Game Engines a Brief Overview

So this is the final assignment for the first discipline of this year.
By now I can say that moving to Manchester to attend Futureworks was the best thing I did in a long time.
I got to know lots of people that I thing some of them might become really close friends with myself.

Enough with the small talk. Here is my assignment:

Unity 3D

The unity engine was created to the game GooBall. The game was a commercial failure but the development team realized that the engine and set of tools that they created had some market value.
First released solely for the Mac, with the advent of the iPhone, it was the first engine to fully support it.
With its 4th version the engine reached more than 1,000,000 registered developers.

Features:

• iOS support
• Asset store
• Mecanim, a new animation system to animate any character or object
• Real-time shadows for all platforms
• DirectX 11 rendering
• Shuriken particle system updated with world collision functionality
• Adobe Flash and Linux as two new platforms
• Cross-platform dynamic fonts

Notable Games

• Rochard
• Shadowgun
• Bad Piggies
• Project Rift

Shadowgun

Rochard

Torque Game Engine

Torque is a 3D graphics engine that also provides networking code, scripting, in-engine world editing, and GUI creation. The source code can be compiled for Windows, Macintosh, Linux, Wii, Xbox 360, and iPhone platforms.
Now the flagship Torque 3D is free under MIT License.

Main Features

• COLLADA Support
• LIVE Material Updating
• PhysX Integration
• Per-pixel dynamic lighting
• Depth of Field

Notable Games

• Tribes 2

CryENGINE® 3

Development

CryEngine 3 Free SDK, originally called Sandbox Editor, is the current version of the level editor used to create levels for the CryEngine line of game engines by Crytek. Tools are also provided within the software to facilitate scripting, animation, and object creation. It has been included with various Crytek games (including, but not limited to, Crysis and Far Cry), and is used extensively for modding purposes. The editing style is that of the sandbox concept, with the emphasis on large terrains and a free style of mission programming. The editor can also construct indoor settings.

Opposed to editors like UnrealEd which use a "subtractive" editing style that takes away areas from a filled world space, the Sandbox has an "additive" style (like Quake II). Objects are added to an overall empty space.

The Sandbox's concentration on potentially huge (in theory, hundreds of square kilometers) terrain, means that it uses an algorithmic form of painting textures and objects onto the landscape. This uses various parameters to define the distribution of textures or types of vegetation. This is intended to save time and make the editing of such large terrains feasible while maintaining the overall "real world" sandbox free roaming style. This is different from some editing styles that often use "fake backdrops" to give the illusion of large terrains.

In a fashion somewhat comparable to the 3D Renderer Blender, which can be used for game design, the Sandbox editor has the ability, with a single key press, for the editor to jump straight into the current design (WYSIWYP, "What You See Is What You Play" Feature). This is facilitated without loading the game as the game engine is already running within the editor. The "player" view is shown within the 3D portion of the Editor.

The Editor also supports all the CryEngine features such as vehicles and physics, scripting, advanced lighting (including real time, moving shadows), Polybump technology, shaders, 3D audio, character Inverse kinematics and animation blending, dynamic music, Real Time Soft Particle System and Integrated FX Editor, Deferred Lighting, Normal Maps & Parallax Occlusion Maps, and Advanced Modular AI System.

Main Features

• Advanced Modular AI System
• Next Generation Real-Time Graphics
• Realistic Characters
• Live Create - Simultaneous WYSIWYP on all platforms

Notable Games

• FarCry 3
• Crysis 3
• MechWarrior Online
• Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2
• Fibble

Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2

MechWarrior Online

Crysis 3

FarCry 3