Gaming Prerequisites

We all like to play games, but do we know how they are made? A game is basically created using a game engine. Game engines initially arose in 1990s in connection with the 3D games such as Unreal and Doom. A game engine was created for these games and on these game engines, other developers created their own games.

Eg. Half-Life and Counter-Strike have similarities since they were created by the same game engine. A game engine is a library of 3D graphics functions. It consists of multiple editors like -

• A Level Editor is used to design the 2D/3D world for the game
• A Model Editor is used to design the game characters
• A Scripting Editor is used to write scripts(code) for the game
• An AI Editor is used to create intelligent opponent characters

Professionals use several game engines like Blitz, Nabula, Crystal Space, Cipher, Torque, Jupiter, etc. Advanced game engines such Unreal Engine 3, Doom 3 Engine are used for creating First Person Shooters (FPS) and game engines like Gamebyro are used for Massive Multiplayer Online Games (MMOG).

For game designers the knowledge of C/C++ and DirectX is very important. Further they should be able to

• Program using game engine scripting languages
• Create polygonal modeling work with 3D Studio Max/Maya
• Create artwork using Adobe Photoshop/CorelDRAW

Remember every game we play, has a lot of effort put into it.