Eli5: How does a videogame engine work? What is its purpose?
In: 3
I’m not a programmer but IIRC an engine is essentially a “video game making kit” where a lot of the ground work is already done for the actual video game developers by the engines developers.
Like, video games all have different mechanics and play differently, but they all need the basics like a way to keep track of where the player is and to render graphics and simulate gravity. That’s done by the engine to save time for the developers.
This is why some games slightly look or feel similar despite being made by different developers or why some games feel extremely different all together.
Team fortress two and half life for example feel very similar when it comes to the characters movement because they both use the same engine to handle movement physics, but Skyrim uses an entirely different engine and an entirely different way of handling motion so it feels very different.
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