Community Let's talk Game Engines

[MegaApple]

Let's be real, no one really knows how game engine works at it's back and most won't know what technically a game engine actually means. And also the fact that people opt-out discussing the 3rd party middlewares and other stuff that are used with the games, which are as critical to the game's existence.
I think that unless a very experienced tools/engine architecture computer engineer is involved in the conversation, talking about engine is a not quite worthwhile.

Pictured : Me reading a Twitter thread of game programmers talking about game engines​

And then, I watched this video today :

"I don't know, why people give a sh*t [...about game engines], I mean you can make a good game with any game engine if you got the right people."

BUT THEN IT DAWNED ON ME...
The general gamers that actually needs to know about game engines are PC Gamers! or more specifically, modders!
If the know what engines they are dealing with, they'll be better to identify how to makes tweaks and additions.

For example : (I don't have this confirmed but...) Resident Evil 2 Remake and other RE Engine games use Maya for creating their character models. Once modders know about it, they imported the character in it and have been wild with their imagination.


What do you all think about game engines?

 

[uraizen]

I feel like that once I saw Guilty Gear Xrd I needed to shut the hell up about Unreal Engine's "brown" look and do my research.

So the quote's not wrong.

 

[Wildebeet]

I admit I just roll my eyes and move on as soon as Unity vs Unreal gets talked about. I always thought the good engine/bad engine conversations were basically just weirdos trying to console war, but bizarrely, they wanted to war over game engines that they didn't use or know anything about. I do recall seeing people vaguely complain about "middleware" without seeming to remotely understand what the tools do. I think people get confused and conflate it with the "asset flip" drama, which is also a total nonsense conversation. Basically people raging on the internet just because internet.

 

[MegaApple]

I feel like that once I saw Guilty Gear Xrd I needed to shut the hell up about Unreal Engine's "brown" look and do my research.

So the quote's not wrong.

Have you seen its GDC talk? It's mind blowing stuff.

 

[gabbo]

For example : (I don't have this confirmed but...) Resident Evil 2 Remake and other RE Engine games use Maya for creating their character models. Once modders know about it, they imported the character in it and have been wild with their imagination.


What do you all think about game engines?

The engines don't use Maya, as Maya is a 3D modelling toolset. They are however, designed to use a file type/extension that can be exported from Maya (using your example, I have no idea what the file type RE2 uses/stores is models/textures in) to render their models and that is something modders would need to know.
I'm sure a model produced in blender could be exported to RE2 if not by default, then if an addon exists to convert to the required file type.

 

[Durante]

Regarding modding, the biggest difference is probably what kind of asset toolchain a game uses.

I.e. if there are closed-source tools in between the authoring program (e.g. Maya) and the format the engine consumes, then modding will be very limited. If the game directly loads industry-standard formats you'll have a much easier time.

 

[MegaApple]

The engines don't use Maya, as Maya is a 3D modelling toolset. They are however, designed to use a file type/extension that can be exported from Maya (using your example, I have no idea what the file type RE2 uses/stores is models/textures in) to render their models and that is something modders would need to know.
I'm sure a model produced in blender could be exported to RE2 if not by default, then if an addon exists to convert to the required file type.

Honestly I picked a wrong example, and thanks for the correction.

asset toolchain

What does that mean?

if there are closed-source tools in between the authoring program (e.g. Maya)

do these programmes us a specialized format?

 

[Nyarlathotep]

Honestly I picked a wrong example, and thanks for the correction.


What does that mean?


do these programmes us a specialized format?

Okay, so: think of a game as a forum, like the one you're posting on.
The engine is the forum software - this forum uses XenForo.
XenForo out of the box comes with certain standard features, and a certain look, but you can customise it however you want.

So think of your forum avatar as the models used in a game.
If its just a .JPEG or .PNG, its really easy to edit, because those are standard image formats that basically every image editor supports.
The asset toolchain to import an avatar into a XenForo forum is User Control Panel -> select local image and upload.

But imagine if for some reason, the forum didn't support images like that; imagine it had, I dunno, Flash avatars.
You wouldn't be able to right click save them, because it wouldn't just be an image, it would be a .SWF file, and you wouldn't be able to edit it with a random photo editing package, you would need something that is capable of decompiling a compiled .SWF and turning it back into an editable image.

Now imagine that we're not talking about Flash and .SWFs (which are uncommon nowadays, but still well known), we're talking about something XenForo made themselves and nobody else has access to, and all images are in .xen format or whatever.

 

[uraizen]

Have you seen its GDC talk? It's mind blowing stuff.

Yup, I usually watch stuff like this and how NRS implemented rollback into MKXL. They were terrified it was going to be shit because it's skipping animations, but "the players didn't care, as long as the matches were smooth." They also mention how they can inject their own delay when working with the game offline to help them now. They said it took them a year, but it was worth it for just development purposes.