Hello there,

Today i was reading a post on MMO forum, there was a lot of smart phrases circling around, like "Upgraded graphical engine" (Context is Heroes of the Storm and Starcraft 2, in case someone is familiar with those games).

One person claimed that Game A uses Game B graphical engine, only a bit updated, and that Game C uses heavily modified Game D engine.

What the heck does that even mean?

I mean yes, you have code to upload textures, models, bind them, then you have a code to call draw functions, switch shaders.

When need comes, you copy that code into your "UNIVERSAL_CODE_LIBRARY.DLL" and start using it in all of your projects.
Sort of "Core functionality" and "Utility features".

I have my own custom library that draws screens in views, has custom UI objects and their event catching, functions to draw Sprite or Arithmetical calculated models with animations, model caches, texture loading and etc. Is that considered and engine?
I still have a "render()" pipeline, which has to be filled with code. I guess not?

Am i missing something? Or is it just 25 dollar term for 5 cent concept?

I am frustrated and confused about this :S

From my experience, what is usually ment by "graphics engine" is not the low/mid-level concepts like resource creation, draw-call execution etc... but more the high-level render-effects systems like lighting, shadows, global illumination, post-processing-pipeline,etc...

That makes sense, especially if people talk about it online outside of game programming forums. The average gamer doesn't give a crap about how you draw your sprites or load your textures. If your Call of Duty MW2 looks almost the same as MW1, then thats where people get to discuss what technology is being used for rendering, and if its the same "graphics engine" as before.

Hope that clarifies it :)

Hmmm, still a bit confused.

Maybe its because i've stayed in 2D way to long.

I've used LWJGL, LibGDX and OpenTK for 3D before. You place vertices into memory, get the handle, draw the model, change lightning when needed, load vertice and fragment shaders. LibGDX even allows programatical mesh adjustment, building and moving mesh parts around.

Issues usually come with stuff like "3d picking".

Thanks guys! I will look into your examples and those terms like "post-processing-pipeline", maybe everything will become clear.
Maybe there are some 2D "graphical engines" you know of?

I will let it sink into me for a while.

In general, a term is not used consistently, it's just a name that to the author seemed fitting to describe whatever thing he was describing.

This holds in particular for umbrella terms like "engine", which can mean almost anything.

Basically, this means that (very likely) his idea of "graphics engine" is not the same as your idea of "graphics engine". This is normal, we have a limited number of words for each concept, and too many detailed notions that we like to express in that word.

Obviously, that also holds for anyone else that you ask. We all have slightly different ideas what a graphics engine is, exactly. This thread illustrates that, I think.

If you want a precise as possible description, read the definition of it by the author, then map that definition onto your world. If you're lucky it may end up in what you call "engine", but it may also become "framework", or "library", or "general game code", or something else.

Thanks guys!

It became a bit more clear.