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Id Software's first truly 3D game engine, the development team went to great pains to ensure the Quake engine ran smoothly without a ton of processing power. One way they did this was by introducing a new way to render maps that purged certain areas from processing that the player wouldn't be able to see. Objects, or brushes as they were called, made up the border of the map and created an enclosed space. The map would then be run through a rendering preprocessor, which would identify empty space inside and outside of the border. It would then discard the back portions of the border. This highly effective technique reduced the amount of polygons usually by half and sometimes by much more.
To further reduce demand put on the CPU, the Quake engine also took advantage of Z-buffering, which put simply is a method for determining which parts of the map are visible and only rendering those sections.
Quake also included 3D light sources, which were added with a second pass of the preprocessor rather than on-the-fly by the CPU, and it also supported 3D hardware acceleration. John Carmack would later release a native port of Quake called VQuake, or Vérité-accelerated Quake, designed to take advantage of the Vérité 1000 graphics chip's hardware features, including anti-aliasing. OpenGL support would also be added, giving Voodoo and PowerVR owners justification for their discrete graphics purchase.
Date Released: 1996
Notable Games: CIA Operative: Solo Missions, HeXen II, Laser Arena, Quake, Silver Wings, Urban Mercenary
The Renderware game engine claims a ton of titles under its belt -- over 200 in all -- most of which are for the PlayStation 2 console, but still over two dozen on the PC platform. It's also been used on the GameCube, Wii, Xbox and Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, and PSP, making it very much a multiplatform game engine.
Originally developed in 1998 as primarily a PC-based middleware solution, Renderware, like most of the engines up to this point, largely preceded the GPU, and this may have led to the engine's eventual downfall as a leading API. In an interview with Gamasutra, William "Bing" Gordon, then CCO for Electronic Arts, the publisher who purchased Renderware producer Criterion in 2004, lamented that "Renderware didn't get the next-gen parts that we needed. We actually underestimated Epic early on. They told us, 'We're going to do this, this, and this,' and we thought, 'Eh, it's going to be kind of hard.' We also underestimated our team, then we looked up three months, six months, and nine months later and said, 'Whoops, we underestimated Epic.'"
Before Epic's Unreal engine began to overshadow Renderware, Renderware proved popular for its ability to allow developers to manipulate art and game processes in real time. A developer could, for example, change the color of a character's clothing without altering the underlying code and rendering the scene all over again. This also worked for rudimentary physics, like jumping and moving. If movement looked 'off,' a developer could go in and alter the physics and see the changes in real-time.
Date Released: 1996
Notable Games: Airport Tycoon, Apache Air Assault, Bratz: Rock Angelz, Broken Sword: The Sleeping Dragon, Burnout Paradise, Chinese Paladin 4, Cold Fear, Commandos: Strike Force, Dream of Mirror Online, Evolution GT, Frank Herbert's Dune, G-Nome, kill.switch, Madagascar, Manhunt, Red Jets, Startdon 3, Super-Bikes Riding Challenge, Tony Hawk's Pro Skater 3, 4, and Underground, Trickstyle
Whereas the original Quake game offered hardware graphics acceleration, Quake II offered native OpenGL support right from the get-go. Other features of the Quake II engine, now known as id Tech 2, included colored lighting effects, and a new game model whereby game code was written in C and loaded from a DLL (Dynamic Link Library) rather than the original QuakeC scripting language. In layman's terms, this allowed for both software and OpenGL renders rather than one or the other, so if you didn't own a Voodoo videocard, you weren't necessarily out of luck.
Quake II also became known for its moddability. Because DLLs were also used for the game logic, id could release the source code into the modding community (and it did just that in 2001) while still keeping the rest of the engine proprietary. The engine was also incredibly robust, and savvy developers were able to use it to power full-fledged role-playing games (like Anachronox) and add features like dismemberment (a la Soldier of Fortune).
Ready for a fun fact? The infamous abomination known as Daikatana employed the Quake II engine.
Date Released: 1997
Notable Games: Anachronox, CodeRED: Alien Arena, Daikatana, Heretic II, Kingpin: Life of Crime, SiN, Soldier of Fortune, UFO: Alien Invasion, Warsow
Comments are closed on this article
Shalbatana
November 02, 2010 at 6:57pm
Okay, I know it started on the Mac, but Marathon was out before, if not at the same time as Doom and was the first to feature mouselook. (well there was "Pathways Into Darkness" before that). However the point is that Marathon 2 was a very well liked engine for PC (and the series is of course the unofficial predecessor of the Halo series.) And it was doing Doom better than Doom did. It was also a better story. Additionally, the multiplayer boards were always acclaimed as being some of the most enjoyable.
