I hear it everywherere “this game is gonna use that engine” … Google doesn’t seem to give me a good explanation, so here I am…
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Just as a car’s engine is a collection of parts that makes the entire car work, a game engine is a collection of parts that makes the game work.
Software of any kind consists of dozens of individual sub-systems that handle everything from graphics processing to user input to audio output and network interfaces. The software doesn’t automatically ‘know’ what any of that is — all of those sub-systems have to be programmed from scratch, and they’re often *incredibly* complex and time-consuming to create.
The end result of all of that programming work becomes a ‘game engine’ — a largely re-useable framework of sub-systems that powers the game you see on the screen.
An engine can be used for multiple games, with the audio, graphics, and network code already in place and working — there’s no need to re-write any of the sub-systems unless the designers decide to add a new feature that the engine wasn’t designed to handle.
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