The Evolution of Game Engine

There was a time when game developers only cared about how to develop as many new games as possible and then sell them to players. Although most of the games at that time were simple and rough, the average development cycle of each game was more than 8 to 10 months, on the one hand, because of technical reasons, on the other hand, almost every game had to be coded from scratch, resulting in a lot of repetitive work. Gradually, some experienced developers found a way to be lazy. They borrowed some codes with similar themes from the last game as the basic framework of the new game to save development time and cost. According to Marx's productivity theory, the cost per unit product will be reduced due to the improvement of productivity level, and craftsmen with higher degree of automation will eventually eliminate those craftsmen with lower productivity. The concept of engine was born under the background of this mechanized operation.

Every game has its own engine, but there are not many engines that can really be recognized by others and become standard. Looking at the development of more than nine years, we can see that the biggest driving force of the engine comes from 3D games, especially 3D shooting games. Although 2D engines like Infinity have a long history, from Baldur's Gate series to Planescape:tradition and Icewind Dale to Icewinddale 2, which will be released this summer, its application scope is limited to "Dungeons and Dragons" style role-playing games. Including the Aurora engine used in the much-anticipated neverwinter nights, all have very special uses, and it is difficult to promote the development of the whole engine technology, which is why the engines of sports simulation games, flight simulation games and real-time strategy games rarely enter the authorized market, and it is difficult for developers to obtain ideal results even if they use third-party engines. Star Wars: Galactic Battlefield, produced by the Imperial Age Engine, is the best example.

Therefore, the following historical review of the engine will mainly focus on the changes of action shooting games. The relationship between action shooting game and 3D engine is equivalent to a pair of twin brothers, who were born together and grew up together, providing each other with motivation for development. ( 1992 ~ 1993)

1992, 3D Realms company /Apogee company released Wolfenstein 3D, a small game with only over 2 trillion yuan. Players with a little experience may remember the excitement when they first came into contact with it, and the inflammatory word "revolution" can't describe its important position in the whole history of computer game development. This game pioneered the first-person shooter game. More importantly, it adds a Z axis on the basis of X axis and Y axis, and adds a forward and backward depth space on the plane composed of width and height. You can imagine the great influence of this Z axis on those players who are used to watching 2D games.

The author of Wolfenstein 3D Engine is the famous john carmack, and the chief programmer of id software company has gained a firm foothold in the game circle with this Wolfenstein 3D engine. In fact, German Command is not the first game from the first person perspective. A few months before its release, Origin had already launched a first-person role-playing game-Ultima Underworld. This game uses similar technology, but it is very different from Wolfenstein 3D engine. For example, the engine of the underground world supports the slope. The floor and ceiling can have different heights and be divided into different levels. Players can jump and bow their heads in the game. These characteristics can't be realized by Wolfenstein 3D engine, and the German Command is closer to the comic style than the traditional pixel picture.

Although the Wolfenstein 3D engine is not as good as the engine of Genesis: Underground World in technical details, it makes better use of the characteristics of first-person perspective. The fast and popular game rhythm makes people remember the word "first-person shooter game" at once, not "first-person role-playing game". German Command later released a nominal sequel-The Rise of Trichords, which added many important functions on the basis of Wolfenstein 3D engine, including jumping and looking up and down.

Another important game in the early days of the engine is also the first-person shooter game with very successful id software-DOOM. Doom engine greatly surpasses Wolfenstein 3D engine in technology. All objects in German Command are fixed in size, and the angles between all paths are right angles, which means you can only go straight or straight. These restrictions were broken in Doom. Although the level of the game is still made on the 2D plane, there is no concept of "upstairs", but the thickness of the wall can be arbitrary, and the angle between paths can also be arbitrary, which makes it possible for various scenes such as stairs, lifting platforms, towers and outdoor.

Because the doomsday engine is still two-dimensional in nature, it can display a large number of characters on the screen at the same time without affecting the running speed of the game. This feature creates a crazy and exciting action style for the game. So far, only the series "Hero Sam" can be compared with it, and no other 3D engine can keep the game smooth when a large number of enemies come at you. This is one of the main reasons why most first-person shooting games on the market are actively cultivating players' tactical application ability, improving players' shooting accuracy and refusing to slash and kill. It is worth mentioning that although the engine of Doomsday lacks enough details, the developers still show amazing environmental effects in Doomsday, and their skillful design skills are really amazing.

