[ELI5] What exactly is game engine and why do games show what engine they are using?
In: Engineering
If it’s an in-house engine, meaning the engine was developed by the company that also makes the game, then they may show it to essentially advertise another product of the company.
If it’s a 3rd party engine that the developers licensed for the development of a game, they are likely showing it out of legal obligation. It is probably stated in the licensing agreement that the engine’s logo must be shown somewhere in the game, usually at the very start. That’s not true for all engines and all licenses, of course.
The engine is like a rulebook of systems the game uses to make things like the physics and graphics work. Rather than have to design all the game mechanics from the ground up the developers can use a prebuilt engine and just apply their own textures and models to it, saves a lot of time and money. They publicise what engine they use so consumers know what the games mechanics will broadly “feel” like and how robust/buggy it’s likely to be.
Game engines are basically just code libraries that deal with the complex aspects of games, most commonly used for 3-D games.
The mathematics and code to manage and process 3D games is VERY complex, especially when it comes to the rendering of such games. So developers adopt the old “why re-invent the wheel” method, and just use an existing engine someone has made and tested before.
As for why developers advertise, I can only speculate, but it is likely because the engine you choose directly has an impact on the physics and visuals of a game (reflections, lighting engine, ect). It’s why (among other economic reasons) triple A games tend not to use Unity.
Does this make sense?
A game engine is a combination of two things: libraries of code that handle complex tasks relevant to game programming, and an editor for designing aspects of the game using a GUI.
The libraries of code make it easier to perform common tasks: rendering geometry, mixing stereo audio, networking, etc. This allows the programmers to focus their effort on code which is actually unique to their specific game.
The editor works in conjunction with the libraries. It’s a program which lets the game designer navigate freely through a scene to place characters and objects. They’ve become increasingly sophisticated with tools for defining AI behavior, animation layers, and shaders. The editor is just as important as the code libraries, as the alternative would be designing levels by writing lines of code or data files.
Game engines were originally proprietary, and they were essentially the accumulation of good code and tools from the studio’s previous games. Many specialists working on a code base for many years naturally becomes quite valuable, so some large game studios released their game engines commercially (Unreal, CryEngine). Now there are many free game engines being developed independently.
Some developers show what game engine they’re using because it’s required by the license.
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