Now I know that I joined not long ago, and the topic sounds insanely noob-ish, but I'm at a loss of better words (at least under 50 words) for this. What would make a good compilation of base engines, which could be essentially combined for a game engine? I'm not asking if it's hard or how hard it is to combine these, just the engines. I'm not asking for specific engines either (that would be nice though), but just the types of engines. Anyways: What all types of engines are needed? I'm assuming that one would need at least a good Graphics engine, a Sound engine, Physics, and something for input. Would any other types of engines be required though, e.g. media players and others. My current list of base engines for a game engine is: Graphics: The Nebula Device 2 or some other ones that I've looked at Sound: Audiere Physics: Newton Input: Undecided Else: this is what I was wanting to know. Thanks for your time, and my apologies if this post was odd to decipher and/or confusing.

I know the choice doesn't matter, but what I was asking was are there any other base engines I would need to make a good engine? My goal is to kind of sort of get a free engine set up to rival the commercial engines. It's a little crazy, but so am I. Anyways, what other types of engines are needed? Will I need something for say...AI or something else?

Once again, specicific engines aren't the main point of the topic, just types of engines, I think I'm covered but not sure.

If you take a look at a decent engine like

SOURCE

for instance, you get a general idea of what you need.

Ah thanks for that xor. Source probably would be a good example to use as a template (as in what's needed, not steal the 'Source'). And on the dissecting engines note, I've been doing that for two days strait now, and I've looked at alot of 3d engines. Haven't looked at many for the other areas though...

When looking at engines and libraries, you have to ask yourself - "Do i need it?". If it's just an extra piece of icing on your cake, you could probably cut back on it. I'd say choose the bare minimum of specs and work with it. Your next project can then be more ambitious.

yes, yes I know, and I thank for you for the info, but my exact question is for a fleshing out of the term need.

What do I need that I haven't already listed. I know the physics are a extra, but it should prevent having to look for some other collision detection mod, if I'm not mistaken.

You don't need anything. 90% of the projects I've worked on didnt use a physics engine, yet you have that. So where do you draw the line? I don't think we can give you that answer.

There are only 3 things that you must have.

Input (can't play a game you can't interact with)
Game Logic (The game goes here, and this is the most important part)
Output (Hard to play a game when you have no idea what's going on, This is what almost everyone treats as the most important part)

Most things are going to fall under those 3. The execptions I can think of are utility librarys. Like a library for loading various files. You don't "need" this since you can generate everything you need in the gamelogic. Another example would be a network library.

Input: something that can interprete your mouse, keyboard, joystick, touchpad, microphone, dancepad, camera, shiny red button, direct wire into your brain.

Game Logic: Scripting Languages, AI, Physics, Pathfinding, lots and lots of other stuff.

Output: Graphics, audio, force feedback, console,robot, smell generator, printer, taser in your side, etc.

And for fun you can mix and match, for example you could have voice controled pong, that uses soround sound to tell you where the ball is. Or a chess game that you email moves to, and it prints out the board (or uses a robot to move pieces). Or you push a a big red button every 10 - 11 seconds or get tasered (probably less painful than everquest).

Maybe I should post this in game design and see what kind of weird stuff people can come up with for fun.