Microsoft Flight Simulator is a series of flight simulator programs for MS-DOS, Classic Mac OS, and Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was an early product in the Microsoft application portfolio and differed significantly from Microsoft's other software, which was largely business-oriented. Microsoft Flight Simulator is Microsoft's longest-running software product line, predating Windows by three years, and is one of the longest-running video game series of all time.
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.
Autodesk 3ds Max, formerly 3D Studio and 3D Studio Max, is a professional 3D computer graphics program for making 3D animations, models, games and images. It is developed and produced by Autodesk Media and Entertainment. It has modeling capabilities and a flexible plugin architecture and must be used on the Microsoft Windows platform. It is frequently used by video game developers, many TV commercial studios, and architectural visualization studios. It is also used for movie effects and movie pre-visualization. 3ds Max features shaders, dynamic simulation, particle systems, radiosity, normal map creation and rendering, global illumination, a customizable user interface, and its own scripting language.
Call of Duty is a 2003 first-person shooter game developed by Infinity Ward and published by Activision. It is the first installment in the Call of Duty franchise, released on October 29, 2003, for Microsoft Windows. The game simulates infantry and combined arms warfare of World War II using a modified version of the id Tech 3 engine. Much of its theme and gameplay is similar to the Medal of Honor series; however, Call of Duty showcases multiple viewpoints staged in the American, British, and Soviet campaigns of World War II in Europe.
Game programming, a subset of game development, is the software development of video games. Game programming requires substantial skill in software engineering and computer programming in a given language, as well as specialization in one or more of the following areas: simulation, computer graphics, artificial intelligence, physics, audio programming, and input. For multiplayer games, knowledge of network programming is required. In some genres, e.g. fighting games, advanced network programming is often demanded, as the netcode and its properties are considered by players and critics to be some of the most important metrics of the game's quality. For massively multiplayer online games (MMOGs), even further knowledge of database programming and advanced networking programming are required. Though often engaged in by professional game programmers, there is a thriving scene of independent developers who lack a relationship with a publishing company.
Havok is a middleware software suite developed by the Irish company Havok. Havok provides physics engine, navigation, and cloth simulation components that can be integrated into video game engines.
C-evo is a free turn-based strategy computer game whose source code is in the public domain by German programmer and designer Steffen Gerlach.
In video games, artificial intelligence (AI) is used to generate responsive, adaptive or intelligent behaviors primarily in non-playable characters (NPCs) similar to human-like intelligence. Artificial intelligence has been an integral part of video games since their inception in 1948, first seen in the game Nim. AI in video games is a distinct subfield and differs from academic AI. It serves to improve the game-player experience rather than machine learning or decision making. During the golden age of arcade video games the idea of AI opponents was largely popularized in the form of graduated difficulty levels, distinct movement patterns, and in-game events dependent on the player's input. Modern games often implement existing techniques such as pathfinding and decision trees to guide the actions of NPCs. AI is often used in mechanisms which are not immediately visible to the user, such as data mining and procedural-content generation. One of the most infamous examples of this NPC technology and gradual difficulty levels can be found in the game Mike Tyson's Punch-Out!! (1987).
PhysX is an open-source realtime physics engine middleware SDK developed by Nvidia as part of the Nvidia GameWorks software suite.
A navigation mesh, or navmesh, is an abstract data structure used in artificial intelligence applications to aid agents in pathfinding through complicated spaces. This approach has been known since at least the mid-1980s in robotics, where it has been called a meadow map, and was popularized in video game AI in 2000.
The Blender Game Engine was a free and open-source 3D production suite used for making real-time interactive content. It was previously embedded within Blender, but support for it was dropped in 2019, with the release of Blender 2.8. The game engine was written from scratch in C++ as a mostly independent component, and includes support for features such as Python scripting and OpenAL 3D sound.
SpeedTree is a group of vegetation programming and modeling software products developed and sold by Interactive Data Visualization, Inc. (IDV) that generates virtual foliage for animations, architecture and in real time for video games and demanding real time simulations.
The Spring Engine is a game engine for real-time strategy (RTS) video games. The game engine is free and open-source software, subject to the terms of the GNU General Public License v2.0 or later.
Grome is an environmental modeling package developed by Quad Software dedicated for procedural and manual generation of large virtual outdoor worlds suitable for games and other 3D real-time simulation applications.
Simplygon is 3D computer graphics software for automatic 3D optimization, based on proprietary methods for creating levels of detail (LODs) through Polygon mesh reduction and other optimization techniques.
iClone is a real-time 3D animation and rendering software program. Real-time playback is enabled by using a 3D videogame engine for instant on-screen rendering.
Autodesk Gameware is a discontinued middleware software suite developed by Autodesk. The suite contained tools that enable designers to create game lighting, character animation, low level path finding, high-level AI and advanced user interfaces. On July 12, 2017, Autodesk removed Scaleform, Beast, HumanIK, and Navigation from their online store, and announced the ending of support for the products.
Luminous Engine, originally called Luminous Studio, is a multi-platform game engine developed and used internally by Square Enix and later on by Luminous Productions. The engine was developed for and targeted at eighth-generation hardware and DirectX 11-compatible platforms, such as Xbox One, the PlayStation 4, and versions of Microsoft Windows. It was conceived during the development of Final Fantasy XIII-2 to be compatible with next generation consoles that their existing platform, Crystal Tools, could not handle.
Proxi is an upcoming mobile game designed by video game designer Will Wright and developed by Gallium. The independent Gallium Studios was co-founded by Wright and Lauren Elliott. It will be the first game created by Wright in over 10 years.
