When the video game “Bright Memory: Infinite” came out this year, reviewers were blown away by the first-person action game’s “satisfying punchy combat” and “top notch visuals.” By any accounts, its creators had pulled off a winner — but what was more impressive was that the game wasn’t made by a team of developers, but by a single software engineer, Zeng Xiancheng, working alone.
It was a testament to the power of a type of software framework called a game engine, a common chassis that underlies a whole family of video games in much the same way a common automobile chassis is used in a family of vehicles. This prepackaged suite of capabilities allows developers to create detailed environments much more easily than would otherwise be possible. It’s a huge business, worth $2.4 billion a year in the US alone.
How it works
Game engines work under the hood, carrying out the main functions needed to bring a game’s world to life. Major components include a rendering engine to create the visual environment, a physics engine to calculate how the characters and the parts of the environment will interact with one another, and the main game program, which carries out the logic of the game itself.
How it works
Game engines work under the hood, carrying out the main functions needed to bring a game’s world to life. Major components include a rendering engine to create the visual environment, a physics engine to calculate how the characters and the parts of the environment will interact with one another, and the main game program, which carries out the logic of the game itself.
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