I know this may seem like an increibly stupid question but - I have been coding a game engine in OpenGL, and I was just curious if there is any difference between a game engine and a collection of OpenGL code. For instance, let''s say I created the code from lesson 11 and distributed it - would it be considered a -basic- game engine, or just an OpenGL demo. My point is where is the defining line between tech demo and useable demo. I know this is incredibly "newbish" but it''s been bugging me. On a different note, is there any good tutorial on adding BSP support (besides the one on gametutorials.com) Thanx for any help - this site has taught me so much!

There is no solid line between the two, but there are qualities a engine should have. An engine should have "tools" to make the game easier to code, such as model loading, particle engine, collision detection, physics, etc.

Wow! thx for amazingly fast reponse time - and for clarifying.

a) bad topic...
b) no unique answer. The word engine is metaphysical and will therefore elude you until you grasp it at one point. It isn''t something that can be explained in one sentence, or two.

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This has been discussed like a 100 times already..


If you start your question, with "this may seem like an increibly stupid question but", it is probarbly aswered before.

Because I felt there wore parts unaswered I had to point something

I think that the engine refers to the deep mecanics of the program, and can be split into 2 parts: Client and Server(although I`ve never done networking before, think glClient...()) so let`s say you have models in the engine, the server has all the dirty code, and the client is like:
LoadModel("File.mod",&MyModel);
and other things like that... just my opinion though

I think cippyboy is right, look at the open source half-life (1 ) and quake 1/2/3 mods, those are the clients and indeed the only thing those clients do is loading models, telling the server what to do when there''s user input. The server does all the physics, sound and technical parts of the drawing. I think of a game engine more as a dll/exe supplying you with the possibilities of drawing a world to the screen, moving through it and playing sound easily.

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Original post by Dybbuk
If you start your question, with "this may seem like an increibly stupid question but", it is probarbly aswered before.

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lol. That''s for sure

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"There are 10 kinds of people in this world, those who know binary, and those who don''t"

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Original post by Tree Penguin
I think cippyboy is right, look at the open source half-life (1 ) and quake 1/2/3 mods, those are the clients and indeed the only thing those clients do is loading models, telling the server what to do when there''s user input. The server does all the physics, sound and technical parts of the drawing. I think of a game engine more as a dll/exe supplying you with the possibilities of drawing a world to the screen, moving through it and playing sound easily.

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Not all engines are server/client based.

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Original post by Skow
Not all engines are server/client based.

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That is true but the most user and developer friendly and almost all high quality engines are (then i am talking about fps engines for sure).