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Game Engine for Serious Games<br />An Overview by <br />Flt Lt KashifShamaun<br />

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What are Serious Games<br />A game designed for a primary purpose other than pure entertainment. The word “serious“ is generally appended to refer products used by industries like defense, education, scientific exploration, health care, emergency management, city planning, engineering, religion, and politics.<br />

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Examples<br />

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Basic Components of Game Visuals<br />Game Engine aka Rendering Engine<br />Image Generator the hardware<br />Visual Database<br />

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+<br />+<br />-><br />-><br />Visual Database<br />Image Generator<br />Controls<br />Graphics Engine<br />Display<br />=<br />Serious Game<br />

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+<br />+<br />-><br />-><br />Visual Database<br />Image Generator<br />Controls<br />Graphics Engine<br />Display<br />=<br />Serious Game<br />

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+<br />+<br />-><br />-><br />Controls<br />Display<br />Game Visuals<br />=<br />Serious Game<br />

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Game Engine<br />Component I<br />

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Game Engine<br />Controls the presentation of game world<br />Geometry and Texture<br />3D Sound<br />Simulation (i.e. Physics)<br />AI<br />Network Traffic<br />Environment<br />Multiplayer<br />

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What is there in Game World<br />Environment Physics<br />Model Physics<br />Object Physics<br />AI<br />Terrain<br />3D Models<br />3D Sound<br />Texture<br />

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Geometry & Textures<br />Terrain<br />3D Models<br />

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Satellite Images + DEM = Terrain<br />Terrain<br />DEM<br />Satellite Images<br />

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How Terrain Looks Like<br />

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3D Models<br />Poly Model<br />Shaded Model<br />Textured Model<br />

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3D Sound<br />

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3D Sound<br />3D audio<br />Sounds are part of the scene graph<br />Each sound has a geometric location<br />Dolby Pro Logic and Dolby Digital<br />“5.1” channels:<br />2 main, center, 2 rear surround, subwoofer<br />

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Simulation or Physics Engine<br />Models behavior in game world<br />Collision detection<br />FDM in case of Flight Simulator<br />

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Artificial Intelligence<br />Design of intelligent agents where an intelligent agent is a system that perceives its environment and takes actions which maximize its chances of success.<br />Computer generated forces or enemies<br />

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Network Traffic<br />Synchronize game clients<br />Game world is a distributed database<br />Scene graph derived from game world<br />Industry standards<br />HLA (High Level Architecture)<br />CIGI (Common Image Generator Interface)<br />DIS (Distributed Interface Simulation)<br />

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Environment<br />Visibility range<br />Cloud layers, solid or variable patchiness<br />Wet & snow-covered surfaces<br />Thunderstorm cell, lightning flash & bolt<br />Volumetric ground & patchy fog<br />Sea states 0 through 9<br />

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Multiplayer<br />Multiplayer on LAN or WAN<br />

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Game engine operations<br />The Game Engine generates an image from models.<br />Converts 3D models into 2D images.<br />

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Scene Graph<br />

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Rendering Stages<br />

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Rendering Process<br />

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Image Generator<br />Component II<br />

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Typical IGs<br />

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Serious Games’ IG<br />

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IG Architecture<br />

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Modern Graphics Hardware<br />Pipelining<br />Number of stages<br />Parallelism<br />Number of parallel processes<br />Parallelism + pipelining<br />Number of parallel pipelines<br />1<br />2<br />3<br />1<br />2<br />3<br />1<br />2<br />3<br />1<br />2<br />3<br />1<br />2<br />3<br />

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Performance parameters<br />Caching<br />Update Rate<br />Display resolution<br />

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Gen Lock & Frame Lock<br />Genlock & frame Lock is a technique where the video output of one source, or a specific reference signal, is used to sync other picture sources together. <br />

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Anisotropic Filtering<br />It is a method of enhancing the image quality of textures on surfaces that are at oblique viewing angles with respect to the camera.<br />

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Light point capacity<br />The number of light points that can be handled.<br />

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Levels of detail (LOD)<br />LODs are sets of models that represent the same object or terrain area with varying degrees of complexity<br />

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Levels of detail (LOD)<br />

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Antialiasing<br />Antialiasing, as the name suggests, is a technique used to combat an effect known as aliasing.<br />

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Addressable moving objects<br />The number of moving or animated models per frame. <br />

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Blend zones and Alpha transparency level<br />Alpha blending is the process of combining a translucent foreground color with a background color, thereby producing a new blended color.<br />The number of alpha blending in a frame is blend zones.<br />Alpha transparency level is the level of transparency that can be handled.<br />

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z-Buffer<br />Itis the management of image depth coordinates in three-dimensional (3-D) graphics<br />It is designed to improve efficiency by selectively choosing which elements in a scene need to be rendered<br />

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Iteration rate<br />The "physics" iterations performed every second.<br />

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Polygonal capacity<br />The polygon capacity of an image generator is most often expressed in polygons per second. <br />The polygons per second number is divided by any frame rate to yield the polygons in each image. <br />

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Other Features<br />Output modes<br />Number of channels<br />Database Type Supported<br />

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The secret to good IG<br />Maximize<br /><br />Optimize<br /><br />

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References<br />Presages Creator Manuals<br />“Game Hardware and Engines” by J. Scott Hofmann<br />www.wikipedia.org<br />www.gamedev.net<br />“Game Development All in One” by Bruno Miguel Teixeira de Sousa<br />Quantum 3D IG brochures<br />Medellin 6000 brochure<br />Images from www.google.com and www.bing.com search engines<br />“3D Engines in games” by Author: Michal Valient<br />“Introduction to Graphics Hardware and GPUs” by Yannick and Tom<br />