But what is more memorable is that the doomsday engine was the first engine used for authorization. At the end of 1993, Raven Company developed a game called ShadowCaster with the improved Doom engine, which was the first successful grafting operation in the game history. 1994 raven company developed heresy with doomsday engine, which added flight characteristics to the engine and became the predecessor of jumping action. 1995, Raven Company developed hexene with Doom engine, and added new sound technology, script technology and level design similar to hub, allowing you to move freely between different levels. A series of cooperation between Raven company and id software company fully shows that the authorization of engine is of great benefit to both users and developers. Only by giving your engine to more people can the engine continue to mature.

The Doomsday Warrior series itself is quite successful, selling about 3.5 million sets, and the licensing fee has brought considerable income to id software. Prior to this, the engine was just a development tool produced and sold by itself. No gamer has considered making money from engines. The success of doomsday engine has undoubtedly opened up a new market for people. ( 1994 ~ 1997)

In the process of engine evolution, the engine built by Ken silverman for 3D Realms in 1994 is an important milestone, and the "flesh" of the engine is known as Duke Nukem 3D. Duke of Destruction has all the standard contents of today's first-person shooter games, such as jumping, looking around 360 degrees, squatting and swimming. In addition, it changed the flight in "The Pagan" into a jet pack, and even added some refreshing contents such as role restoration. On the basis of the Build engine, 14 games were born successively, such as Red Neck Rambling, Shadow Warrior and Hot Blood, King Cat of Taiwan Province Aisheng Information Development, etc. It was one of the few 3D shooting games in China at that time (up to now). The licensing business of Build engine has brought more than one million dollars in additional income to 3D Realms, and 3D Realms has thus become the first "upstart" in the engine licensing market. But generally speaking, the Build engine has not brought any qualitative changes to the development of 3D engines, and the breakthrough task is finally completed by Quake of id software.

The hammer of Raytheon was released immediately after the Duke of Destruction, and which is better or worse suddenly became a hot topic for players. Duke of Destruction is much better than Hammer of Raytheon in terms of content, but Hammer of Raytheon is the undisputed winner in terms of technological advancement. Raytheon Hammer Engine is the first 3D engine that fully supports polygon model, animation and particle special effects, instead of 2.5D engines like Doom and Build. In addition, Thor's Hammer is the first online game. Although Doom could also play online through a modem a few years ago, it was the hammer of Raytheon that finally brought online games into public view, which promoted the development of e-sports industry.

A year later, id software launched "Thor's Hammer 2", which established its dominance in the 3D engine market in one fell swoop. Thor's Hammer 2 adopts a brand-new engine, which can make full use of 3D acceleration and OpenGL technology, and has made a qualitative leap in images and networks. Levin's Pagan II and Lucky Soldier, The Sin of Ritual, Golden Merger: A Life of Crime by Xatrix Entertainment and Anachronox just released by Ion Storm Studio last summer are all adopted.

The licensing model of Raytheon Hammer II engine is roughly as follows: the basic licensing fee ranges from $400,000 to $6,543.8+0,000, and the version tax depends on the basic licensing fee. The license fee of $400,000 needs to be extracted by more than 654.38+00%, and the license fee of $6.5438+00,000 needs to be extracted by a small amount of page tax. In this way, Thor Hammer 2 earned at least10 million dollars through engine authorization. Although the sales performance of the game itself is much worse than that of Doomsday, it sold 165438+ 10,000 sets and earned about $45 million, but its profit from licensing fees is obviously much higher than that of Doomsday. At this time, the engine has gone from simple.

As the saying goes, "a clever woman can't cook without rice", and no market can develop without competitors with equal strength. Just as Thor Hammer II dominated the whole engine market, Epic Mega Games Company's Unreal came out. It is no exaggeration to say that when I first ran this game, I was really shocked by the picture in front of me, even though I only ran this game at a resolution of 300x200 (one of the four tragedies: I was not strong enough to play video games). In addition to exquisite architecture, many special effects in the game are still excellent even today, such as rippling water waves, beautiful sky, huge checkpoints, realistic flames, smoke and force fields. From the simple picture effect, illusion is a well-deserved leader, and its shocking power can be compared with people's feelings when they first saw German Command.

