Game Development Reference
In-Depth Information
This image shows a popular
Quake
map editor called BSP. Though long out of publication,
Quake
is
still popular with a number of dedicated gamers.
This trend increased in both complexity and intensity with the release
of the
Quake
engine, developed for the game of the same name,
also written by John Carmack. By this point other developers were
beginning to see the revenue possibilities in game engine development,
and competitors started to appear. In 1998, Epic Games released the
game
Unreal
, which was created using their in-house development
engine called, appropriately, the Unreal Engine. These engines further
separated the roles of content and game design from each other,
allowing development of game 'mods' such as the wildly popular
Counterstrike
. Modding, as it came to be known, enabled the average
player to adapt and change game content to create their own unique
variations. Other innovations included the development of a client and
server model that greatly assisted with development of multiplayer and
MMORPG games.
Current Game Engines
On the next page are a few selected game engines worthy of note,
besides Unity 3D, the one we'll be looking at in more depth in the next
levels. This is just a sampling and is by no means to be considered
dei nitive in scope.