That said, I can see why it wasn't mentioned, as it really wasn't used in an excessive amount of other games.
Anyone interested, it's a series that still holds up today. Go and find it.
Vladislav_Draculva
September 04, 2009 at 6:22pm
What about neverwinter nights...good stuff even though it is a little bit obscure...
Orionsword
September 01, 2009 at 8:43pm
I remember this game used to push hardware back then just as much as Crysis and fear was at least used for benchmarking at one time
The Nexus 6
August 08, 2009 at 12:25am
What about Wolfenstein 3D's engine, which predates doom, and was used for many classic games.
Wolfenstein 3D, Spear Of Destiny, Blake Stone, Planet Strike, Rise of the Triad...
How can you leave out this revolutionary engine, and skip directly to Doom's engine???
You also totally skipped over the Tomb Raider engine incarnations from CORE! come on guys!
Sajt
August 06, 2009 at 2:09am
RE: (concerning Quake3): "The newer engine marked a departure from skeletal animation and instead
made use of per-vertex animation. Without diving into the technical
details of both, the switch paved the way for smoother animation."The Quake 1 and 2 engines (which were very similar) did not use skeletal animation. Both used per-vertex animation, like Quake 3.
The reason Quake 3's animations were of higher quality is because the vertex coordinates weren't compressed (quantized) so aggressively. Quake 1 and 2 stored vertex coordinates with 8 bits per component (each of X, Y, Z), while Quake 3 used 16 bits per component. Quake 1 and 2's aggressive compression led to an ugly effect known as "vertex swimming".
Also, Quake 3's animations were created with more keyframes, generally 20 to 30 per second, whereas all animations in Quake and Quake 2 were created at 10 frames per second. But that's not nearly as noticeable as the compression.
ducis
August 04, 2009 at 4:53pm
OMG!!! NO X-RAY ENGINE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
have fun without any volumetric smoke, no realistic ballistics, ai lifecycle
camillus_mmi
August 03, 2009 at 4:14pm
Great article on the history of game engines but HOW COULD YOU LEAVE OUT BULLFROG??? Anyone remember the Magic Carpet Engine? What about the greatest PC shoot'em up - racing game of all time, Hioctane??? You owe us a seperate article devoted to Bullfrog, with a focus on Hioctane's amazing if not quirky AI.
To The MAX!
andre.goddard
July 29, 2009 at 11:02am
I really miss Mafia 3D engine. It features really nice physics and everything. It's stunning!!!
aachrisg
July 29, 2009 at 9:01am
AFAIK, there's not a single line of code from space rogue's engine in ultima underworld's.
The underworld engine was the engine from the (best left forgotten) Car+Driver game, augmented with an upper layer to handle interior environments modelled on a grid. The texture mapper that drew the billboards in c+d is basically the same one that drew the walls in UU.
- Chris Green
Agent1138
July 29, 2009 at 7:34am
So they acknowledge Renderware as a key engine in the last generation but neglect to mention that it was used in one of the biggest titles in that generation, namely the GTA III trilogy (GTA 3, Vice City, Sandreas). That's a massive oversight, no? That would be like talking about the Unreal engine in today's market and not mentioning Gears of War or something. Seems like some one didn't do much research or has limited games knowledge.
mitcoes
July 27, 2009 at 5:44am
It would be a lot more of work, but it would become a "wikipedia article" if each game would have a video with FPS ON THE SAME MODERN MACHINE, and benchmark tests.
And of course a picture of each game, links to where to buy, or where to download - some are now free or abandonware - or even where to play online, there are versions of doom and hexen online.
I missed GLdoom that ported wads to a opengl engine.
u-r-a-johnson
July 24, 2009 at 9:39am
Rick
I gotta agree with John P.: yeah, I know Diablo 2 is old, not true 3D, and uses sprites on a background; but it, and other Blizzard games are Popular. The D2 ladders are still full! The news of Diablo Three has caused firestorms! I still love the bird's eye camera, no-fuss controls, and gameplay as simple or complicated as you want (normal, NM, or hell difficulty). I have a bunch of character classes at different points along the game.
