What is the purpose of a game engine when making a game? What is the purpose of it?
In: 0
A game engine takes care of low level tasks, such as talking with the graphics card, basic physics, and even generating menus and other basic UI elements.
The game engine is just that: you start it and it runs in the background connecting your game logic (which is unique to your game) to hardware that actually computes your environment and displays it on the screen. The connection is through an application interface, or even an IDE (think unity and godot).
[deleted]
Imagine that you are an orchestra leader. Say every time you want to perform a symphony you need to go out, select your musician, compose their songs yourself or make someone do it, find an orchestra to perform and etc.
Now for every piece of music, going through this process would be time consuming and tiring. Yet in the case of computers, where someone has access to technologies much wider than an orchestra, this example would scale to a much larger scenario. To the point that you would need to go out, design the clothing of your performers, invent the instruments that they’re gonna play and perhaps even needing to furnish the orchestra yourself.
A computer at its core, is just a bunch of silicon with a fabricated plastic and metal casing. It wouldn’t have any use until you program it correctly. However, a modern capable personal computer would have tons of capabilities which are raw themselves and aren’t very usable without correct algorithms and communication.
To make a game, you have to utilize tons of algorithms to manage your computer memory, construct an artistic environment, translate your program into a machine code which your computer is able to understand etc.
Thus, you should be a one man army and spend a lot of time learning how to fashion clothing, construct instruments, furnish orchestras just to be able to perform a symphony.
A game engine is like a company that has the majority of components that an orchestra needs. Therefore, you wouldn’t need to master a highly divergent skill set and lets you focus on your symphony.
By packaging tools and methods into a single toolchain where all low level and exhaustive stuff is taken care by a familiar interface, it let’s you unleash your imagination as a game designer so you wouldn’t need to waste time on anything else other than the game.
Latest Answers