SimWord of the Day: Game Engines

Game Engine -- the application/code that is used as the basis for building a game. In games there is generally one primary engine (The graphics engine, for movement, 3D rendering, and resolution) and a few smaller engines that power other aspects of the game (AI, Sound, Input). Game engines represent a trade-off between ease of use and diversity of possible experiences. Many game engines are optimizes around one type of game genre, like first person shooter or real-time strategy, compromising its ability to enable educational simulations.
Oh, and selecting the right game engine, from the hundreds or even thousands, is an adventure.
Famous examples include the Quake, Unreal, Half-Life, and Lithtech 3D engines.

• MIT’s Revolutions uses the Aurora Engine from Bioware
• RoadQuiz and many other educational simatulions uses RenderWare as the 3D renderer
• Delta3D is an open source game engine being built at the MOVES Institute at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey.
• There is free game creation system called Game Maker.
• There is Unity Pro.
• Blitz3d is an indy engine, costs $80.00, and has a huge support online community.

There is also PopCap Framework, Torque 3D, Blitz BASIC, and even Director and Flash. Funnily enough, even large game developers are increasingly using the smaller tools to quickly mock up game play and interfaces.

Part of the SimWord of the Day Series....