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In lugnet.castle, Scott P. Costello writes:
> The way this works is a creative company invents a gaming engine and several
> others copy it. Classic example Wolfenstein/Doom invented by Idg. These guys
> invented the 3D shooter engine that was copied by many others. Once software
> engine is created, it is simple to adjust the graphics, maps and weapons to
> suit your theme.
This is partly true, but I would like to clear up some of your nomenclature.
You could say that Id created the First Person Shooter (FPS) genre of games
when they created Wolfenstein 3D.
This is different from an engine, as an engine is a computer program (or group
of programs) that handle all the low-level stuff that a video game does, such
as handling player input (from keyboard, mouse, joystick, whatever),
calculating if some object has collided with some other object, displaying
images to the screen, tracking player and enemy stats, and so on.
An engine has to have data to get the look of the game that is wanted. Data
is textures (pictures and images, used for floors, ceilings, walls, computer
consoles, water, skins, weapons, the sky, etc...), meshes (3D models of
enemies, weapons, trees, etc., if the game is truly 3D (like Quake)), sprites
(2D models of stuff if a game is not truly 3D (like Doom or Warcraft)), and
other stuff like stats (weapon ranges, enemy hit points, lighting
information, etc.) and maps (the layout of a game level).
A single engine can be used with different data to make several different (but
usually similar) games. Both Klingon Honor Guard and Wheel of Time use the
same engine as the game Unreal. The three games are similar in controls and
general gameplay, but each game is distinct and different. The three games all
use different data.
As another example, my company developed a new game engine when they created
The Lost World for PlayStation. The engine was able to "fake" 3D pretty well,
but our engineers continued to work on it and refine it. The same engine
(though much improved) was used for Small Soldiers and T'ai Fu, both very
different games from Lost World (both were true 3D... Small Soldiers was
somewhat like Tomb Raider or MDK and T'ai Fu was somewhat like Super Mario 64
(with a fixed camera)). That same engine was even further refined to create a
First Person Shooter, Medal of Honor.
So as you see, a single engine can even be used to make games from several
different genres. I've worked with the Unreal engine enough to know that it is
very flexible and can be used to create games of many different genres. It
doesn't seem that anyone has bothered to do so, sticking with the current
popularity of the FPS.
> I know this is a very simple explanation for a very involved process but my
> point is that this would be easier than you might think.
>
> Scott
And now you have a complex explanation as well! I hope this information
helps clear things up for everyone.
Tony
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