Game Engine Development Research Articles

SyDRA: An approach to understand game engine architecture

Game engines are tools to facilitate video game development. They provide graphics, sound, and physics simulation features, which would have to be otherwise implemented by developers. Even though essential for modern commercial video game development, game engines are complex and developers often struggle to understand their architecture, leading to maintainability and evolution issues that negatively affect video game productions. In this paper, we present the Subsystem-Dependency Recovery Approach (SyDRA), which helps game engine developers understand game engine architecture and therefore make informed game engine development choices. By applying this approach to 10 open-source game engines, we obtain architectural models that can be used to compare game engine architectures and identify and solve issues of excessive coupling and folder nesting. Through a controlled experiment, we show that the inspection of the architectural models derived from SyDRA enables developers to complete tasks related to architectural understanding and impact analysis in less time and with higher correctness than without these models.

Meaningful Place: A Phenomenological Approach to the Design of Spatial Experience in Open-world Games

With the development of game engines and graphics technology, open-world games have gained popularity all over the world recently. One of the key features of this genre is a realistic open world space for the players to explore, to the extent that some even deemed it as the prototype of virtual world and the Metaverse. However, in comparison with the growing world size, the player's spatial experience is a downward spiral. Interaction in an ever-increasing game space suffered from a repetitive design pattern which rendered the world grandeur on the surface but hollow deep down. How to find meaning in this seemingly hollow world and what game designers can learn from it? From a phenomenological perspective, this paper distinguishes “place” from “space,” and, according to this, proposes a three-dimensional meaning structure of place, that is “orientation-identification-time,” as a design approach to reconstruct a meaningful spatial experience in the game world.

THE ENGINE IS THE MESSAGE: VIDEOGAME INFRASTRUCTURE AND THE FUTURE OF DIGITAL PLATFORMS

On January 18, Microsoft revealed its $68.7 billion deal to acquire videogame publisher Activision Blizzard. The acquisition was pitched as an investment towards “metaverse platforms” that gaming would play a key role in developing. Journalists speculated about the increasing consolidation of the videogame industry and whether blockbuster franchises would be locked into Microsoft’s platforms and subscription services. Commentary on the metaverse weighed in on how toxicity and harassment in game industry workplaces such as Activision Blizzard might relate to issues of trust and safety in virtual worlds such as Meta’s Horizon Worlds. Seemingly above the fray of platform strategy, market speculation, and corporate scandal, New Yorker writer Kyle Chayka (2022) tweeted as a matter of fact: “video game infrastructure and tools are increasingly going to take over all digital platforms”. This panel contextualizes discussions about the business and aesthetics of 3D platforms in the infrastructural work of game engines, which routinely integrate databases, file formats, web protocols, and translational algorithms. We trace public debates and corporate statements over representation and governance, equity and inclusion (Bosworth 2021) to the techniques, technologies, and practices that enable massive real-time 3D digital spaces to flow and transact. We also highlight the growing intertwinement between game engine development companies and related content ecosystems, such as the Epic Games Store and the Unreal Engine, and Epic’s and Unity’s Asset Stores. This panel investigates how digital systems are designed to regulate technical interoperability and its implications for creative practice and cultural production. Together, these papers map how power and capital become centralized and distributed throughout the back end of the metaverse, and politicize how social practices and subjectivities are negotiated through technological architecture.

VALIDATING THE GEOMETRIC DESIGN RULES FOR ORTHOGONAL TOPOLOGIES IN INTEGRATED CIRCUITS

A series of existing methods for obtaining parametric metrics for orthogonal topologies (sets of orthogonal geometric objects) is analysed. The systematic examination and analysis of rules for designing of orthogonal topologies are critically important in modern electronic design. Precise and efficient component placement on integrated circuits impacts the device performance and reliability. Based on the analysis and comparisons, two effective solution methods are proposed. These methods are founded on the introduction and computation of metrics based on rectangular and square trees, which enhance the design process and facilitate more efficient chip space utilization, a matter of significance in the contemporary electronics industry. Rectangular trees provide an intuitive structure for organizing orthogonal objects, while square trees offer optimal space partitioning into square cells, which can be crucial for specific tasks. The article provides detailed descriptions of these methods and their implementation algorithms. A comparative analysis of both methods is then conducted to identify their advantages and disadvantages in different scenarios. The research shows that the choice between rectangular and square trees depends on specific design requirements and task characteristics. This research project has a wide range of practical applications, from integrated circuit development to mapping, game engine development, and more. This work can be valuable for professionals in the field of electronic design, as well as for those involved in optimizing orthogonal geometric structures.

