Graphics gaming engine

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velocitytrap

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The graphics engine of a game dictates how well the game will look but they seem to be a big mystery, well at least to me. I tried looking up a list of the names and who makes them but I couldn’t find a lot of information. How do you know if it is the latest and greatest? What makes one so much better than another visually? Why do some games still us inferior graphic engines? The list of questions goes on and on…

Any information would be helpful. I have never seen an article that compared graphic engines or the pros and cons of why one is used over the other.
 
Engines primarily dictate how the game performs. How a game looks primarily falls on the art and textures. Of course, it's up to the engine to scale the graphics accordingly, and execute them as efficiently as possible.

Some games take an extensive amount of time to develop, so by the time they're released, new engines are available. But engines can always be improved, so using an older engine should indicate further optimization.
 
GJSNeptune said:
Engines primarily dictate how the game performs. How a game looks primarily falls on the art and textures. Of course, it's up to the engine to scale the graphics accordingly, and execute them as efficiently as possible.

Some games take an extensive amount of time to develop, so by the time they're released, new engines are available. But engines can always be improved, so using an older engine should indicate further optimization.
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Thank you, somebody finally gets it. There are so many idiots out there, and even on this forum who don't. Just because a game is based on the Unreal 3 engine doesn't mean it's gonna look like UT3. One of the most obvious examples is TF2. It's basically on the same core engine that CS:S is on, but do those games look the same? No...
 
The UT3 engine has been amazing with the sheet variety of games using it. Back in the day, the Quake 1 & Quake 2 engines were running great looking/running games for years.
 
How do they decide which engine to use? Does it rely on the programmers they have in house or is it more based on what they are trying to accomplish? I assume that most game companies buy a license to use an engine. There are so many good ones out there like Doom3, UT3, Crysis... It looks like you may not need to reinvent the wheel with addons and updates to previous engines.
 
you pay good money in order to license an engine, and various engines come with various levels of support from the developers.
 
They evaluate the cost of:

The amount of work it'd take to develop an in-house solution vs. the amount of work it'd take to retrofit a licensed engine plus the cost of licensing

The engine is just pre-fabricated software, it's useful only if it saves the developer money. The biggest drain on the budget is time because they have to pay salaries. Time really is money for these companies. So if a game concept is really unique, they'll probably want to just make their own engine rather than try to retrofit one.

The developer wants to see the engine package include training, documentation of how it works, and consulting to help them use the engine. It doesn't save them much time if they have to waste a lot of time just understanding how to get stuff working.

Also, not every studio has staff that's fully up-to-date on the latest technology/methodology. Maybe they really need to license an engine because they won't be able to duplicate the results effectively on their own. Then later on, they might have the experience needed to produce it themselves.

Check out Gamasutra interviews: http://www.gamasutra.com/
 
On a somewhat related note - anyone know if the engine from Dead Space was created in-house or if it was licensed? I'm only just now playing through that game, and the graphics, lighting, etc. are pretty amazing. I can't recall anything else that's done the same things so well.
 
velocitytrap said:
How do they decide which engine to use? Does it rely on the programmers they have in house or is it more based on what they are trying to accomplish? I assume that most game companies buy a license to use an engine. There are so many good ones out there like Doom3, UT3, Crysis... It looks like you may not need to reinvent the wheel with addons and updates to previous engines.
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It depends on a lot of factors. Larger companies like EA and Activision tend to have their own in house engines they prefer to use for several different projects in order to maximize their investment in the development of the engine and to leverage their own expertise. However, even those companies have to make concessions. EA's Frostbite engine might be great and all for their Battlefield games, but it's not exactly a good fit for the Sims. The UT3 engine worked well OK Mass Effect because it fits well into the shooter mold, but for Dragon Age, a more traditional RPG, Bioware chose to go with a different engine.
 
Domingo said:
On a somewhat related note - anyone know if the engine from Dead Space was created in-house or if it was licensed? I'm only just now playing through that game, and the graphics, lighting, etc. are pretty amazing. I can't recall anything else that's done the same things so well.
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Wikipedia says that it uses the engine from the Godfather game, which I'm assuming was in-house.
 
Domingo said:
On a somewhat related note - anyone know if the engine from Dead Space was created in-house or if it was licensed? I'm only just now playing through that game, and the graphics, lighting, etc. are pretty amazing. I can't recall anything else that's done the same things so well.
Click to expand...

Dead Space used an in-house game engine that was originally created for the Godfather game; last I heard EA was working on marketing it out for license.
 
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