UGDP - Game Development Tools Lesson

Game Engines

To build the game itself, you rely on a game engine. A game engine is a software that has built-in tools that help interaction occur, like picking up a prize, or hitting a wall, or shooting a ball. It can give you artificial physics to make things roll or fall, and can even help you create the worlds, locations or levels that you will be playing in. This is the place where you will bring all of your other work, called assets. Engines are not a place to create assets, just collect them, organize them, and create relationships between them. You do a lot of programming in the engine, to make the relationships and reactions happen, from a simple "boink" sound effect if you hit your head, to fire, smoke, and sound following a meteor, and the accompanying effects of the impact.

Some of the most commonly used engines for 3D games are Unreal, Crytech, and Unity. These have been the basis of most of the top 3D games you see today. In addition, they can be used for simulations as well, like the military training you've read about. Each engine has its strengths and weaknesses, so it's good to have a list of priorities for your games before you commit to a specific engine. The top gaming companies usually get access to the new game engines early, and can even add features to them. Not all game developers use one of these three engines, as there are others to use and some companies even make their own!

Operating System

In the 2D world there are just as many choices if not more. Because so many mobile games are also 2D games, the operating system of the device becomes the issue. Some 2D engines and other development tools might be focused on Android devices, while others might focus on iOS, the operating system for Apple products. Android is the operating system for many more devices than iOS, but there are still millions of iOS users that need games.

Because computers are becoming faster with smarter software, more and more development tools can make games for multiple platforms and operating systems: one developer can make a game for Android, iOS and Windows PC using the same software. A developer usually has to do much more testing and fixing when developing for more than one platform or operating system, but that is expected. This is called Quality Assurance or QA testing. 

A game development team might also agree on game design, art, sound and more, but then they could have a Windows programmer, iOS programmer, and Android programmer that use those assets and their own engines in parallel with each other.

Assets

Assets are items, art music, sound and other items that are used in a game. The tools to create assets can become very different based on the type of game. There are some tools that are very common and necessary like Photoshop or similar products like Pixlr, to make concept art and 2D graphics. 

There are two main types of 2D images, raster and vector.  Raster images are photo-like images, based on colors for each pixel. Realistic games need raster photo editors like Photoshop or GIMP. The other type, vector images, are more cartoon-like, and don't have a color for each pixel, but measure a shape then fill that shape with a color. These shapes can stretch and shrink very well, where raster images cannot.

3D Modeling Software

For 3D games there are specific 3D modeling softwares like Autodesk 3DS Max or Blender, which can help you create a custom three-dimensional item that can be imported into your engine, from a simple thing like a teapot all the way to a walking dinosaur, including some very realistic looks based on their material. A material in 3D is just like reality: it gives the appearance of what that material would look like in the real world, only it's an illusion. If you want a bike with a chrome frame, give it a chrome material and it will look shiny and new! If you then want to add rust or cuts to it, you need to do more work in Photoshop, then bring that material back to the 3d software. We'll talk more about that later when we focus on 3d games and simulations.

Unity

We will be using one of the more popular tools, and it is a free version, called Unity3D.com. This is a great cross-platform tool that can create a PC, mobile, Android, iOS and so many other options, in both 2D and 3D, and it's all free! While you will be downloading the free version, there are other versions if you become a pro. For the purposes of this course, the free version will help us to do as much as we need and more! This is the engine chosen by HiRez studios for their line of 2D games, starting with Jetpack Fighter, so it's definitely good enough for us.