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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Computers use maths to draw pictures on the screen. In fact, that is all they *can* do. Even a highly sophisticated video game requiring the computer to draw 120 extremely complicated pictures per second onto your screen – in the end, every pixel of every picture is the product of some mathematical computation.
When someone makes a video game, very very rarely do they write all the formulas and functions out themselves and from scratch. Over the years, we’ve developed software that combines very efficient and versatile packages of maths that draw pictures onto the screen, and outfitted those packages with a user interface, so you can skip a lot of the mathematics and go right into the creative part. That’s a game engine.
Let’s say I want to build a diorama. I’m not likely to make my own cardstock, my own glue, my own markers. I will go to a crafts store and gather all the tools and materials for my project.
In this metaphor, a game engine is the crafts store.
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