Unreal Tournament Engine
Currently we only treat game engines intended for commercial product development, and available for licensing. In most cases at present this involves a substantial cash commitment, except for the free of charge Quake Engine which remains of interest despite its age.
An engine typically consists of a collection of modules concerned with different aspects of game runtime behaviour along with editors and add-ons for popular tools, such as 3D modeling programs. Unlike most commercial software, source code rather than simply compiled libraries or DLLs is usually supplied. This is a reflection of the immaturity of the market and implies good vendor support is essential.
Low level access to sound and graphics are now usually handled by system services such as DirectX for Windows and OpenGL on computers and consoles so the programmer need no longer work directly with the hardware. Likewise in the early years of the 21st century, the role of game engines can be expected to become more significant, with use of engine components becoming less of a black art, and availability more widespread and commodity based, following the trends in other parts of the software industry.
Game Developer Magazine provides some excellent case studies and insights into the game development process and a good introduction to some of the benefits and problems associated with using contemporary engines for game software and product development.
