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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 War | 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 2.0 | 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) |
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 | |
Source 2 | Half-Life: Alyx | 2020 | Counter-Strike 2 (2023), S&Box (TBA) |
Slipspace | Halo Infinite | 2021 | |
Unreal Engine 5 | Immortals of Aveum | 2022 | RoboCop: Rogue City (2023), The Finals (2023) |
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 .
Heretic II is a dark fantasy action-adventure game developed by Raven Software and published by Activision in November 1998 continuing the story of Corvus, the main character from its predecessor, Heretic. It is the fourth game in the Hexen: Beyond Heretic series and comes after the "Serpent Rider" trilogy. Although Id Software owns the publishing rights to the previous titles, Heretic 2 is owned by Activision since they own Raven Software and its IPs.
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 by Wisdom Tree for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, and was ported a year later to MS-DOS, and re-released in 2015 on Steam for Microsoft Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux. The game was an officially licensed id Software Wolfenstein 3D engine title, but was not licensed by Nintendo, so it was sold in Christian bookstores instead of typical video game retailers.
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 or 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.
Nexuiz is a free first-person shooter video game developed and published by Alientrap. The game was released 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 original game was released on May 31, 2005.
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 2012, 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 the Dunia Engine, which is used in their later iterations of the Far Cry series.
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 or may be so in the future.
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 inspired by Unreal Tournament and Quake, 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, formally 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 360, Android and iOS. It uses the Lua scripting language.