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This is a sortable list of first-person shooter engines .
Game engine | First used for | Date | Other first-person shooters |
---|---|---|---|
— | Maze | 1973 | |
— | Spasim | 1974 | |
Arsys Software | Plazma Line | 1984 | Wibarm (1986), Star Cruiser (1988), Star Cruiser 2 (1992) |
Freescape | Driller | 1987 | Dark Side (1988), Total Eclipse (1988), Castle Master (1990), Castle Master II: The Crypt (1990), Total Eclipse II: The Sphinx Jinx (1991) |
— | The Colony | 1988 |
Game engine | First used for | Date | Other first-person shooters |
---|---|---|---|
— | Geograph Seal | 1994 | |
— | Descent | 1995 | Descent II (1996), Descent 3 (1999) |
XnGine | The Terminator: Future Shock | 1995 | The Terminator: SkyNET (1996) |
Quake engine | Quake | 1996 | Hexen II (1997), Malice (1997), X-Men: The Ravages of Apocalypse (1997), Laser Arena (2000), Wrath: Aeon of Ruin (2019) |
SlaveDriver | PowerSlave (Sega Saturn version) | 1996 | Quake (1997, Sega Saturn version), Duke Nukem 3D (1997, Sega Saturn version) |
TurokTech | Turok: Dinosaur Hunter | 1997 | Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (1998), South Park (1998), Turok: Rage Wars (1999), Turok 3: Shadow of Oblivion (2000) |
RareWare Engine | GoldenEye 007 | 1997 | Perfect Dark (2000) |
Sith engine | Star Wars Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II | 1997 | |
id Tech 2 | Quake II | 1997 | Heretic II (1998), SiN (1998), Kingpin: Life of Crime (1999), Soldier of Fortune (2000), Daikatana (2000) |
Lithtech 1.0 | Shogo: Mobile Armor Division | 1998 | Blood II: The Chosen (1998) |
Game engine | First used for | Date | Other first-person shooters |
---|---|---|---|
Serious Engine | Serious Sam: The First Encounter | 2001 | Serious Sam: The Second Encounter (2002) |
Real Virtuality | Operation Flashpoint: Cold War Crisis | 2001 | VBS1 (2002), ArmA: Armed Assault (2007), ARMA II (2009) |
Cube Engine | Cube | 2001 | AssaultCube (2008) |
SAGE | Command & Conquer: Renegade | 2002 | |
Unreal Engine 2 | America's Army | 2002 | Unreal Tournament 2003 (2002) Unreal II: The Awakening (2003), Tom Clancy's Rainbow Six 3: Raven Shield (2003), Devastation (2003), Postal 2 (2003), Unreal Tournament 2004 (2004), Thief: Deadly Shadows (2004) |
Refractor 2 | Battlefield 1942 | 2002 | Battlefield Vietnam (2004), Battlefield 2 (2005), Battlefield 2142 (2006) |
Lithtech Jupiter | No One Lives Forever 2: A Spy in H.A.R.M.'s Way | 2002 | Tron 2.0 (2003) |
Game engine | First used for | Date | Other first-person shooters |
---|---|---|---|
id Tech 7 | Doom Eternal | 2020 | Indiana Jones and the Great Circle (2024) |
Source 2 | Half-Life: Alyx | 2020 | Counter-Strike 2 (2023) |
Slipspace | Halo Infinite | 2021 | |
Unreal Engine 5 | Immortals of Aveum | 2023 | RoboCop: Rogue City (2023), The Finals (2023), Concord (2024) |
CryEngine 6 | TBA | TBA |
Some features may be integrated into engines. For instance for trees and foliage a special "engine" is available, SpeedTree, that does just that (or could be integrated into general engines). The Euphoria character's 3D animating engine can be used independently but is integrated in the Rockstar Advanced Game Engine and the game Grand Theft Auto IV .
A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs such as a level editor. The "engine" terminology is akin to the term "software engine" used more widely in the software industry.
Urban Terror is a freeware multiplayer first-person shooter video game developed by FrozenSand. Originally a total conversion of id Software's Quake III Arena, FrozenSand released Urban Terror as a free standalone game in 2007 utilizing ioquake3 as the game engine. While the game engine is licensed under the open-source GPL, Urban Terror's game code is closed source and its assets are freeware but not open content.
id Tech 1, also known as the Doom engine, is the game engine used in the id Software video games Doom and Doom II: Hell on Earth. It is also used in Heretic, Hexen: Beyond Heretic, Strife: Quest for the Sigil, Hacx: Twitch 'n Kill, Freedoom, and other games produced by licensees. It was created by John Carmack, with auxiliary functions written by Mike Abrash, John Romero, Dave Taylor, and Paul Radek. Originally developed on NeXT computers, it was ported to MS-DOS and compatible operating systems for Doom's initial release and was later ported to several game consoles and operating systems.
Super 3D Noah's Ark is a non-violent Christian first-person shooter developed and published by Wisdom Tree for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES) in 1994 and MS-DOS in 1995. Its gameplay is similar to that of Wolfenstein 3D, as Wisdom Tree had licensed that game's engine from id Software. Wisdom Tree opted not to secure a license from Nintendo for the game's SNES release. While not illegal, it prevented the game from being sold at most video game retailers, which were under a contractual agreement with Nintendo not to sell unlicensed games for the company's consoles. As a result, the SNES release of Super 3D Noah's Ark was sold primarily via Christian bookstores.
