Darren New wrote:
> Darren New wrote:
>> Of course. Maybe I phrased the question wrong.
> 
> Or, to ask it yet another way, are there games which, by their very
> nature, would be difficult to put in the same game engine?
> 
I think so, yes. Everquest, Halo, Neverwinter Nights 2, Homeworld 2.
Even just combining the scale of Homeworld 2, which allows you to zoom
in on a single ship or zoom out to see a hundred ship, with something
like Neverwinter Nights 2, which has occasionally has some really good
lighting effects, would either make an online game unplayable or require
tons of work with predicting what the user will do next so that the lag
isn't as dangerous. That might work in a slower paced game like
Everquest, but in Halo it would never fly with the players.

> Obviously, tetris and solitaire and minesweeper would be harder to code
> in the id engine than just writing them by themselves, for example.
> 
> So how far apart can two games be and still be reasonably in the same
> engine?  Could you put Thief and Halo in the same engine realistically?
> Are there features of games that are incompatible with features of other
> games?
> 
> Obviously not, or you couldn't play them on the same machine. But how
> close to the metal do you have to get to merge them? How abstract and
> powerful can your game engine be while still supporting everything
> someone might want to do with a minimum of low-level on-the-metal code?
> 

I think it is more of the developers having to decide between learning
one engine and modifying it to only do what they need as fast as they
need it to, vs building one from scratch that does exactly what they
want. Some games really don't need complex physics, so either the devs
need to re-write part of the engine or the engine will need to provide
the option to turn simple physics on. The same applies to various parts
of the lighting system. Add in various 'middleware', tree software like
SpeedTree or a modeler that can take advantage of all the features that
the engine provides, and the code base would be pretty unmaintainable in
my opinion.

I don't doubt that it could be done, but could it be done in a way that
would be easier for the game developers to use then it would be for them
to create their own? And could it be sold cheaper then developing a new
one with just certain features?

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