Unreal engine is probably the most widely used engine. Within two years after its launch, 18 games signed a licensing agreement with Epic, which does not include Epic's own fantasy expansion "Return to Napali". Some recent works, such as the third-person action game Rune, the role-playing game Deus Ex, and the first-person shooting game Duke Nukem Forever, will be released at the end of May, 20 1 1, and have been or will be well received.

The application scope of unreal engine is not limited to game production, but also covers other fields such as education and architecture. Digital Design cooperated with UNESCO World Heritage Division to make an internal virtual demonstration of Notre Dame with unreal engine, while Zen Tao made martial arts training software for karate players with unreal engine. Vito Miliano, another software developer, also developed a set of architectural design software named "Unrealty" with unreal engine for real estate demonstration.

This contemporary engine with "Hammer of Thor 2" has been constantly updated, and it is still active in the game market, showing no signs of aging, which is really rare. ( 1998 ~2000)

The image of the game has reached a ceiling height in illusion, and the next development direction is obviously impossible to go on towards the visual aspect. As mentioned above, the role of engine technology in the game is not limited to the picture, but also affects the overall style of the game. For example, all the games played by the doomsday engine, whether it's "Pagan" or "Destroy the Wizard", are similar in content, even with the same plot setting. Players began to get tired of the monotonous mode of running around with guns, and developers had to seek breakthroughs from other aspects, which set off a new climax of the first-person shooter game.

1998 There are two epoch-making works in Half-Life-The Thief: The Dark Plan by Valve Company and LookingGlass Studio. Although previous games, such as System Shock, have also brought many new functions to engine technology, none of them can do it.

Half-life, who won many awards, used a mixture of Thor's Hammer and Thor's Hammer II engine. Valve Company has added two very important features on the basis of these two engines: first, the script sequence technology allows players to truly experience the development of the plot through touching events at a reasonable pace, which is undoubtedly a huge revolution for the first-person shooter who has paid little attention to the plot since its birth; The second feature is the improvement of artificial intelligence engine. Compared with the past, the enemy's actions are obviously more cunning, and they are no longer simply guns. These two characteristics endow the half-life engine with distinctive personality. On this basis, excellent works such as Legion Fortress, Counter-Terrorism Elite and Day of Destruction are born, which make the half-life engine glow with more dazzling light through the addition of network code.

The game that really made a breakthrough in artificial intelligence is "Thieves: The Dark Plan" by Looking Mirror Studio. The story of the game took place in the middle ages, and the player played a thief. The task is to enter different places and steal things as unnoticed as possible. The thief used a dark engine developed by the mirror studio. The dark engine is not as good as the hammer or illusion of Raytheon 2 in image, but its level of artificial intelligence is much higher than the latter two. The enemy in the game knows how to identify your position according to the sound, can distinguish the footsteps on different floors, have different vision in different lighting environments, and will enter the alert state after discovering the body of a companion. You will also make all kinds of reasonable responses to your actions. You have to hide in the dark and not be found by the enemy to complete the task, which was never seen in those pure killing games in the past. Today, most first-person shooter games adopt this secret style to some extent, including the newly released Medal of Honor: Allied Assault. Unfortunately, due to the premature closure of the speculum studio, the dark engine was not developed. Except for Thief 2: Metal Age and System Shock 2, only a few games use this engine.

Inspired by the two games "Half-Life" and "Thief: Dark Plan", more and more developers began to turn their attention from simple visual effects to more diverse game contents, among which DeUEX and DeUEX produced by Ion Storm Studio used unreal engine. Although the picture effect is outstanding, as far as personal artificial intelligence is concerned, it can't reach the level of thief series. Enemies in the game rely more on preset scenarios to react. For example, smashing ammunition boxes may arouse the vigilance of nearby enemies, but this does not mean that he heard anything. After killing the enemy, the accomplices around you may run to where you are standing, or they may be indifferent. These unrealistic behaviors still exist even in Medal of Honor: Allied Attack. The quality of the image offsets the defects of artificial intelligence, and what really helps DeUEX stand out from many shooting games is its unique style. The game contains strong role-playing elements, characters can accumulate experience and improve their skills, as well as rich dialogues and tortuous plots. Like a half-life, the success of DeUEX shows the importance of narration for the first-person shooter game, and whether it can better support the narrative ability of the game has become a new standard to measure the engine.

