The general goals of a scripting language are to provide level designers with tools to produce the desired gameplay, without needing them to be full on programmers, and without needing to edit the game's source code. The functionality and complexity will vary between game engines, from extremely simple functions such as telling the game to spawn an enemy in or load a new map file when you reach a trigger point, to directing the game engine to achieve more complicated results which may not exist as part of the game's default sandbox, to at its fullest being a feature complete programming language itself, usually based on an existing programming language. In a game engine where most features are defined in the game data, the game engine would be expected to carry out functions such managing memory, I/O, rendering the graphics for output to a display, interpreting the game's scripting language if it exists, doing general number crunching to make the game work, and so on.Ī scripting language is effectively data driven code, interpreted by the game engine. The game's data thus defines both the function and the fun, while the code is just there to make the data do its job. Virtually all games have some data component, but only relatively recently has this component become flexible enough that two games built from the same engine can be very different from each other. Unlike the above example, a proper game engine would allow the behavior of in-world entities to be defined in almost every way through data. In short, a game that has its data modified to become another game is still, at the very basic level, the source game.Ī game engine is game code that is designed to be data-driven. Collecting 100 "coins" will always result in an extra life.Running out of time will always result in death.Falling off the bottom of the screen will always result in death." Fireballs" will always go down and forward, bouncing along the ground.Unless you change the code, however, said game will have certain mechanics completely identical to Super Mario Bros., such as: and create a Mario-like game that replaces how Mario looks, and how the terrain, objects and monster in levels are laid out. Through Game Mods, you can change the data of Super Mario Bros. The game's data defines what Mario looks like, how he animates, and the arrangement of the terrain and placement of objects and monsters, which form levels. The game's code defines the rules of the game: that Mario can jump that Mario can run how fast he runs that there are monsters, some of which can be stomped on etc. Code is what makes a game function, and data is what makes it fun. Video games are composed of two things: code and data. In order to understand what a game engine is, it is necessary to first understand what video games are made of.
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