whats the best PC game engine youve played on?

Half Life 2 Engine/ SourceHelbrec

Cryengine2

Then the Jupiter EX engine used in FEAR 2, runs so smooth but looks so good.

Dark Engine

Dark Engine perfected movement for first person games. It had strafing, jumping, crouching, two (or three?) different walking speeds, leaning left right and forward and mantling (pulling yourself up a ledge.) It was perfection back then and still everytime I play a FPP game that's missing any of those features I feel crippled. This all comes with an easy to use mission editor too.

Games using Dark Engine also had amazing AI, the AI still manages to surprise me. It might not be the most perfect AI out there, but it is the most realistic. The sound system was advanced too. It supported EAX, and the sound is truly 3D. If there's someone behind a door, the sounds are muffled. If you're in a room with two doors, the left one is open and right door is closed, and someone walks past the right door, the sound sounds like it's coming from the left, since the left door is open. The engine was truly "next-gen" back then...

---

I wanna bring up another engine that was highly advanced for it's time. The U-Vision engine. AFAIK, it was only used in one game - Montezuma's Return!, released in late 1997. Not too many people know this game, but it had the most amazing graphics for it's time. It supported 3Dfx Voodoo 2 chips, had colored and dynamic lighting, bump mapping, environment mapping and the textures looked amazing. It was released only a few weeks later than Quake 2 and Unreal wasn't out yet, and in some ways I think it looked better than Quake 2, so it was the graphics king for a while. It's really a shame that nobody knows about it.

Also the other "next-gen" thing about Montezuma's Return! is that up until Mirror's Edge, it was the first 1st-person platformer ever made. Not only that, but the player has a model, like in Crysis or F.E.A.R. when you look down you can see your legs. Montezuma did that, only 7 years before.

---

Another engine that was advanced for it's time was Jurassic Park: Trespasser engine. Heck, it was WAAAYYY ahead of it's time. You can read about it in Wikipedia. What's this? Ragdoll physics... in 1998?! It's a shame about the game really (not that good) but it was an interesting experiment.

Seems like all of my favorite engines are from 1997-1998. In the 90's the devs had most creativity and tried to innovate the most. It's a shame we don't see that much true innovation (not just better graphics) these days.

Flexible: Source

Technically advanced: Cryengine 2

Source.thusaha

was it better then GW engine? where the graphics better then GW?dragonmaster64

wel id say for making levels the best is unreal engine, hl2 is great but dated, cryengine 2... well its buggy i had issues in editor, its a really good engine in terms of realistic rendering....but... yeah sometimes its can turn buggy or crash in editor id say the best is unreal engine that why there are millions of games out there, also cod engine is pretty good for what it does but it doesnt have further capabilities like physics so unreal engine it is.... i think far cry 2 for optimization,

id say its a pretty good engine check its futures Features of Dunia Engine include:

* Dynamic Weather

* Dynamic fire propagation (influenced by weather system)

* Realistic Fire

* Physics (Most objects can be moved\thrown around. Including bodies of dead Non-player character's) < non breakable however like crysis

* Full day/night cycles

* Dynamic music system

* Support for large player maps, without specific levels

* Non-scripted AI < crysis has scripted ai maping

* Radiosity, or non-direct lighting

* amBX technology from Philips for special effects,

with the proper hardware Dunia Engine takes advantage of DirectX 10 on Windows Vista, but is also designed to run on DirectX 9. Dunia Engine is less hardware-demanding than CryEngine 2, a competeing game engine developed by Crytek.< but it doesnt support that high detail textures as crysis

well id say its Dunia.

UE3 is best i think in terms of performance vs graphics scale.Source engine has way too high loading screen and is outdated now.sandeep410

RAGE Game Enginedinjo_jo

[QUOTE="dinjo_jo"]RAGE Game EngineHellboard

It's not the engine's fault. Blame rockstar for the lame port job.

[QUOTE="Hellboard"][QUOTE="dinjo_jo"]RAGE Game Engineshalashaska88

It's not the engine's fault. Blame rockstar for the lame port job.

havok engine

serious engine was also barrels of fun to wander around in.

was it better then GW engine? where the graphics better then GW?dragonmaster64

Engines ive played its between source and cod4 engine

GoldSrc and Dark, I don't think I could ever get tired of playing on them.

Probably the Source engine. Looks fantastic while not being demanding on the hardware.Litchie

What people dont seem to realize is that its actually its pretty dated in graphics wise thats why it runs so well...

[QUOTE="Litchie"]Probably the Source engine. Looks fantastic while not being demanding on the hardware.Hellboard

What people dont seem to realize is that its actually its pretty dated in graphics wise thats why it runs so well...