Since 2000, 3D engines have developed in two different directions. First, like Half-Life, Thief and deus ex, by adding more narrative components and role-playing components to strengthen the artificial intelligence of the game, 3D engines are developing towards pure network mode. In this respect, id software once again came to the forefront of the whole industry, and they realized the fun of fighting with people. Therefore, more network components were added to the excellent image engine of Thor's Hammer II, and a pure online game, Thor's Hammer III Arena, was launched for the first time. Together with the unreal tournament released by Epic later, it became a turning point in the development history of the engine.

With the success of Raytheon Hammer III engine, id software has also made a fortune in the engine licensing market. Raven once again cooperated with id software to produce the first-person shooter "Star Trek Voyager: Elite Troops" with the engine of Thor's Hammer III. In addition, this engine is also used to make third-person action games, such as heavy metal F. a. k. k. 2 and Alice from McGee, USA. Two recent World War II-themed shooting games, Return to Wolfenstein Castle and Medal of Honor: Allied Attack, and Developing 2 (Jedi outcast: Jedi II. From the dungeon to outer space, from the fairy tale world to World War II, from the first-person perspective to the third-person perspective, the powerful potential of Thor's Hammer III engine is fully demonstrated.

Epic's unreal tournament is one step behind Thor's Hammer 3 Arena, but its performance is slightly higher than the latter. From the picture, the two are almost tied, but in the networking mode, it not only provides a death contest mode, but also provides a variety of fierce and popular battle modes such as teamwork. Moreover, the unreal tournament engine can not only be used for action shooting games, but also provide powerful 3D support for large-scale multiplayer games, real-time strategy games and role-playing games. Unreal tournament engine is also superior to Raytheon Hammer 3 in licensing business. Up to now, there are about 20 games made by using the unreal tournament engine, including Star Trek Deep Space Nine: The Fallen, The New Legend and Seraphim.

Another engine that quickly rose from 1998 to 2000 is Monolith's LithTech engine, which was originally used in the mecha shooting game Shogo. As mentioned earlier, the development of the LithTech engine * * * cost $7 million and took five years. Everything comes to him who waits. The first edition of the LithTech engine of 1998 immediately attracted the attention of the industry, which poured cold water on the dispute between Hammer of Raytheon 2 and fantasy.

It is precisely because of the high development cost that Monolith decided to set up a LithTech company in 2002, with the licensing of LithTech engines as its main business, hoping to recover part of the cost. Games made with LithTech's first-generation engine include "Blood Sign 2" and "Reason". In 2000, LithTech Company launched version 2.0 and version 2.5 engines, adding bone animation and advanced terrain system. The impressive No One Will Live Forever and the upcoming Global Warfare both used LithTech 2.5 engines. At this time, LithTech has changed from a useful supplement to an engine on an equal footing with Thor Hammer III and Unreal Tournament. Now version 3.0 of LithTech engine has been released, and four systems of Jupiter, Talon, Cobalt and Discovery have been derived, among which Talon was used to develop Alien vs Predator 2.

In addition to its powerful performance, the biggest selling point of LithTech engine is its meticulous service. In addition to the source code and editor of LithTech engine, buyers can also get free upgrades, fast e-mail and telephone technical support, and LithTech even invites buyers to the company for practical training. Moreover, the average price of LithTech engine is not very high, about $250,000, which is quite low compared with the $700,000 of Raytheon Hammer III engine. (200 1 year ~)

200 1, many excellent 3D shooting games are released one after another. Some of them use ready-made engines such as Thor's Hammer III and unreal tournament, such as Star Trek Deep Space 9: Falling, Return to Wolfenstein Castle and Medal of Honor: Allied Attack, and more of them use their own engines, including 2》(Tribes 2, a representative online shooting game.

Tribe 2 uses V 12 engine. Although this engine can't be compared with Hammer of Thor III and unreal tournament, the licensing model developed by the developer for it is quite novel. You can get the right to use the engine for only 100 dollars, but there is no free lunch in the world, and the following series of regulations are quite harsh. For example, developers cannot use this engine to make games for other game publishers, other commercial game websites and other competitors. The developed games must be handed over to Garage Games (the owner of V12 engine) before release, and cannot be handed over to any third party. GarageGames will have the exclusive distribution rights of these games for five years, and so on. Nevertheless, for those small independent developers, this ultra-low-cost engine is still very attractive.

