Game Engine Q

[Lurker]

Just wondering...what exactly is a game engine? Ive heard about companies that use the same engine for several games....what does this mean? Sorry for my isolence! :rolleyes

[XSquared]

http://www.3dactionplanet.com/featur...s/gameengines/

[Magos]

An engine is basically a chunk of code doing something, coded in such a general way that you can specify what it does without coding any specifics.

Here's an example of a graphics engine:

class GRAPHICS
{
	public:
		//Constructor/Destructor
		GRAPHICS();
		~GRAPHICS();

		//Graphics mode controllers
		BOOL Setup();
		VOID Shutdown();

		//Render methods
		VOID RenderText(INT X, INT Y, CONST CHAR* Text, DWORD Colour);
		VOID RenderInt(INT X, INT Y, INT Value, DWORD Colour);
		VOID RenderFill(DWORD Colour);
		VOID RenderSolidSprite(INT X, INT Y, SPRITE Sprite);
		VOID RenderTransparentSprite(INT X, INT Y, SPRITE Sprite);
};

To enter the graphics mode, all you have to do is call Setup() and it takes care of everything for you. No need to code thousends of lines, just one little call to Setup().
To draw a sprite (image), you simply call RenderSolidSprite(), pass where on the screen it should be drawn and what sprite to use.
This makes the code a lot clearer and easier to read.

[Lurker]

Ahh, thank you both.

[zornthrohacker]

I guess you have the answer but a good game engin can be found at my site
look in the tutorials section.. ther's onely one there thats the tutorial.

[frenchfry164]

I'm working on a 2D graphics engine for Direct3D right now. Sounds weird to people inexperienced in the game programming or hardware fields, but it works out VERY cool.

I see an engine as a very broad word. Depending on what it does, it could be very different things. But usually it is as Magos described.

[Blizzarddog]

Me and someone else are working on a bombing game in SDL. We'll be using ZEngine. What eva the heck ZEngine is.