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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What an engine SPECIFICALLY is will vary a lot, but functionally an engine is a collection of support oriented code that handles a lot of common features that virtually all games will require.
One simple example is a physics system. Unless you are trying to do something weird and interesting, your physics system will probably be the same as most other games. Gravity goes down at a particular rate, “Friction” slows things down, something spinning will keep spinning till it hits something, etc.
You don’t need to rewrite all that code for each and every project, you can simply grab an engine that already has a physics system, and then you arrange your art assets and game code to use it.
The point I raised at the beginning about it varying is that not all game engines are specced into doing the same thing. If you are making a first/third person shooter, then Unreal will help you with a lot of the common problems that you will encounter. If you want to make a grand strategy game like Crusader Kings or Stellaris, then you’re going to want to look for an engine that specializes more in database management because the problems you are going to run into are different.
Or to put more specifically, most engines have a physics system, but not all engines do because not all game types actually need one.
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