game engines (horror project)

a game engine is a system, a system used for the development and creation for a video game, it can be both 3d and 2d graphics, used as a rendering engine, a physics engine or collision detection, sound, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence, networking, streaming, memory management, threading, localization support, and a scene graph.

Areas of game engines

graphics rendering
graphics rendering is basically, the game engine is drawing/creating, everything/ anything you'll be able to see in a game, rendering is a technical term for "coloring a design", basically saying, everything that has been made and put into a game engine for a game will then be rendered, aka, formatted into a much higher quality and a quality in which the game and frames of the game can handle, good graphics rendering is when you can see no stick out pixels, everything looks smooth and sleek, here you'll know that the rendering of the graphics has been preformed at a high quality within the game engine and used within the frame rate needed. a badly done rendering is (sort of like what you'd see many years ago with very very old games) is when it doesn't look high quality at all, and it looks quite messy, it can be used with a certain frame rate, but could cause graphic lag.

Animation systems
this could include "Unreal Development kit", however animations systems include many things, these things help in making moving images/ graphics/ objects and storing them in a games engine where they'd soon be used in a game.
the unreal engine is an example (UDK) the
animation system adds motion to rendered objects. "Bone animated meshes are called Skeletal Meshes. Unlike Static Meshes which can only be animated via Matinee, Skeletal Meshes have a set of bones to make up a skeleton. These bones are used to drive the motion of the mesh and placement of objects on a mesh. There are four parts to the animation system - playback of key framed animation data, blending of animations together, controlling bones and blending of morph targets." of course with animation systems there has to be a whole line of work which you'll have to go through different stages this is known as a "pipe line" which are mentioned above.
this is just one of the most known/ basic animations systems known, which is the unreal development kit, also being used in my project.


AI


also known as artificial intelligence, an AI is used to produce intelligence and such to non playable characters in games (NPC'S) an AI is usually centered around NPC's and good game play, collecting and holding in alot of information needed for the game to continue, this could include simple codes to make the game fair for players and keep power and level of the NPC's at an average if need be. also cheats are also held in by an AI, because you know some people can't play a game unless they have some sort of cheat code, due to this the AI is programmed and ready for an event such as this.
(extra information: some people may wonder why this image has been connected to the paragraph labelled AI , well just looking at it you can see lots of coding and scripting etc, something in which an AI has to store for their intelligence to be unique inside a game there for linked this image as it seems most fitting)


Physics 
physics in a video game are very important as they keep everything in order as they would in real life, for example, the physics of jumping, in real life you can jump only a few feet off the ground, so in games this would also be made like this or else the physics would be seen as unrealistic, of course if you are making a sort of fantasy game where you can do anything you want, physics will not apply, other physics would include collision on objects so you can't walk through everything, physics make games very stable and realistic and also fair to play, having no physics at all can make things very odd and difficult to work with, and so they are added into the game to make things easier and to give a better gaming experience ( could also include making sure all grounds are hard so no glitches make you fall through it or get stuck etc)
 
Sound
a game engine would not hold and process all of the graphics and physics, but also the sounds and music put into games, game engines make sure all music/sound stay to where they have been  programmed and are played with perfect timing, sound makes a game become more alive and so a game engine makes sure that the sound is made high quality and is processed with up most perfection before being put into a game ( seeing as sound travels as vibrations/ waves this picture seems most appropriate when trying to talk about sounds in game engines)

Different types of game engine

2D engines
2D game engines where used to create very simple but fun games, it may not look as stunning as 3D but the games made are still great, an example of a 2D game made,could be the very original PAC MAN, I'm
not sure if it was made by a game engine but it is merely an example,2D engines are like 3D they transfer graphics, sounds, etc however at a much quicker speed and lower rate, due to the fact there are only 2 dimensional graphics, text and models and frames in 2D engines

examples of 2d engines:
* Adventure Game Studio
* Construct Classic
* dreemchest
* flare
* ZenGL
these are just a few of many 2D game engines

3D Engines 
if i am correct 3D game engines are usually the type of engines which would make them games in which we see today, all graphics and pixels and frames are 3 dimensional, and they all look kind of realistic at some point, especially at this day and age, there are many examples of games which could have been created in a 3D engine, such as: halo, fable, elder scrolls etc. 3D engines carry a lot more information then 2D ones i think, due to the fact there is a lot more polygons in models and meshes, the sounds and soundtracks are usually updated to suit the area of a game in which you are in (also for 2D) and there would be alot more moving frames at different rates (picture is from fable as an example of the 3D graphics)

examples of 3d engines:
* UDK
* Ardor 3D
* Blender
* Cube
* Game play3D
* panda 3D
there are many many more!

Mobile engines
these are special types of engines which are used to store the information and data needed for games for your mobile phone, they won;'t hold as much data as the 3D or 2D engines for consoles as the games for those have alot more detail to them, mobile engines will hold everything your normal engine would hold, except alot less due to the low graphics so a phone can handle it, frame rate (not as high as normal engines can handle) sounds etc

examples:
* alien3D
* Android GL engine
* DX studio
* game Kit
* LGame
and there are many more! ( these where mainly just android mobile game engines)