Simulation of Smartphone-Based Public Participation in Earthquake Structural Response Emergency Monitoring Using a Virtual Experiment and AI

Structural health monitoring (SHM) is of great significance for post-earthquake damage assessment. Smartphone-based monitoring techniques provide the possibility to perform crowdsensing for all buildings in urban regions after an earthquake. However, this idea still faces many difficulties and is hard to realize. Fortunately, the development of game engines provides the opportunity for simulating this kind of experiment. The main objective of this study was to use Unity to simulate the whole process when a city is struck by an earthquake that consists of one main shock and one aftershock. During the emergency response, the citizens and the “city brain” in Unity, named Ground Eye, cooperate to finish the task of taking refuge and collecting data for regional damage assessment. Some basic assumptions were made first. Then the city model was established in Unity, and the behaviors of the citizens were directed by the behavior tree artificial intelligence (AI). OpenSees was utilized to determine the monitoring demand and simulate the monitoring results. A GUI was built to exhibit the data during the whole process. The results show that the evacuation and monitoring plan is feasible. The simulation framework presented in this paper can be used in other SHM application scenarios.

AI intelligent wayfinding based on Unreal Engine 4 static map

The development of games is closely related to the development of game engines. Unreal Engine is a mainstream game development engine. Unreal Engine has a powerful lighting rendering function and blueprint programming system.Therefore, using Unreal Engine for game development will better meet the requirements of modern game users for game quality and game content. In games, the AI path-finding system is often the core of a game. However, the path-finding component of the unreal engine is usually only applies to three-dimensional game and is used for intelligent path-finding in dynamic environment. Howerve, the 2D game usually finds the way in static environment. At present, there are a lareg number of path-finding algorithms and theoretical studies based on static environment, but there is no simulation experiment and detailed explanation of intelligent path-finding in static environment based on the Unreal Engine platform. This article firstly explains the principle of path-finding algorithms that are several commonly used in static environment. Then it compares the performance of different algorithms, and selects the optimal solution among several schemes by summarizing the experimental results. Then based on the optimal path-finding algorithm, using blueprint programming to implement AI path-finding in the Unreal engine. Finally, this article sort out and summarize the overall work process and indicate direction for future optimization.

On the comprehension of application programming interface usability in game engines

AbstractExtensive development of games for various purposes including education and entertainment has resulted in increased development of game engines. Game engines are being used on a large scale as they support and simplify game development to a greater extent. Game developers using game engines are often compelled to use various application programming interfaces (APIs) of game engines in the process of game development. Thus, both quality and ease of development of games are greatly influenced by APIs defined in game engines. Hence, understanding API usability in game engines could greatly help in choosing better game engines among the ones that are available for game development and also could help developers in designing better game engines. In this article, we thus aim to evaluate API usability of 95 publicly available game engine repositories on GitHub, written primarily in C++ programming language. We test API usability of these game engines against the eight structural API usability metrics—AMNOI, AMNCI, AMGI, APXI, APLCI, AESI, ATSI, and ADI. We see this research as a first step toward the direction of improving usability of APIs in game engines. We present the results of the study, which indicate that about 25% of the game engines considered have minimal API usability, with respect to the considered metrics. It was observed that none of the considered repositories have ideal (all metric scores equal to 1) API usability, indicating the need for developers to consider API usability metrics while designing game engines.

Rendering Optimization Approach for Game Engine Development

The article is devoted to the problem of creating a software tool for optimizing rendering in game engines, which will help users to quickly and easily configure their projects. The tool provides a centralized simple interface to the rendering tools built into a game engine. The key possibility of the tool is the management of visual effects, such as Bloom, Volumetric Shadow, Ambient Occlusion, etc. There is also an opportunity to use profilers and get a critical information for project optimization.

Unified Patterns for Realtime Interactive Simulation in Games and Digital Storytelling.

This paper discusses the state of the art in realtime interactive simulation patterns, which are essential in the development of game engines, digital storytelling, and many other graphical applications. We show how currently popular patterns have evolved from equivalent, or, at least, very similar concepts, and are deeply related. We show that game engines do not need to choose a particular pattern, but can easily combine all desired properties with little or no overhead.

Increasing Learning Frequency through Education Based Game

In the era of globalization, the development of the gaming world is evident very quickly, evidenced by the launch of various types of games every year, even every month. Game development that grows rapidly makes the desire to incorporate educational elements into the game application. It is also supported by the development of game engine to facilitate game development. The purpose of this research is to build an education based game on PC platform using Unity3D Game Engine (the newest game engine) to increase the learning frequency. The result achieved in this result is the creation of an educational based game app as a medium of study by combining the concept of the game and learning in it. Conclusion obtained after doing this research is that education based game can be made to increase the learning frequency.

Complex game development throughout the college curriculum

This case study discusses the incorporation of game development throughout the Daniel Webster College computer science curriculum. During the freshman year all computer science majors develop complex games in C#.net while participating in an instructional game motif method we call the GM method. This freshman educational method combines agile software engineering techniques with an inquiry based, neo-Socratic classroom. The GM method provides freshmen with the core skills necessary to develop complex games throughout their college career. This freshman program of study is followed by more traditional project courses which begin with an encryption system project in the sophomore year. XNA 2-D and XNA 3-D game development soon follow and a C++ game engine development capstone project is undertaken in the senior year.