Topic: The Chit Chat Thread

@johncalmc Bet you and the other mods on here are having a collective sigh of relief that you don’t have to deal with the mess that the NLife mods have been wrestling with. 670 comments has to be some sort of new record.

@nessisonett I'm not a mod, thank the Gods. I've been a mod on other sites in the distant past though and it's a thankless task. Fortunately I think it generally seems pretty cool here. I check in on the forums every day whereas pretty much every other site I've ever been a part of I've posted my article or whatever and scarpered. The Internet can be a hive of scum and villainy.

This is what I do it for. The adulation of the crowds.

I’m not sure where to post this, since it’s a broad question that applies to really all gaming consoles I guess. So this thread is as good as any…

First off, I apologize for how ignorant I am about the technical aspects of computers and have no plans to ever pursue formal education and training in the technological realm. But gaming is my hobby, so I think I should have a surface level understanding of some things. So here goes —

Can anyone explain what a gaming engine is? I mean the technical term we use a lot to describe what developers use to create their games. I see the different engines thrown around (Unreal Engine, Frostbite Engine, Decima Engine, Fox Engine…) and I have a basic understanding, but in the most elementary and simplistic terms, what does it mean and why is it important? Is there an easy analogy in the concrete world to help me wrap my head around it? Like, is it akin to a carpenter’s toolbox when he’s trying build something? Or more like an architect’s blueprint when building a house? Or more like the foundation of a house before it’s built…?

I feel like I should know this. I hear and read chatter about these engines and it seems to be important, but it only seems to pop up in game conversation occasionally. And I’ve never felt like while playing a game that as a player that I feel the difference when playing games made from different engines. I would never know both Death Stranding and Horizon Zero Dawn have the same engine, for example.

@Th3solution I'm not sure if I can put it in an easy analogy so I won't be attempting that. I will however try to put it in terms you can understand.

At the most general level, an engine is just the technical side of the game. It's how the software goes about displaying a rock on screen when the designer asks it to display a rock on screen.
The game's engine is responsible for things like applying texture and lighting to models, mixing sound depending on the camera's relative position to the sources, deciding which animation use for a character at a given moment. As importantly, it's about managing the limited resources of your hardware by, for example, lowering the level of detail of objects if they're far away in the scene.

Every game has an engine. Now, it's a smart thing to design an engine in a way that allows it to be reused for other projects - which is what you see with the engines you mentioned. These are usually coupled with tools that allow game devs build things to be used by that specific engine easier and faster.
The thing about these "universal" engines is that they allow devs to put more focus on actual game design and less on the low level technical side, but at the same time it being "universal" could mean it being less effective at handling some specific things.

I have a work call now but I'll gladly expand a little more in 30 minutes. Let me know if you have any specific questions in the meantime

@Voltan Thanks, and that helps. It makes some sense, although still a bit fuzzy in my mind. So as an example, the fact that Kojima was given access to Decima meant that a lot of the work for Death Stranding was already done, so to speak? So the way sound travels, the way light bounces off rocks and water, etc - most of the basic world is pre-created in a basic form already and he just adds the characters, set piece detail, and storyline?

Like if I’m creating something in Dreams, is the engine like the creation tools that they have already there which I just pull off of the shared space? Like the trees and lamps are there to copy. Or is the engine more basic things than that? Like the engine will help so the developer doesn’t have to create the logic of the world from scratch like gravity and physics, but the actual items on screen have to be built? 😅. The more I try to think about it the more confusing I think I’m making it. Which makes me think I don’t actually have a grip on it.

@Th3solution An important thing to note is that you don’t need to use a pre-existing or even sophisticated engine at all to create a game. You could potentially individually write your own ways of calculating gravity, light diffusion etc. But chances are that after you’ve done that once, you really really don’t want to do that again. Programming is 99% shortcuts. So you take a package of pre-existing methods, functions and such, and start building your game using those existing parts. Of course, these will usually have to be re-done in some capacity when you’re moving to a different console, or your engine is incompatible with your creative vision (some engines work great with 2D and 3D, some just one or the other etc). All those logos you get on games like Bink Video, Havok and such are middleware developed to save the developers some time so that they don’t have to write their own video handling code or physics code respectively. It’s all about saving time in some parts to focus on others!

