"Engine": terminology & history

Ooo, good question I''ll bet you''ll get a whole range of different answers..

1. Dunno, probably a few months after i got my hands on Quake1.

2.a. Hmm, I usually read this as implying "It can draw pretty graphics, but don''t expect any help doing collision detection, or all the other things you''ll need for a game".

2.b. The ''proper'' game engine I take it as something you can use to build an entire game on with only game-specific code. Some sort of API would provide you with a high level interface and the managing of objects, drawing, networking etc. is all handled for you.

2.c. I don''t like this one- in game terms it usually really means ''Graphics API'' or ''Scenegraph''. I suppose this has more meaning outside of games - Flash for example would probably count as a graphics engine.

I don''t like the overuse of the word ''Engine''. It seems like every man and his dog create a game, and claim that it''s built on an engine of some kind. Typically, if someone says ''graphics engine'' they really mean ''a bunch of classes that wrap around the graphics API''. Ditto for 3d engine. Game engine usually mean ''i made a game with it, but don''t expect to be able to reuse my code without some major restructuring work''.

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Original post by S1CA

1) When was the first time you heard the word "engine" being used in connection with games ?. A rough year will do.


2) What''s the difference (in your opinion), if any, between:
a. 3D Engine
b. Game Engine
c. Graphics Engine

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q1. is like asking when was the first time you saw the moon, you just cant remember(well i cant anyway.)

q2. (IMO)
a. draws geometric primatives. textures ,lights, projects, etc them.

b. runs all other aspects of a game: logic,AI,physics, particles etc.

c. same as A.

1) The "Quake" engine, definately.
2) a and c) A 3D engine is a graphics engine, ''nuff said.
b) a game engine consists of A LOT MORE than graphics. It consists of various audio components, input, networking, AI, physics and graphics. A graphics engine is just a mere subset of a game engine.

Engine programming is a blast though love it.

Trent Polack
trent.codershq.com
trent@codershq.com
Author of Focus on 3D Terrain Programming

1. Duke3D. The Build Engine.
2a. 3D graphics. Pretty textured and lit traingles.
2b. Everything except the game.
2c. See 2a. Or lots of sprites.

1) I have absolutely no idea.

2) a) 3d graphics, ranging from simple primitives to complex raycasting. Not necessarily fast; no collision detection or physics. Minimal interactivity - at most, you can move the camera around or change a few shading parameters.
2) b) As someone already said, the ''proper'' one - support for all aspects of the game, from low-level (memory management, profiling) to high-level (scenegraph, network messages, interpolators).
2) c) Geared to producing graphics (2D or 3D) at a relatively fast rate.

Superpig
- saving pigs from untimely fates, and when he''s not doing that, runs The Binary Refinery.

1) Pac-man engine? Seriously though, I had heard the term engine used as far back as 93 when Doom came out.

2a) 3D engine _usually_ implies a 3D graphics engine, however, in reality, a 3D engine _could_ only store and manipulate 3D content while the graphics engine (2c) renders. Of course, with 3D and graphics technology sharing the same piece of hardware/API, the two are naturally combined in PC game development.

2b) A game engine is a system in which a game may be built upon. It may handle all content, actions and low-level functions. It may act as the vehicle in which all game objects communicate and interact. A game does not necessarily have to be built on a game engine. Just because some middle school kid wrote a tetris clone, does not mean he has created a game engine.

2c) Really, I don''t understand why the term engine is used for every piece of a game. It''s like saying "As I drove down the road, I rolled down my window engine and turned up the volume of my radio engine." How does a game have multiple "engines"? Anywho, by todays standards, I would say a graphics engine is a system for rendering game content.

- Jay


[ Here, taste this ]

When I think of an engine I think of the thing that does all of the work. You just push buttons and stuff on the interface and the engine does what you asked, like a car.

When I think of an engine, I think of a chess engine, because that''s what I program. The distinction between the engine and the GUI is very distinct in most chess programs. For instance, you can usually plug in different engines into the same GUI. Most chess engines are either a DLL or a seperate executable altogether (communicating with the GUI via text pipes, or some other method). The engine does all of the work (decides on a move, makes sure you don''t make illegal moves, etc.), and the GUI just handles the user''s input and sends the parsed stuff to the engine.

1) Probably around the quake/Duke3D time...

2a) 3D engine has beside the rendering, culling and that sort of stuff. Not sure if I would include the collision detection.

2b) Handles everything that has to do with a game. It''s mostly the games framework that includes the gfx, input and audio (maybe network too) engines.

2b) Is able to output something to the screen and includes lots of graphics related functions (blit, screen resize...)

