Gaming Engines

Game engines are vital pieces of software that put realism into a game, real life physics such as weight, density and buoyancy are put into games using engines. Without these we would have tanks acting like they were the weight of a marshmallow or boats being confused an trying to be submarines by sinking the second you get on them. This is done using complex code which us as artists will probably never see or understand, well leave that for the programmers thank you. So in short engines make the game work. It also handles all the main factors of a game such as AI, lighting and animation and makes them work together for the game. The key engine technologies pretty much boil down to the source engine from Valve, The Havok engine and the Unreal engine. Each with their own personal traits and games including Half Life 2, Bioshock, The force unleashed, Gears of war etc etc

Gaming engines can be resuable with the like of the source engine being used in half life 2, counterstrike and team fortress 2. Making them middleware. This resuable technology can save a lot of developers time as instead of creating their own engine they can simple buy other companies engines, quite a bonus considering creating an engine can take years and cost from £10,000 to 3 million. Also not having to create your own engine can be seen as a good thing. Not having to worry about making your own engine means less focus on technology and more time spent on gameplay. games such as BioShock proves it works with the game not concentrating on next gen physics and instead just buying one, the unreal engine to be exact, so most of their time can go into making the game being both creatively and beautifully designed.




Some of the key issues for gaming engines, both old and new are either issues that have cropped up due to the next gen era or ones that have been haunting gameplay since the dawn of time. Technology restraints are a big issue. As next gen engines are becoming more and more photo realistic with dynamic lighting and so on the technology to play them on such as PC'S arent quite being able to keep up with them, resulting in them not being able to support the engines. This is especially the case with PC gaming. When the Crytek engine first made an appearance it was more a showcase piece for the company then a reliable engine as barely any computers were powerful enough to use it. Technology is having a hard time keeping up with one another as yet another issue engines have is the old chestnut of AI, over the years of gaming AI has been constantly critisised in reviews due to a lot of games having a lack of good AI 'on a couple of times he just froze up while the enemy turned us both into bullet and hamburger sandwiches' or 'he ended up endlessly running around like a sheepdog with a piece of shrapnel stuck in his head' to say a few from zero punctuation reviews. In the world of next gen consoles graphics have reached the point where they are only one step away from looking pretty much like real life but in gaming engines AI hasnt seem to have caught up yet, leaving us with PS1 day cases of NPC's occasionally still being no use nor ornement.