Halo Blam! engine......

[hunterX]

What is that? I cant find any info on it over the web

[SnaFuBAR]

what info are you looking for?:eyesroll:

spam thread

[hunterX]

Like what Its mainly for. some people talk about it not being able to support stuff, but I dont get that is it the game itself or is it a program?

[Timo]

It's the engine that runs the game.

[Jay2645]

The engine IS the game. Think of it like a car. You can add in all sorts of extra features (Maps and whatnot), but the car won't run without the engine. The engine makes the game work; it is what does the necessary calculations for physics and whatnot. Without the engine, the game won't work. Every game has an engine; Halo happens to use the Blam! engine.

[Limited]

The engine IS the game. Think of it like a car. You can add in all sorts of extra features (Maps and whatnot), but the car won't run without the engine. The engine makes the game work; it is what does the necessary calculations for physics and whatnot. Without the engine, the game won't work. Every game has an engine; Halo happens to use the Blam! engine.
^ This guys right.

The engine is the inner workings of the game, things like game asssets, sound, textures, models are used via the engine.

[hunterX]

So theres more than one kinda engine for varieties of games?

[Jay2645]

Yep. Every game uses an engine.

Source games, like Counter-Strike: Source, Portal, Team Fortress 2, or Half-Life all use the Source engine, for example.

[hunterX]

How many diffrent kinds of engines are there? and is the Blam! engine the only one that can be modded?

[thehoodedsmack]

How many diffrent kinds of engines are there? and is the Blam! engine the only one that can be modded?

That question is unanswerable. Nearly, if not, every game uses a slightly different engine. And most mainstream commercial game engines can be modded. If you don't know a whole lot about how video games work, this probably isn't the best place to start your investigation. Check out a book or something.

[hunterX]

The engine was the only thing I didnt get.

[CrAsHOvErRide]

How many diffrent kinds of engines are there? and is the Blam! engine the only one that can be modded?
All of them can be modded. There are companies that produce those engines and the SDK (Development Kit) and sell them to other companies.

Only some SDKs are public for some engines so that's why you might get the feeling that some games are unmodable. Then it's up to the community to create one. Luckily for us, we have the SDK for a special version of Halo called Halo Custom Edition and the SDK is called Halo Editing Kit.

[SnaFuBAR]

@ hunter: no, it isn't. also, wrong section. more tech related, since it's not strictly halo.

[hunterX]

Well since I though the Blam! engine was a program for halo I though it would be best to post here, but since it isnt you should prob move it to tech talk then

[paladin]

How many diffrent kinds of engines are there? and is the Blam! engine the only one that can be modded?

Every game has their own, essentially. A publisher leases the engine but makes slight adjustments to comfort their game.

The big ones are Havok, Unreal 3, Source, and some others...

[BobtheGreatII]

The big ones are Havok, Unreal 3, Source, and some others...
Isn't Havok just a physics engine...

I'm a little confused as to what this thread is actually asking for. Blam! is Halo's game engine.
A game engine as defined by Wiki:
"A game engine is the core software (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software) component of a computer video game (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game) or other interactive application with real-time graphics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Real-time_computer_graphics). It provides the underlying technologies, simplifies development, and often enables the game to run on multiple platforms such as game consoles (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_console) and desktop operating systems such as Linux (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linux), Mac OS X (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mac_OS_X), and Microsoft Windows (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Windows). The core functionality typically provided by a game engine includes a rendering engine (“renderer”) for 2D (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2D_computer_graphics) or 3D (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/3D_computer_graphics) graphics (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_graphics), a physics engine (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physics_engine) or collision detection (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collision_detection) (and collision response), sound (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sound), scripting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scripting_language), animation (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_animation), artificial intelligence (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_AI), networking (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computer_networking), streaming, memory management, threading, and a scene graph (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scene_graph). The process of game development (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_development) is frequently economized by in large part reusing the same game engine to create different games."

[CrAsHOvErRide]

Every game has their own, essentially. A publisher leases the engine but makes slight adjustments to comfort their game.

The big ones are Havok, Unreal 3, Source, and some others...
I'm pretty sure Havok is only a physics engine...

Rendering Engines (Sound,Video,Input) - based on DirectX / OpenGL (only video)
Physic Engines - Havok, CryEngine 2 (more than just physics), Euphoria

and much more...

All engines have custom technologies the developers invent...and those are the things that make the engine unique. Also, there are many engines out there that combine multiple engines like physics engines together (e.g. Start Wars : The Force Unleashed).

[Tweek]

you know, i honestly thought this was a troll.

[Phopojijo]

Every game has their own, essentially. A publisher leases the engine but makes slight adjustments to comfort their game.

The big ones are Havok, Unreal 3, Source, and some others...Havok's not really an "engine" -- it's a bit more 'specific' of a middleware.

UnrealEngine, Source, Renderware, CryEngine, idTech, Torque, and Frostbite are pretty much the major commercial engines.

Many companies make their own engine: Insomniac, Bungie, etc. all keep their tech proprietary.

A "mod" is simply a 3rd party addition to the game engine. A game engine by itself is fairly "dumb"... it has the basic networking code, 3d rendering, toolsets, a scripting language... it's up to the game and level designers to tell the engine what it actually is.

The difference between a "mod" and a "game" is simply who makes it.

If the creator of the engine allows people to modify the engine (or modify the content the engine renders -- as is abundantly more common) -- then it's moddable.

How many do that? That's nearly impossible to answer... however -- the major ones are Source, UnrealEngine, CryEngine, and iDTech.

That is *in no way a complete list* -- it's barely a bullet-point of the highlights.

Didn't even mention Halo engine...

[BobtheGreatII]

Not to mention the list of people who actually hack into the engine/game in order to mod it. For example Halo 2.

[Mr Buckshot]

Havok is not a game engine. It's a physics engine that can be integrated into various game engines. Halo 2, FEAR, and notably Source have all used Havok, although Source-based games (HL2 + expansions) are the only ones that make the physics an integral portion of gameplay in the form of puzzles. Not to mention countless mods of course.

In all respects, you have much to learn about the technological science behind gaming. It's great that you're interested, but you can find tons more info here than on some forum:

http://electronics.howstuffworks.com/video-games-gear-channel.htm

What we forum members say here is not necessarily correct, so a scientific article is a better source of information. Good luck!