Eli5: What does it mean for a video game to run on a certain “engine”?
In: Technology
A lot of what a game needs to do, *most* games need to do. Things like lighting a scene, animating a character, detecting a collision, determining physics etc.
An engine is essentially a common library of code ensuring game developers don’t need to waste time re-inventing the wheel every time they start work on a new game. Developers work with an existing engine so they can focus on, for example, unique gameplay mechanisms and interesting art assets, rather than coding the underlying frameworks again and again.
Often these engines also feature toolsets to make workflows easier and make the development process more responsive and visual.
New engines usually come along when hardware changes make old code obsolete, or when the developer has unique ideas or special requirements for the underlying features. Things like procedural worlds often need bespoke engines, for example.
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