/MindWipe

1) When was the first time you heard the word "engine" being used in connection with games ?. A rough year will do.
Build3D for Duke Nukem 3D.

a. 3D Engine
Abstracts all operations related to manipulating and presenting a 3D environment. The developer creates content, but is also responsible for interaction, logic, audio and so forth. Generally, a 3D engine will supply one or more renderers, but will support the addition of additional renderers to create different visual effects.

b. Game Engine
Abstracts all operations related to manipulating and presenting a game of a specific type including graphics, input, physics and audio. The developer need only create content and specify routines to be called in response to certain events (logic).

c. Graphics Engine
Flexible term that refers to a subsystem that abstracts all tasks related to the graphical representation of game objects. A 3D engine is a graphics engine.

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[my first new topic btw ]

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Congratulations! You and SabreMan have to be the longest active posters to have just made your first posts respectively.

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Original post by S1CA
1) When was the first time you heard the word "engine" being used in connection with games ?. A rough year will do.

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1994, when I bought the book Flights Of Fantasy and started getting into software renderers. It just seemed like the term that was used to describe the rendering process. I still remember telling my Aunt I made a 3D engine, and she was confused when I showed her a spinning cube and was expecting a piston engine or something.

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Original post by S1CA
2) What''s the difference (in your opinion), if any, between:
a. 3D Engine
b. Game Engine
c. Graphics Engine

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a) Renderer focusing on real-time 3D
b) Game architecture.
c) a + 2D

i read it on the back of a game i bought. mech commander 2 was tuff as hell. didnt look very good either at the time

1) 3D engine : one year after Doom, been hearing how it worked in the commercial games. This pushed me to code my first soft engine. It was somehow like Quake1 with 16bits rgb instead tho. 15FPS 640*480 on a P90

2a) 3D engine :
- used to be the rasterizing plus model/scene management. (Quake1)
- the 3D cards n APIs will step more and more inside the coder boarders.
- so 3D engines will be more scene management and collision detection. Now it's still low level tho with new consoles and vertex/pixel shaders. Which is a very good thing after 5 boring years of BSP trees, portals and big flat models.

2b) I don't see it like Oluseyi, I interpret it as a low level API. But my english sucks
Graphics engine : should be limited to primitive rendering and hardware control APIs. Eventually an API extending gl or d3d. For instance : geDrawCloud( void *params, GE_PERLINNOISE ) could be part of it. Anyway I bet gl and d3d will have to evolve in this direction more and more under the pressure of the hardware manufacturers. Else the game PCs will start to be like consoles that only share a common OS ... that is back to the old sound video card coding nightmares of the 90s.

2c) Game engine : will be more and more prod tools + game kernel strongly dependent on the kind of AI, network schemes and level of physics simulation.
There will never be a unique game engine model. At least not before 2020. Well be too rusty to discuss that anymore.

Engine surely means the tech challenges are supposed to require more modular components. The projects gonna be too big to be started from scratch and no team will be able to hold all the savoir faire necessary. This will happen unless small prod models win the online market.

So the term engine was a mean for the game industry to claim its right to be reckonized as a real industry in the future. This helps in front of buisiness angels.


[edited by - Charles B on July 12, 2003 3:59:23 PM]

1. dont know maybe quake guaranteed time by unreal1

a: nice 3d rendering engine thing can also be used to describe a 3d game engine
b: a engine that a game uses. can be 2d or 3d
c: thing to draw graphics. more 2d than 3d

1. 1993 While I was at Virgin and surprisingly not in relation to a 3D game. The company bought Dave Perry''s platform game engine and used it to produce Cool Spot and Aladdin.

2.
a) 3D engine - the system or tool set which contains a library of common 3D graphics routines, which allows you to quickly get 3D graphics up and running.
b) the Game engine I think of that more as a suite of tools. Graphics, mapping, scripting at a minimum but also possibly physics and AI stuff as well. Could be 2D or 3D.
c) A graphics engine is be the same as a) except that it could be 2D or 3D.

Dan Marchant
Obscure Productions
Game Development & Design consultant

I remember seeing the term "engine" used to refer to the engine for a Sonic the hedgehog game being developed for the Sega Megadrive. This would have been around 1992.

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Original post by S1CA

1) When was the first time you heard the word "engine" being used in connection with games ?. A rough year will do.

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I think it was Quake.

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2) What's the difference (in your opinion), if any, between:
a. 3D Engine
b. Game Engine
c. Graphics Engine

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Hmm... dunnno... might be their functionality... what aspect they handle.

[edited by - TSwitch on July 20, 2003 1:29:33 PM]