End Date: 10/10/16
Tutor: Wayne, Gallear
Student: Wyatt, Chapman
Unit 70
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Computer Game Engines
About game engines - A game engine is the incorporation of modelling, animation, terrain design, physics, sounds, scripting, AI and many other games development properties used. These properties will be used to create the game of choice by the developer.
Almost every games company have their own game engine and they all function in specific ways. Some game engines might have better physics, while another will be more visually appealing. Examples of this would be comparing a game like Borderlands 2, with it's cel shaded graphics. It prefers to have textures, such as blood splatters, to have a very colourful and vibrant look to them. Games with photo-realistic graphics, try to imitate real life, attempting to create a flawlessly beautiful landscapes, character details, model details, sounds etc.
Unity Engine - The Unity engine focuses on portable devices, such as android and IOS. It has however been used on different devices aswell, such as: Xbox, PlayStation, PC and Nintendo consoles.
Unity Release Date: June 8th 2005
In 2006 the engine won the Apple Design award at WWDC trade show. Unity said that this was the first time a game developer tool had ever been nominated an award.
The engine has specific support for each individual device. So the engine doesn't run one game on a mobile device better than if it was to be imported to a console. Unity's engine provides a shader with multiple variants and a declarative fallback specification. This allows the engine to choose the optimum video settings for your current hardware, to make sure you're getting the best experience from the game.
When giving an objects physics you must take into account how real life objects move, react, or don't react to certain events or environments. Luckily you wont have to go through too much trouble in doing this with unity. Since the engine has built-in components that handle the simulation for you. Meaning in just afew tweaks to the parameter settings you can create items/objects that act in a specific way (i.e they can fall, be collided with and wont move about on their own). The engine actually has two separate physics engines, one for 3D games and one for 2D.
Unity can import sound files such .AIFF, .WAV, .MP3 and .Ogg. Along with tracker modules in .xm, .mod, .it and .s3m. The engine supports mono, stereo and multichannel audio assets.
The engine comes with a program called "AudioGroup Inspector" that allows you to modify the sounds/music you have for your game. It has options like "edit in playmode" that allow you to play the game and modify the sound while playing. This can make things less tedious and easier to get the sound you want.
Unity's animation systems is based on animation clips, this systems has information which directs how an object should move; change position, rotate, along with afew other properties. The clips are then organised into a flowchart called "Animation Controller". Animation Controller keeps track of which clips should be playing, and when the animation should change.
Unreal Engines - The engine was made in 1998 and was first demonstrated in the game called "Unreal". Unreal's main genre started as First Person Shooter, but because the engine uses C++, its adaptability is quite high, so most developers in this present day use this engine on all platforms, such as: Xbox, IOS, Android, PlayStation, PC, Linux and afew others.
Unreal 4 Release Date: September 4th 2014
The newest version of the Unreal engine is "Unreal Engine 4". The Unreal Engine 4 has been in development since 2003.
Some of the new features of this engine include; A new "Blueprint" visual scripting system, that allows faster development of game logic without using C++, and includes live debugging. Real time global illumination using voxel cone tracers, getting rid of the need for pre-computer lighting. Unfortunately this has been replaced with a similar, yet less computationally-expensive algorithm, just before release, because of performance problems with the next generation of consoles.
On September 3rd, 2014, Epic Games made the change from subscription based profiting, to creating a marketplace where people can buy models, textures, and other assets for different prices, and there are even some free textures and models that people can obtain. Along with the free content came multiple asset packs, that consisted of fully developed environments, landscapes, characters, props, sounds, animated meshes and more.
Unreal Engine 3 - Originally Unreal Engine 3 only supported the following platforms; Xbox, PlayStation and PC, while Android and IOS were added later in 2010. The first game to be released on consoles using unreal engine 3 was "Gears of War". The first PC release was "RoboBlitz".
The engines renderer supports techniques including HDRR, per-pixel lighting, and dynamic shadows. Many other features were added to Unreal Engine 3 in later updates, ones such as; global illumination solver, improved destructible environments, soft body dynamics, ipod touch functionality, steamworks integration and more.
FrostBite Engine - The FrostBite Engine was made by EA Digital Illusions CE. Made for the purpose of creating First Person Shooters (FPS), the FrostBite Engine gave birth to the BattleField series but, the company has expanded its engine to include a variety of genres, like; Role-Playing-Games/RPG, real-time strategy, racing and others. At this moment in time, FrostBite is an exclusive engine, only available after joining EA.
