Computer Science Canada Engines |
| Author: | josh [ Fri May 14, 2004 3:15 pm ] |
| Post subject: | Engines |
can someone please explain to me the purpose of graphics and physics engines and how they work? |
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| Author: | the_short1 [ Fri May 14, 2004 4:52 pm ] |
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what kind of physic engines ? ?? ? ? like gravity.. or w/e like taht?? graphics... liuke particle engines ?? 3d?? |
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| Author: | josh [ Fri May 14, 2004 4:55 pm ] |
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I am not quite sure, I was watching some E3 videos about games and they where talking about how they made a really good physics engine for car crashes. Also on this site I have seen "3D engines" and othe graphics engine things. In general when the word engine is used to refer to software what does it mean?  |
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| Author: | Tony [ Fri May 14, 2004 5:58 pm ] |
| Post subject: | |
engine is the core code that drives the basics of your program. A physics engine is responsible for physical forces of your world, such as gravity, collisions, etc. A graphics engine is responsible for drawing your graphics. That would include shading, lighting and any other visual effects. A good example would be Half-Life and Counter Strike games. Two different games, but they look and feel similar because Counter Strike is build on top of HL's engine(s) |
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| Author: | josh [ Fri May 14, 2004 7:52 pm ] |
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but how do engines work (what does the code look like/do) does it take graphics files and render them in 3D? or for a physics engine does it contain math equations that state how objects move? Are engines used so you do not have to keep writing certain code over and over? |
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| Author: | Catalyst [ Fri May 14, 2004 8:06 pm ] |
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engines are just classes and algorithms that handle a certain task. They can be compiled to DLLs, static libs, or just included in the code A graphics engine will most likely have classes for handling primitives and models, levels, and scene graphs e.g. Ogre http://www.ogre3d.org/ A physics engine will most likely have mass,spring, and collision primitives to use to check collisions between objects e.g. ODE http://ode.org/ yes they are used so that code does not have to be repeated or to same time using the ready done engine instead of making their own |
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| Author: | the_short1 [ Fri May 14, 2004 9:57 pm ] |
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u want to see how a 3d engine looks like... i think catalist or zylum posted their engine in source.... |
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| Author: | josh [ Sat May 15, 2004 8:07 am ] |
| Post subject: | |
thanx for the explanation guys, now I understand. |
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