Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
Standardization in Game Development
This dii cult situation, in spite of the need for change, continued until
the development and rise of the PC gaming market. PCs needed to have
standards in which graphics, sound and controller input would conform
to certain norms in order for computers to run a variety of applications
consistently. The i rst jump toward standardization in game development
took place in the graphics sector. A number of third-party developers
began to create graphics engines, or what were called renderers, for use
by game developers. These software drivers would do the hard work of
interacting with a variety of dif erent video cards. At the same time, it
presented developers with a simplii ed set of common APIs that they
could use to draw various game elements ei ciently. The best known
of these renderers, Reality Lab, became Direct3D after being purchased
by Microsoft, which became the graphics-oriented component of the
DirectX multimedia API, still in use today.
With the rendering standards of DirectX or OpenGL (which followed
soon after Direct3D in the 1990s), the next step was to encompass
other elements and functionality into a game-oriented development
environment. The i rst-person shooter genre led the way in this case,
specii cally with the development of Doom by id Software. John Carmack
designed a game engine which not only helped him create game levels
and interaction for his game, it also led to him licensing his engine to
other developers of similar titles such as HeXen , Heretic , and Strife . These
developers used the Doom engine, but developed their own characters,
rules, weapons, sounds and levels. In other words, all the content was
developed by them, but the framework in which this content would
function was licensed from a competitor.
 
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