2.5D perspective refers to gameplay or movement in a video game or virtual reality environment that is restricted to a two-dimensional (2D) plane with little to no access to a third dimension in a space that otherwise appears to be three-dimensional and is often simulated and rendered in a 3D digital environment.
A first-person shooter engine is a video game engine specialized for simulating 3D environments for use in a first-person shooter video game. First-person refers to the view where the players see the world from the eyes of their characters. Shooter refers to games which revolve primarily around wielding firearms and killing other entities in the game world, either non-player characters or other players.
NovaLogic, Inc. was an American software developer and publisher established in 1985 and based in Calabasas, California. The company was founded by CEO John A. Garcia. Garcia's background in computer software started in Southern California in the early 1980s, when he worked at Datasoft. The company was known for their Voxel Space engine, which was utilized in franchises such as the Comanche and Delta Force series. In October 2016, NovaLogic's assets were bought out by THQ Nordic who are not currently using the label.
Nexuiz is a free first-person shooter video game developed and published by Alientrap. It was released on May 31, 2005 under the GNU General Public License (GPL) and uses the DarkPlaces engine, a modified Quake engine. A remake, also called Nexuiz, was released for Steam and Xbox 360 using CryEngine 3.
The Quake engine, is the game engine developed by id Software to power their 1996 video game Quake. It featured true 3D real-time rendering. Since 1999, it has been licensed under the terms of GNU General Public License v2.0 or later.
CryEngine is a game engine designed by the German game developer Crytek. It has been used in all of their titles with the initial version being used in Far Cry, and continues to be updated to support new consoles and hardware for their games. It has also been used for many third-party games under Crytek's licensing scheme, including Sniper: Ghost Warrior 2 and SNOW. Warhorse Studios uses a modified version of the engine for their medieval RPG Kingdom Come: Deliverance. Ubisoft maintains an in-house, heavily modified version of CryEngine from the original Far Cry called Dunia, which is used in their later iterations of the Far Cry series. The Dunia engine would in turn be further modified and used in games such as The Crew 2.
Cube 2: Sauerbraten is a first-person shooter released for Microsoft Windows, Linux, FreeBSD, OpenBSD, and Mac OS X using OpenGL and SDL.
Extreme PaintBrawl is a paintball video game released for DOS/Windows on October 20, 1998. The game is considered to be one of the worst video games ever made. Extreme PaintBrawl was developed in two weeks using the Build engine; its soundtrack was composed by musician Todd Duane, who sent his demo tracks to Head Games. The game was followed by Extreme PaintBrawl 2 in 1999, Ultimate PaintBrawl 3 in 2000, and Extreme PaintBrawl 4 in 2002, all of which were met with negative reviews.
In video games, first-person is any graphical perspective rendered from the viewpoint of the player character, or from the inside of a device or vehicle controlled by the player character. It is one of two perspectives used in the vast majority of video games, with the other being third-person, the graphical perspective from outside of any character ; some games such as interactive fiction do not belong to either format.
Red Faction is a series of shooter video games developed by Volition and owned by Plaion. Originating in 2001, the Red Faction games have spanned Microsoft Windows, macOS and consoles, including the PlayStation 2, GameCube, Xbox, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360. Original developers Volition have retained the rights to the series since 2020, with no updates provided on whether a future fifth game is in the works.
A first-person shooter (FPS) is a video game centered on gun fighting and other weapon-based combat seen from a first-person perspective, with the player experiencing the action directly through the eyes of the main character. This genre shares multiple common traits with other shooter games, and in turn falls under the action games category. Since the genre's inception, advanced 3D and pseudo-3D graphics have proven fundamental to allow a reasonable level of immersion in the game world, and this type of game helped pushing technology progressively further, challenging hardware developers worldwide to introduce numerous innovations in the field of graphics processing units. Multiplayer gaming has been an integral part of the experience, and became even more prominent with the diffusion of internet connectivity in recent years.
Pie in the Sky is a 2.5D and 3D first-person shooter engine most popular in the mid-to-late 1990s by Pie in the Sky Software, also known as Power 3D and the 3D Game Creation or 3D Game Creation System engine. The engine was used in two games by the company as well as many other independent games and amateur projects after it was turned into a commercial game creator, largely because it minimized the amount of computer programming knowledge needed to make 3D games in its editing tools, making it suitable even for beginners with no game-design experience.
Xonotic is a free and open-source first-person shooter video game. It was developed as a fork of Nexuiz, following controversy surrounding the game's development. The game runs on a heavily modified version of the Quake engine known as the DarkPlaces engine. Its gameplay is similar to Quake Arena series games, but with various unique elements.
A game creation system (GCS) is a consumer-targeted game engine and a set of specialized design tools, and sometimes also a light scripting language, engineered for the rapid iteration of user-derived video games.
Unvanquished is a free and open-source video game. It is a multiplayer first-person shooter and real-time strategy game where Humans and Aliens fight for domination.
Autodesk Stingray, formerly known as Bitsquid, is a discontinued 3D game engine with support for Linux, Windows, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 3, Xbox Series X and Series S, Xbox One, Xbox 360, Android and iOS. It uses the Lua scripting language.