Comments on: Game engines – an artists guide

By: Dino

Dino — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 17:56:44 +0000

“Actually, there are lots of stuff that programmer have to do, such as game logic, special effect handling, A.I. system, etc. But not only “bug fixing”.”

I don’t think Rick was saying programmers *didn’t* do those things; but think of it this way.. most programmers aren’t just programmers, they are AI programmers or Network programmers, or Graphics programmers, or Animation programmers, or … (drum roll) .. Engine programmers.

The emphasis of this article is about describing what an engine is (a core around which you build a game) and where it comes from (reused code from previous games). The programmer line you quote above is true (to an extent) for Engine programmers, but you’re right that the other programmers still have work to do. An Engine programmer’s job is never done!

If you want to audition work quickly, in order to demo some feature, you might not need any gameplay programmers, but you probably would need an engine.

By: T.K.

T.K. — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 14:13:40 +0000

“But what will all those programmers do now that we have engines? Lots of things – they’ll find and fix bugs in the engine. They’ll make the engine run faster. They’ll add new features (and then fix them. And then make them faster). And they’ll even write nice tools for us artists to make it easier to get our artwork out of our heads and into the game.”

Oh my god… You are a totally artist, aren’t you?
Actually, there are lots of stuff that programmer have to do, such as game logic, special effect handling, A.I. system, etc. But not only “bug fixing”.

By: Rick Stirling

Rick Stirling — Wed, 02 May 2007 12:22:15 +0000

A pleasure – there will be more to come.

By: Phil Price

Phil Price — Tue, 01 May 2007 18:46:43 +0000

Thanks very much.I learned more from your article than I’ve been able to find out in the last 5 hours on the net. I,ve been teaching myself 3d animation and have not been able to find out how animation relates to games and VR.Your article has cleared up a lot of my questions.