Max payne uses MAX-FX engine, which is the first engine to support radiosity lighting. This technology has only appeared in some advanced architectural design software in the past. It can accurately calculate the refractive index and reflectivity of each point according to the physical properties and geometric characteristics of materials, so that light can spread in a more natural way and create a very realistic light and shadow effect for objects. Another feature of the MAX-FX engine is the so-called "bullet time", which is a slow-motion lens in the style of "Matrix". In this state, you can even see the flight path of the bullet clearly. The appearance of MAX-FX engine pushes the visual effect of the game to a new peak.

The red faction uses the Geo-Mod engine, which is the first 3D engine that can change its geometry at will. In other words, you can use weapons to blast a gap in a wall, a building or any solid object, go through the wall, or blast a crater on the flat ground and hide it. Another feature of Geo-Mod engine is superb artificial intelligence. Enemies will not only react when they see the bodies of their companions or hear the explosion, but also be alert when they find traces left by you on surrounding objects, such as bullet holes. They know how to stay away from situations that may hurt themselves but are unable to fight back. When they are injured, they will run away instead of risking their lives to continue fighting.

Hero of Sam uses a serious engine. The biggest feature of this engine is its extremely powerful rendering ability. Faced with a large number of enemies and endless open scenes, you won't feel the stagnation of the picture at all, and the picture effect of the game is quite excellent. In addition, it is worth mentioning the Krass engine used in AquaNox. As the official designated engine of GeForce 3, this engine promotes and demonstrates the effect of GeForce 3, and its visual performance is impeccable.

It can be seen that several engines from 200 1 have continued the development trend for more than two years. On the one hand, they constantly pursue real effects, such as MAX-FX engine pursuing picture truth, Geo-Mod engine pursuing content truth, and GHOUL engine pursuing death truth. On the other hand, continue to explore the direction of the network, such as Tribe 2, Team Fortress 2, and large-scale online games that Monolith has not yet announced.

However, due to technical limitations, the idea of putting the first-person shooter game into a large-scale network environment is still difficult to achieve. As we all know, most large-scale online games are slow-paced role-playing games. The engines used in these games, whether the net inquire engine used in Dark Age of Camelot, the Horizons engine used in Horizon: Sista Empire, or "it is said that 500,000 people can enjoy the game in the same virtual world without any sense of lag", can not support the large-scale team dynamic environment in which hundreds of players fight at the same time. Based on this consideration, id software re-focuses on single-player mode, and quake 4 and Doom 3 released later will rebuild an engine based on single-player game. At the same time, the old rival Epic Game Company is also developing a new generation of engines for unreal engine and Unreal Tournament 2. Although there is not much specific information about these engines, from the animation clips with real-time rendering of new engines that have been shown, they do surpass other engines on the market, indicating the arrival of a new engine era.

With the appearance of the game Battlefield Europe: World War II Online, it creatively solved the worldwide problem of large-scale multi-person online combat at the same time, making it possible to put the first-person shooter into a large-scale network environment, and it has become the only fully realistic three-dimensional simulated war game in the world so far. Unity3D game engine technology used in the game is unique in the world. The engine of the game is a product independently researched and developed by developers with huge investment, which has unique intellectual property rights. It is developed on the basis of advanced flight simulation software in the United States. Relying on this world-leading engine technology, the game can accommodate more than 5,000 people online and fight on the same map and multiple battlefields at the same time, and ensure that these 5,000 people can play the game smoothly. It also simulates various weapons, including the parabola of ammunition trajectory, the thickness and protective performance of different armor, and the aerodynamic performance of aircraft after wind tunnel test. , all simulate real weapons and equipment and so on.

Finally, it should be pointed out that many excellent game developers are withdrawing from the game development market and entering the engine licensing market, which is a dangerous signal. Although the continuous evolution of the engine makes the technical content of the game higher and higher, the factor that ultimately determines whether a game is excellent or not lies in the people who use the technology, not the technology itself. As mentioned above, the engine is equivalent to the framework of the game. After the frame is finished, you just need to fill in the contents. Here, the framework only provides a possibility. Whether the game is wonderful or not depends on the content rather than the picture. As the development team of "No one will live forever" said: "All the questions will eventually come down to one point-is your game fun?"