Introduction to computer game engines

Game engine is the core component that has been prepared for editing computer games. It provides various tools for game designers to write games and lays a certain foundation for the creation of games. No matter what kind of game needs a piece of control code, after a long time of development of the game, the game engine is constantly upgraded, from the short control code development into a complex structure composed of multiple parts of the system, all important aspects of the whole game development are included. It is a collection of code that can be recognized by the machine and controls the running of the game.

A game can be divided into two parts: game engine and game resource. Game resource refers to the game’s image, sound, animation and other parts, and game engine is the program code used to call these resources.

The basic components of a game engine

Game engine is a complex system, which is composed of many subsystems. The important components of the engine are described below.

• Light and shadow effect: light and shadow effect refers to the influence of the scene light in the game on the character, including the refraction of the light source, reflection and other physical phenomena, as well as dynamic light source, color light source and other game screen effects, which are realized by the engine.
• Animation: Animation is an important part of the game, the animation in the game can be roughly divided into two kinds, one is the skeleton animation, is a more common animation system in the game, with a good skeleton structure to support the movement of characters or animals. The other is the model animation system, which directly transforms the preset model.
• Physics System: The physics system is an important part of the engine, which is used to process the movement of objects and make them follow the physical laws in reality, making the game closer to reality and thus having a better game experience. For example, the reflection of light in the game, the speed of the character falling, the height of the jump, the speed and trajectory of the bullet flight, etc.
• Collision detection: Collision detection is the core of the physics system and is used to detect the edges of objects in the game to achieve better physics laws, such as walls in the game to ensure that the character does not pass through the wall, and to determine the interaction between the wall and the character based on the detection.
• Rendering: Rendering is the most important part of the game engine. Rendering is the calculation and integration of the model, animation, light effect and other game effects after the completion of the 3D model. It is the most complex step in the engine with the largest amount of calculation and the most complex implementation process.

Currently the main commercial engine

Some famous commercial engines include Valve’s Soure Engine, EA DICE’s Frost engine, BigWorld’s BigWorld engine, Unity Technologies’ Unity 3D engine, etc. Here is the Unity 3D engine.

Unity 3D engine has a wide range of applicability. In addition to the game level, it can also be applied to many directions such as film and television animation field and education field, and occupy a place in many fields such as automobile, architecture, art design. It is common in virtual exhibition hall development, VR animation design and other technical fields.

Another notable feature of Unity3D engine that is highly praised by many game developers is that it can support cross-platform development, reducing the huge amount of work brought by platform migration development. There are many kinds of platforms supported by Unity3D, covering most of the game platforms provided on the market. Developers only need to use personal computers for development and testing, and then slightly adjust the main part for each platform, so that they can package and release each version, which simplifies the problem of game transplantation and saves a lot of adjustment time in game development.

At the same time, Unity3D engine also has a large number of discussion areas on the official website to facilitate developers to exchange development experience with each other, and a network resource store that serves the majority of developers.

Your task

What are the main components of a game engine?

Share your thoughts and ideas in the comments below.