The only reason I don't play online is because of all the PlayerKillers and Cheaters Duping and selling items-for real cash. But that's gotta tell ya something about popular! I'll get set in a comfy chair, mouse table, hand-held keypad, and just lose myself for a while. Like a peaceful walk by a mountain stream, with a$$kicking. And I'm preordering D3 as soon as I save the money. (I've got some other upgrades going on.)
Pball1224
July 22, 2009 at 9:07am
I'd really like to know a little more about the Halo and WoW engines as well, more so Halo, but I doubt they are used for any other games.
JohnP
July 21, 2009 at 3:42pm
I wonder what kind of engine runs World of Warcraft? No loading levels, low system requirements, tons of toons and NPC's on the screen at once, AND it is the more often played game in the world.
and how about Starcraft or even Starcraft 2? What are they using?
Blizzard should have definitely been mentioned in this article! Well perhaps not, as whatever engine they used, it was only used for their own games.
Anyone know?
JohnP
November 02, 2010 at 11:03am
That is one thing that Blizzard has never really talked about is their game engines. I guess since they do not share it with anyone else, it's a "don't care" attitude. What you see is what you get...
crunchieman
July 21, 2009 at 2:42pm
Im pretty sure Bioshock was going on U2.5. I do recall that it has some U3 features....
deject
July 21, 2009 at 1:27pm
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.'s game engine might have been overshadowed by the Crysis engine, but it is still pretty impressive, especially with all the DirectX 10 effects like the dynamic wet surfaces and such. How could you leave that one out?
fnordfnord
July 21, 2009 at 9:42am
Setting the record straight: Space Rogue was not developed by Origin. It was a contract game written by Paul Neurath and published by Origin. Nor did Origin develop Underworld (or System Shock, or Underworld 2). They were produced by Origin, but all of those games were developed by Blue Sky (later the legendary Looking Glass Studios).
AZWizo
July 21, 2009 at 8:56am
Dude, Doom and Duke Nukem 3D, best video games of ALL time!
RT
www.be-anonymous.tk
Transmuter
July 21, 2009 at 7:39am
Excellent article!
Long ago, I played the demo for an FPS. Years later all I could remember of the game was that the player collected money that could be used to purchase items from a merchant in a town, and that there was some sort of electric weapon the player acquired early on in the game. I could never find that game again, but thanks to this article I know that game was called Strife! Thanks MaxPC!
Time for some retro gaming...
SpazzAttack
July 21, 2009 at 7:30am
Dungeon Master from FTL Games was the first game engine that worked as "a viable programming model." It was released in 1987. The same code base for Dungeon Master (DM) would build on the Amiga, Apple IIGS, Atari ST, PC, SNES, TurboGrafx-CD, Sharp X68000, PC-9801 and FM Towns. The same game engine was used to produce four more titles.
DM set the standard for adventure games in terms of the user interface and playability. The Ultima Underworld GUI looks remarkably like DM. DM was also the first 3D looking, first person, real-time adventure game.
As a plus, DM was also the #1 selling game on the Amiga, Apple IIGS, Atari ST and PC all at the same time. Doom the first? Pffft! Give me a break!
:-)
Visit the Dungeon Master Encyclopaedia
BTW - This was a very good article.
killerxx7
July 21, 2009 at 3:46am
Outcast by far my favorite game in history,my heart stopped whene i herd there wasnt going to be a second one :(:(:(
Yusonice
July 21, 2009 at 3:13am
Far Cry 2's Technical Director, pointed out in an interview with Gamasutra that they had Far Cry 2 running on a Pentium 4-class processor with a GeForce 6600 graphics card.
Its true! I played Far cry on medium settings using pentium 4 3ghz and 8400gs (which is close to 6600)
Still nothing beats source engine! And what engine does COD 4 uses? It seems efficient too
hentaiboi
July 21, 2009 at 1:30am
once wolfenstein is released would you kindly add id Tech 5 engine
also include Cry Engine 2 for Crysis 2.
bjtalbot
July 21, 2009 at 1:06pm
If you look up "id tech 4" in wikipedia, you will find that the new Wolfentein is using id tech 4.
As far as I know, the only games that have been announced to use id tech 5 are Rage and Doom 4.
vulchan
July 21, 2009 at 1:23am
The worst engine on this list is the unreal 3 engine by a mile; I bought UT3
a while back and played it for less than ten hours total. The sound went out in
the game for some reason, never could find a solution and gave up on it. It's
horrible on the eyes, the world melts together with the characters and objects
and all looks the same. I realized after Bioshock that the non-world objects
are extremely choppy in their animation. And I hate how most DX10 games either
look no better with AA or don't support it at all, it's like they think we
don't want it anymore.My favorites are the Quake III, Unreal I & II, and Source Engines. They
all contain games that are found on many top 5 games list
QUINTIX256
July 21, 2009 at 12:32am
Uh, Descent? I'm surprised Descent wasn't mentioned at all. It had graphics almost on par with quake, and the demo was released in '94.