A good example is Rockstar’s RAGE. They developed that in-house to be specifically compatible with their style of game. It thus powers all of their open world games after GTA IV. So all of the little calculations and methods take into account the type of world which Rockstar tend to make. Whereas something like Unreal Engine 4 can’t be as in-depth because it’s designed for a much wider range of games.

Probably good to mention that engines pretty much always lack assets (art, sound etc) so it’s less that you build a world from parts in that sense and more that you build the underlying foundations of the world (weather, gravity) on the pre-existing code.

Yes but think of it on the technical level - as in the engine being responsible what you as a player see when there's a light source here and an object with a reflective property there - not how the object actually looks.

More or less. Physics can definitely be a part of the engine (although I imagine Kojima's team expanded on them a lot in this specific case). It's more about efficiently translating the designed world to what you actually see in each frame of video though.

I know Unreal Engine comes with huge library of assets that you can use (like terrain models and textures) but I wouldn't consider it a part of the engine itself.

Basically, it's the layer between the game design and the hardware itself - what makes the game actually run. Hence the name "engine"

On a separate note, you can sometimes tell some games run on the same engine because it handles some things in a specific way. For example, UE4 is notorious for texture pop-in, which I believe is due to prioritizing performance (which isn't a bad thing).

I suppose it can be confusing for someone without any background in IT, don't worry about it too much

@Th3solution Yeah to add to what others have said...you mentioned Dreams which in a way could be thought of as a game engine, but a very high level one. It allows you to utilise functionality that's already been developed such as the ability to display and animate characters, allows logic to be programmed e.g. what happens if character A hits character B, music to be made etc. It then pulls all of those things together and actually runs them for you to play.

In the real world those things aren't provided by an easy to use controller driven interface in a single package, instead they would be spread across loads of different bits of software and then all of that would be assembled into a package that you would run separately on the actual hardware.

@render Dreams is probably one of the hardest ones to get your head around, thinking about it. You could call the creation suite itself an engine of sorts. But then that all exists within BubbleBath Engine. It’s all a bit Engineception.

@nessisonett Totally, it's a real head**** that's for sure. I'm actually surprised that no one has created Dreams within Dreams yet just to add to the confusion 😂

Dang, what an exhausting week this has been and I feel like I got almost nothing done despite that.
It’s not all bad though. I learned that I will most likely be moving to a bigger apartment (with a nice little backyard too) in a few months and I’m very excited about that

@Voltan congrats dude, the missus and I are similarly about to move to a more desirable property in the next couple of months and we just can’t wait. Sounds like you’ve earned the weekend.

@nessisonett @render yeah I tried Dreams back when it released, it seems a really cool piece of kit and is undoubtedly capable of producing some really cool games but after maybe 10 or 15 tutorials it just seemed impossible to retain everything. If I were to continue and try and actually create a game I would’ve had to return to numerous tutorials again and again… and it just felt like I would have to sink mucho hours, days, weeks and months (if not years) to get anywhere near the concept in my mind.

@nessisonett @Voltan @render Thanks, chaps! I learned something new today. I can check that off my list! 😄

@Kidfried I'll be moving in late autum or early winter most likely so it will be a while until I get some real use of that - but even without it, I'll finally have a separate room for all my music/recording stuff AND enough space to get a nice big TV for the PS5 (you know, the important stuff, lol)

@colonelkilgore How's your weekend going? I know you're in Wales but apparently "It's coming home!" (I'm in England, and not actually a football fan - I prefer a bit of cricket)

@Th3solution @nessisonett How are your weekends going?

@Jimmer-jammer Do you ever play jazz on piano? I went to an intermediate jazz jam earlier and, whilst, I kept up, there are just so many little rules in jazz that it doesn't feel very free or open compared to rock music, now considering going back to rock. (I'm on guitar, as I've previously mentioned - still love Sco though!)

@TheBrandedSwordsman So far so good, my friend. I have some chores to do but I’ve got in a couple hours of Returnal already. It a long weekend around these parts since Independence Day will be observed on Monday so most businesses will be closed. I love long weekends. You having a good one?