Game Engine Overview
Game Engines serve as the core foundation of a game. The engine handles the interfacing with the hardware it is running on, how to receive input from controller hardware, holds files all different kinds and sizes, allows 3D to be drawn into the world, recreates physics and allows the programming to interact with the game.
Most AAA publishers have their own in-house engine(s)
specifically built for the type of games they make. No engine is built the same
with their own nuanced technical proficiencies and weaknesses. DICEs Frostbite
engine was built mainly for large scale high fidelity FPS multiplayer games but
struggled when tasked with creating an RPG game in the form of Dragon Age:
Inquisition and Mass Effect: Andromeda as the engine was not built with the
tools to support the mechanics and logic of that genre and the developers had
to spend a lot of time creating these basic systems from scratch.
Creating a good 3D engine from scratch is a herculean task
requiring a vast amount of programming knowledge and an even larger amount of
man hours. Licensing proprietary engines from other development studios is
expensive and/or extremely unlikely as studios want to keep their engine in
house. As a result, most smaller scale game studios and even big AAA studios turn
to middleware engines to develop their games on. Unreal Engine 4 is one such
middleware.
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