| Original author(s) | NetEase |
|---|---|
| Platform | |
| Type | Game engine |
| License | Proprietary |
Messiah Engine is an in-house game engine developed by NetEase. The engine supports multiple platforms including iOS, Android, and PC, with a focus on mobile games.
Development of Messiah Engine began in 2007. [1] It was first introduced in 2010, with its first game released in 2013. [2] Zhao Yukun, head of the engine's development, said he was inspired by Edwin Catmull, who developed the Stochastic Sampling algorithm initially used by Pixar RenderMan. [1] The first demo was shown to NetEase founder Ding Lei on an iPad mini 2. [1] The engine now supports multiple platforms: iOS, macOS, Android, PC, PS4/PS5, Switch, and Xbox. [1] NetEase demonstrated the engine at E3 2016 along with its game Tianxia. [3] [4] It has received more than 20 patents. [5]
As of July 2021, the engine has been used to develop 9 games, including Diablo Immortal and Where Winds Meet , [6] [7] as well as many mobile games such as Knives Out, Eternal Arena, A Dream of Jianghu, The Legend of Glory, and Ace Racer. [1] [8] [2]
A major focus of Messiah Engine is efficiently taking advantage of multiple processors. [9] Besides general rendering, physics, and UI threads, Messiah Engine attempts to break down jobs even further into "execution slices," with a queue to manage task dependencies. [9] To support multiple platforms, Messiah Engine uses Hardware Abstraction Layer composed of three layers: algorithm, translation, and device driver. [9]
The engine supports physically based rendering and real time global illumination. [5] [1]