Here's my question, I know I am asking too far ahead of myself, but I've been wondering for quite a while now... How are games made? Are they PURELY made of code? (C++, C, non RAD langs) Or do you CREATE an engine, map editor, etc etc? I always wondered how this was done.

yes...
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ok, that was fun for a moment. Your question is a little obscure but I think I understand what you are asking, and the answer is 'yes' to both.

You can 'hard-code' everything that happens in your game and maybe load a little information from other files like logos and sprites etc that you have hard-coded references to and usage of.

Or, you can design a program that is more adaptable and configurable and so design an 'engine' that is coded to read data from other files as well as instructions on what to do with the data and so on and so forth. Things are easily changed without having to do anything with the 'engine', you can just swap different files in and out or add-to or remove and so on.

It all depends on what you want to achieve. If you are making, for example, a side-scrolling game where enemies randomly appear on the right of the screen and move to the left then you can just write a simple hard-coded program and be done with it... simple, no hassles, end of story... however, if you want to make a game that you can later-on add more maps to and be able to easily modify characters etc etc then you would want to write an engine that knows what files to look for and what to do with them.

I wonder if that helps your question at all? I also wonder if you truly understand what an 'engine' is and isn't? Perhaps that is your next question?

That is the exact answer I was looking for, thank you for answering :)

Also, I believe I know what an engine is (at least I hope so), the thing that creates things for your game that you are creating, as you said, a program you make to add stuff into the game you are making.

But anyway, thank you for your answer :)

With some sugar and spice???????

no worries. were you the same person asking about Delphi a few days ago? [ok, i bothered to check and now see that yes it was you... thought the nickname looked familiar]

ankhd : and all things nice.

Quote:Original post by dynaemyu
Also, I believe I know what an engine is (at least I hope so), the thing that creates things for your game that you are creating, as you said, a program you make to add stuff into the game you are making.

No, what you are describing are tools. Tools are programs that generate the content for the game. Content is the art, sound, models, music, etc.

The engine is typically the main process, which generally performs the role of taking that generated content and presenting it in game form. The term 'engine' is deliberately vague and it's perfectly valid for a 'game engine' to be itself comprised of various other 'engines', such as a graphics engine, a physics engine, etc.