Unit 6 – Introducing Game Engines
Items In This Unit
- Introduction
- What do I need to get started
- What I don’t need to get started
- Most popular game engines
Introduction
Creating video games is supposed to be FUN! It used to be very hard to create video games. Often times you would need a team of people to create just one video game. Times have changed! These days, anyone with a computer, yes even you can create fancy video games with just a bit of knowledge and a game engine program!
What do I need to get started
- Windows, Mac or Linux computer
- Ideally 2 monitors
- Strong interest in video games
- Your imagination
- Game Engine
What I don’t need to get started
Here is a couple of great MIDI online free tools to create songs and sound effects for your games:
- Any previous programming knowledge
- Any previous graphics knowledge
- Any previous sound effects or music knowledge
Why use Game Engines?
Using game engines allows for fast video game creations. For professional video game companies, utilizing game engines allow for fast video game prototyping. Game engines come with lots of out-of-box functionality. Some examples of the out of the box functionality include:
- Physics engine for your characters or various sprites
- Easy music integrations
- Easy sound effects integration
- Spritesheets (multiple character picture frames often embedded into a single image of game characters simulation motion or animation)
- Easy integration of textual elements
Most Popular Game Engines
There are many other game engines some of which are very powerful and allow you to create video games for various game consoles. Here is a list of some of the more popular ones:
- Unity
- Unreal Engine,
- Game Maker
- Godot
- AppGameKit
- CryEngine
- Amazon Lumberyard
- RPG Maker
- LibGDX
- Urho3d
Stay tuned for the next chapters where we will create some real games!