[ELI5] What exactly is game engine and why do games show what engine they are using?
In: Engineering
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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