i keep hearing about graphics engines, terrain engines, rpg engines, but i dont know what it is exactly. can anybody explain it for me? mythril

Basically, Game Engines are just your game sans all the actual data. It''s all the code for the graphics, AI, Sound, etc that your game uses. A Graphics Engine would be all the code you''ve written to get your graphics up, etc etc.

-Michael

Also, this topic was just recently asked in one of these forums, so try to make use of that search tool up there!

Well its basicly what the guy ^above^ said... its just all the functions you have written to do stuff, eg when you detect a collision in your collision function you would call the function to play sound etc save, load game functions etc...

CEO Plunder Studios

I have to disagree slightly with Mr. Grazier and say that the engine is everything that the game is not, including code. For example, in my game project, I have source split into two categories: engine code and "game" code. The engine code holds things like terrain, particles, camera, audio, and input interface objects and functions, while the game code holds cutscene and the game bootloader.

Here''s the distinction: anything that''s project specific and requires tweaking, or is so intertwined with data that it would have to be rewritten to accomodate for new data, is game code. All the platform-specific code and "behind-the-scenes" code, as well as all the wrappers for the API(s) you use is "the engine."

Later,
ZE.

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I guess ya got me. ;P

Although I was just trying to generalize a bit, not knowing the level of experience of the original poster. I knew it wasn''t ENTIRELY true, but didn''t know exactly how it wasn''t.

Thanks for the clarification,


-Michael