First-person shooter engine

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A diagram on the history of fps engine
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A diagram on the history of fps engine

This page gives an overview of FPS graphics engines and the games that use them. Engines that included games that have first person view and a third person view are included. Some of these hybrid TPS/FPS run on what are otherwise FPS graphics engines. For more on graphic engines in general and other types of game engine see Game engine.

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[edit] Early FPS graphics engines

A wireframe tank from Battlezone
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A wireframe tank from Battlezone

Widely varying requirements and characteristics, but with game rendering point intended to be from the first person perspective and with the need to shoot things mostly made up using Vector graphics engines.

[edit] From wireframes to 3D Worlds and Textures

An Imp from Doom - a 2D sprite
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An Imp from Doom - a 2D sprite

Planar worlds (rectangular grid in Wolfenstein 3D, sector-based plane levels in Doom) with sprite objects. Average Video Hardware requirements: CPU powered software rendering. The Build engine used sprites for many things, but had arbitrary 3D level geometry.


[edit] The rise of 3D Models

Gunner from Quake II - a texture skewed over a 3D model
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Gunner from Quake II - a texture skewed over a 3D model

For the first time, game engines recreated true 3D worlds with arbitrary level geometry. Instead of sprites the engines used simply textured (single-pass texturing, no lighting details) polygon objects. Average Video Hardware requirements: first 3D-accelerators (Voodoo, Voodoo 2). Quake would use less animated sprites, following the trend to 3D rather than 2D game objects.


[edit] New capabilities, increasing detail

A Skaarj warrior from Unreal 2 - texture filtered and textured mapped polygons in plain light
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A Skaarj warrior from Unreal 2 - texture filtered and textured mapped polygons in plain light

New graphics hardware provided new capabilities, allowing new engines to add various new effects, such as particle effects, fog, coloured lightning, as well as increase texture and polygon detail. Many games featured large outdoor environments, vehicles, rag-doll physics. Average Video Hardware requirements: GeForce 2 (or similar).


[edit] The approach to photorealism

A Hell Knight from DOOM 3 - self-shadowing and bump mapping
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A Hell Knight from DOOM 3 - self-shadowing and bump mapping

Developers of this era of 3D engines often tout their increasingly photorealistic quality. The maps may feature seamlessly integrated indoor-outdoor environments. Some, or all of the Pixel shader-based textures, bump mapping, vertex shaders used for animations, lighting and shadowing technologies are common. Average Video Hardware requirements: GeForce 3 (or other cards with shader support).

Titles marked with * are not released yet. Release dates are estimates.

[edit] The future

Berserker from Unreal 3 technology demo - a detailed model, bump-mapping, and real-time soft self-shadowing
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Berserker from Unreal 3 technology demo - a detailed model, bump-mapping, and real-time soft self-shadowing

The first games using Unreal Engine 3 and CryENGINE 2 will be released in 2007 (although the first PC game to use the Unreal Engine 3 is RoboBlitz, released late 2006.) These games will include including realistic shader-based materials with predefined physics, environments with procedural and vertex shader-based objects (vegetation, debris, human made objects such as books or tools), procedural animation, cinematographic effects (depth of field, motion blur, etc.), and unified lighting models with soft shadowing.

Another interesting prospective is the Sauerbraten FPS game and engine. Although it is still in early development (as a continuation of Cube), the simple engine framework and in-game map editing make the game stand out.

[edit] Generations

One way of dividing up the different FPS game engines is to use various technological generations based on a distinct set of key features.

Generation 1 game engines are the same as the above planar worlds category, these engines only simulated real 3D trough various methods, the requirements to qualify as a generation 1 game is anything that does not qualify as a gen2 engine, it includes game such as.

Generation 2 game engines are the first to do real 3d, this is also the largest segment because of it's key feature, it has to use at least lightmapped textured polygons as a main rendering method, other requirements are basic physics (gravity) and stereo sound. Game engines range from the original Quake engine to the now so popular Source engine.

Generation 3 game engines require 3 things, full per fragment dynamic lighting that treats all light sources the same way (though not necessarily using the same method) using additive blending, surround sound and realistic physics. The Doom 3 engine was the first game engine to comply with the gen 3 requirements and can therefore be seen as the absolute minimum of what a third gen game engine should be able to do, but as other more recent engines like Unreal Engine 3 show us what you can do with it.

Generation 4 game engines does not currently exist but, one of the key features would be the the use of ray tracing as a main rendering method instead of or in conjunction with rasterization like is used today.

[edit] See also

[edit] References

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