purpose of game engines

a game engine is a system designed for the creation and development of games. the best game engines have a software framework that the creators use to make video games for consoles and personal computers. game engines have many different functions like graphic rendering (2D or 3D), physics engine, collision detection (and collision response), sound, scripting, animation, and artificial intelligence. game engines provide different development tools and e-usable software components. most game engine usually have, platform abstractions this makes the game usable on different platforms like XBOX 360, PS3, and PC.

• graphic rendering: this is how the game engine shows you what is on the screen, this could be anything from the character too the surroundings around your character. this can come in the form of either 2D rendering or 3D rendering.
• a physics engine is what adds things like a rigid body into different objects and other things like gravity, so certain items in the map can fall when dropped or if a building collapses, you will get too see this whilst playing. this can make games harder by having to avoid things like this.
• collision detection is the detection of two or more objects that are i a game intersecting in the game, and being able to know exactly when this happens so that it can be detected effectively.
• this is used in game engines for the to apply emphasis on a certain pat of the game, this has to be done properly because this can lead to people not liking the game because the sound effects are bad.
• scripting is used in a game engine because this is what codes the game and gives you the ability to do certain things in a game, like special moves, and eve walk around, without this a game would not be playable.
• animation in games, is things like the cut scene and what your character does, and what other characters do whilst you are not playing as them, like in call of duty or battlefield, you see other soldiers dive for cover and even see the animation for them dying, you can see exactly he same animation on many different characters in different places whilst playing a game.
• artificial intelligence, this is where software does what humans do, like controlling a character to do a specific job, AI can also be set to many different difficulties. Foor example on fifa if you play against the computer you can set the difficulty to what you want like, amateur, semi-pro, proffesional, world class or ultimate, and you can select the difficulty that best fits your level of skill, obviously amateur may be too easy but proffesional may be too hard so you would then go on semi pro.

game mods can hold many different things. Older game mods would only add little things to a game like new weapons, and maybe a little are that you can explore. but more modern game mods can provide endless things and can be seen more like a free DLC package, newer mods on games like Skyrim can provide a whole new area where there are more quests and new people, even new enemies and people that you can interact with to gather information for other quests. many people think that mods and hacks are the same things. this is not correct, hacks tend to crash servers and are used to hack into peoples accounts on Xbox for example, modding is allowed and can be used on most video games.

different types of game engines

• source
• unreal engine 3 rage engine
• cry engine
• naughty dog engine     
• halo engine
• frostbite
• id tech
• gamebryo
• IW engine

all of these game engines are regarded as "good" and most of them are used in some of the worlds best or most well known game like, the battlefield series, the call of duty series and the halo series. all of these games are popular on some of the most played games on both consoles and PC.