named "x 7", which is actually the xuanyuan sword 7 to be created in cooperation with Daewoo, however, from the propaganda film, we can see that the image of the dark engine can indeed stick to the pace of the world's first-class engine, but the actual effect remains to be tested.

Although there are many excellent game engines available for us to choose, a dark horse game is not the engine itself, but the one who uses it. Because the famous saying in the game industry is "content is King )".