If I recall, that segmented software renderer Volition created (which removed the need for BSP trees), was used in one other game.
You can have your recession. I'm not participating.
bornhald
July 29, 2009 at 2:49pm
I was pretty taken aback by the fact that this list of influential 3D engines fails to mention ANY of the Descent titles. Parallax/Interplay's Portal Engine used in Descent II was far and away the best of the bunch when it debuted in 1996. Unlike all of the other FPS games out at the time, Descent II allowed the player to take advantage of 6 degrees of freedom in moving about the gameworld space. This gave rise to the concept of tri-chording, whereby the player would apply forward thrust (Z) while also sliding (strafing) on both the horizontal (x) and vertical axis (Y). The combination of these movements, once mastered, actually allowed the ship to fly faster than it could simply applying forward thrust.
All in all it was a ridiculously well made, entertaining game that still holds a small cult following today...
Descent III raised the stakes, adding portal rendering, procedural texturing, and advanced lighting. When it was released in mid 1999, it was probably the most graphically advanced game of its time.
Lilrockerdude
July 20, 2009 at 11:20pm
I think the Best Engine ever was Unreal because nothing could touch it when it came out and 2 generations later the Unreal3 Engine still looks beautiful and plays smooth. Next to that Voxel would be my fav oldschool, because C&C looked damn good, and Source as best new because its an evolving engine that next to CryEngine sets bench marks for others, and Source has pushed out so many great games in its still going life. My only big question would be if HL2 Ep3 will run off Source, a newer version as Ep2 did, or stay the same or will Valve deliver Source2 or something to show us how badass HL3 will look like on its relase date (whenever the game is set to come out.)
Lilrockerdude
July 20, 2009 at 11:20pm
I think the Best Engine ever was Unreal because nothing could touch it when it came out and 2 generations later the Unreal3 Engine still looks beautiful and plays smooth. Next to that Voxel would be my fav oldschool, because C&C looked damn good, and Source as best new because its an evolving engine that next to CryEngine sets bench marks for others, and Source has pushed out so many great games in its still going life. My only big question would be if HL2 Ep3 will run off Source, a newer version as Ep2 did, or stay the same or will Valve deliver Source2 or something to show us how badass HL3 will look like on its relase date (whenever the game is set to come out.)
The Relic
July 20, 2009 at 10:35pm
Uh, wasn't the Doom Engine simply a modified Wolf 3D engine? Could be wrong, but I recall hearing something to that effect...
Netram
July 20, 2009 at 10:03pm
Call of Duty was made using the Quake 3 Team Arena engine, I'm sure of it. Then CoD2 and 4 where made use an extremely heavily modified version of the Q3TA engine, even the cvar's are the same as quake. I think because it was so heavily modified that they just said fuck it, we're calling it proprietary.
Also, why in pretty much all UE3 games is console BOUND TO FUCKING '. It's the most retarded fucking binding ever, yet it exists in all UE3 games.
Zoomer
July 20, 2009 at 9:49pm
It may be made from scratch, but apparantly the mechanics are very much like Gears of War, so that may be something to think about.
dabiddo
July 20, 2009 at 9:40pm
saw a video on youtube, that says the 3d engine for the new ghostbusters game was built from scratch... any more info on it?
norman
July 20, 2009 at 9:54pm
I believe the engine that powers Ghostbusters is proprietary -- that is it's not a licensed engine like Unreal Engine 3. However, it hasn't been out for a while to make any waves in the development community. There are many more proprietary game engines that we didn't mention which appeared in only one or two games. We chose to focus on the ones that have pushed technology forward and excited us as gamers and hardware enthusiasts.
-- Norm
willsmith
July 21, 2009 at 10:26am
It's uses the Infernal engine, first seen in the eponymous game from a year or two ago. So far, they haven't licensd it to anyone external.
AeXStrider
July 26, 2009 at 4:38pm
Wasn't there an engine Lucasarts [tech demo using Indiana Jones] was working on going to be the next Big Thing? ...Was also a couple of years ago.