FrostBite 3 Release Date: October 29th 2013
The engine uses three main components, FrostED, Backend Services, and Runtime. FrostED is a PC program used for developers to create games in realtime workflow. Runtime memory and runtime performance provide the ability to enable code and data systems to release content to Xbox, PlayStation, Android and IOS.
The latest version of the FrostBite Engine is FrostBite 3. Workflows and runtimes are configurable, and cover all aspects of development, including, audio, animation, scripting, cinematics, Artificial Intelligence (AI), physics, object destruction, rendering, and visual effects. FrostBite 3 has added alot of features, like, a new weather system, physically based rendering (PBR), and support for other developing techniques; one example would be photogrammetry.
DICE first used the FrostBite engine in BattleField: Bad Company, BattleField 1943, and BattleField: Bad Company 2. There was a version of FrostBite called FrostBite 1.5, which was used to make Medal of Honor. The next generation of FrostBite 2. The first game to be released with this version, was BattleField 3. FrostBite 2 was the one that made other EA studios use it, other than DICE. FrostBite 2 powered games include: Need for Speed: The Run, Medal of Honor: Warfighter, and Army of Two: Devils Cartel. FrostBite 3 was released along side BattleField 4.
Rockstar Advanced Game Engine (RAGE) - RAGE is an engine made by the technology group at Rockstar San Diego with help from other Rockstar studios. The engine has had multiple appearances on a variety of consoles, such as; Xbox, PC, PlayStation, and Nintendo Wii.
Release Date: May 23rd 2006
RAGE had originally evolved from the Angel Game Engine, developed by Angel Studios for Midtown Madness and later the sixth generation console version of the Midnight Club Series and other Rockstar San Diego games. Rcokstar has imported some middleware components into RAGE, like the proprietary Euphoria character animation engine and the open-source Bullet physics engine. Before RAGE, Rockstar mainly used Criterion Game's RenderWare engine to develop games, including the Xbox, PlayStation, and PC versions of the Grand Theft Auto franchise.
CryEngine - CryEngine was made by the German developers from Cytek. It has been used in all games created by Crytek, the first being Far Cry. The engine has also been used in third-party games under the Crytek licence, including Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2, and SNOW. Several companies have different version of the engine, such as Cloud Imperium Games, which uses a modified version of the engine for Star Citizen and Squadron 42. Even a company like Ubisoft has an incredibly modified version that they have dubbed the Dunia Engine, which is used for the most recent version of the Far Cry series.
CryEngine 1 - This version of the engine was licensed to NCsoft for their game, Aion: The Tower of Eternity.
Crytek made this engine as a technology demo of Far Cry for Nvidia. When the company saw its potential, they turned it into a game. When graphics cards were released that supported 3.0 pixel vertex shaders, Crytek released version 1.2 of the engine, which used capabilities for better graphics. Soon after Crytek developed CryEngine 1.3. This added support for HDR lighting.
CryEngine 2 - The version 2.0 appeared in Crytek's game, Crysis. It was later used in Crysis Warhead when it updated the same engine.
The engine was licensed to an architectural and urban-planning communication company. The obvious reason for this, was because the company would be able to see what the building looked like before construction. Other companies such as Simpson Studios also licensed the engine to be used for a game. On September, 17th, 2007, the engine became the first version in the world to be used for educational purposes.
CryEngine 3 - CryEngine 3 was released on October 14th, 2009 and is available for use on PlayStation, Xbox, and Wii U. The first game made using this engine version was Crysis 2, which was released on March 22nd, 2011.
On July 1st, 2011, an SDK version of CryEngine 3 was released specifically to make custom maps, mods and content for Crysis 2. Crytek also released a free-to-use version of the CryEngine for non-commercial use. It was released on August 17th, 2011 under the name CRYENGINE® Free SDK.
CryEngine 3.6/4 - Even though this 'version' is classed as 3.6/4, Crytek actually decided that they were going to rebrand the engine and simply name it CryEngine without the version numbers. They chose to do this because as they stated that the latest edition of CryEngine will not be like any others seen previously.
The new CryEngine version adds support for Linux and other consoles like the PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Wii U. At certain events, Crytek have also shown their engine supporting virtual reality systems. At GDC 2015 Crytek brought a demo called 'Back To Dinosaur Island' to the event, which shown how well their engine could use VR.
CryEngine V - On March 22nd, 2016, Crytek released a new version of CryEngine, called CryEngine V, which supports DirectX 12, Vulkan and Virtual Reality.
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