Game Basics

im just curious.. what is the purpose of an engine in a game? .. i have an idea but would like to hear how everyone else in the world does it.


thanks

A game would actually have more than one support engine that
make up the actual game engine. An engine is basically a
wrapper.

You would have a graphics engine that would include functions
for loading your graphics, manipulating them to suit your needs
(setting transparencies/rotating/etc.), blitting them to the screen
(in 2d) and then cleaning up the graphic objects/memory on
completion. Your sound engine would have functions to load your
sounds, manipulate them (panning/volume/freq/etc), play them
and clean up at the end.

You would (and this is not definitive) have these basic engines:
Graphics
Sound
Music
Input
Script
Gameplay

so - basically i'd be making the driver a loop and have the engines handle the real work, right?

Put it this way, it's like owning a business. You get specialists(engines) who are good at doing a specific thing (music, script, etc...) and that's basically the meaning of an engine
*putted in a little example of course*

As soon as you make your first game (a basic one at that) you will have a much clearer picture of it all, trust me.