Alan Wake Engine

[Phaedruss]

I read the engine for Alan Wake is called "The Alan Wake Engine" -- a custom in-house designed engine that uses Havok 4.0 physics.

An engine is a very, very complicated thing. I can't really think of a game that had an engine written specifically for one game -- even back in the dawn of FPS, the BUILD engine had per-game customizations, but the engine itself was used in many, many games.

Has the Alan Wake engine been used in anything other than Alan Wake and Alan Wake's American Nightmare?

Is it a customizaton of another modern day engine (the way Source was a customization of idtech)

[DeathWantsMore]

It uses Havok for both physics and animation, so basically it's just a customized Havok 4.0.

[Phaedruss]

I didn't realize it used havoc animation. Thanks!

[Arucard]

Also many games in the past have used custom engines, it's more recent (last 5+ years) that everything started using havok, unreal, etc. as the standard as they have become more refined.

[Phaedruss]

Originally posted by Arucard:

Also many games in the past have used custom engines, it's more recent (last 5+ years) that everything started using havok, unreal, etc. as the standard as they have become more refined.

Can you name a few? I'm haivng trouble thinking of any.

BUILD had a lot of per-game tweaks, but at its core, it powered DOS fps. Same with goldsrc (although that was more of a modern day concept of an engine than BUILD).

I'm not a game dev, but I've written a (poorly written) hobbyist engine and know a few game producers, and what little I know about the biz, it's hard to imagine many, if any, studios writing an engine specifically for one game and not intending on selling licensing to others.

But I suppose anything is possible - can you give me some examples?

[ar2games]

Originally posted by Phaedruss:

Originally posted by Arucard:

Also many games in the past have used custom engines, it's more recent (last 5+ years) that everything started using havok, unreal, etc. as the standard as they have become more refined.

Can you name a few? I'm haivng trouble thinking of any.

BUILD had a lot of per-game tweaks, but at its core, it powered DOS fps. Same with goldsrc (although that was more of a modern day concept of an engine than BUILD).

I'm not a game dev, but I've written a (poorly written) hobbyist engine and know a few game producers, and what little I know about the biz, it's hard to imagine many, if any, studios writing an engine specifically for one game and not intending on selling licensing to others.

But I suppose anything is possible - can you give me some examples?

Off the top of my head most Final Fantasy games run on custom engines. The 13 saga runs on crystal tools and 15 runs on the luminous engine, which are unique for them.

[sphere2121]

Originally posted by Phaedruss:

Originally posted by Arucard:

Also many games in the past have used custom engines, it's more recent (last 5+ years) that everything started using havok, unreal, etc. as the standard as they have become more refined.

Can you name a few? I'm haivng trouble thinking of any.

BUILD had a lot of per-game tweaks, but at its core, it powered DOS fps. Same with goldsrc (although that was more of a modern day concept of an engine than BUILD).

I'm not a game dev, but I've written a (poorly written) hobbyist engine and know a few game producers, and what little I know about the biz, it's hard to imagine many, if any, studios writing an engine specifically for one game and not intending on selling licensing to others.

But I suppose anything is possible - can you give me some examples?

The one exception I can think of is the HPL (H. P. Lovecraft) engine used by Frictional Games. Not exactly big wig, but with the exception of Amnesia: The Machine for Pigs. They haven't liscensed out their engine (as far as I know anyway).

It is built upon middleware Newton Game Dynamics, so maybe it isn't technically a custom engine though. They also have been continuously developing it for each successive game over the last decade (basically since the company was founded by two people).

That is the only thing I can think of that vaguely meets your requirements.

[Alex Hooves]

As far as I know, Visceral games designed an engine specially for Dead Space 2 and 3 and no game has used it since

[DireAct]

Kojima created his own Engine called The Fox Engine which is used in Silent Hill (P.T) and Metal Gear Solid 4 and more recent MGS games. Also Kojima cannot use his own Engine as Konami has full rights over it, now he
has created a new Engine for Deaths Stranding.

[ar2games]

Originally posted by CouldBeAnyone:

Kojima created his own Engine called The Fox Engine which is used in Silent Hill (P.T) and Metal Gear Solid 4 and more recent MGS games. Also Kojima cannot use his own Engine as Konami has full rights over it, now he
has created a new Engine for Deaths Stranding.

Death Stranding is actually running on Guerrilla's Decima engine (same used in Horizon)

The fox engine is exclusive to konami but they used it for PES too so l guess it wasn't designed just for MGS.

[pls_like_and_sub]

Codemasters Games - 'Ego'
Dice/Battlefield series - 'Frostbite'
Hitman games - 'Glacier'

[Laura Palmer 420]

I'm just curious if it's an entirely new engine or if it still has code from the Max Payne engines left in it.

[EbonHawk]

Originally posted by Phaedruss:

Originally posted by Arucard:

Also many games in the past have used custom engines, it's more recent (last 5+ years) that everything started using havok, unreal, etc. as the standard as they have become more refined.

Can you name a few? I'm haivng trouble thinking of any.

BUILD had a lot of per-game tweaks, but at its core, it powered DOS fps. Same with goldsrc (although that was more of a modern day concept of an engine than BUILD).

I'm not a game dev, but I've written a (poorly written) hobbyist engine and know a few game producers, and what little I know about the biz, it's hard to imagine many, if any, studios writing an engine specifically for one game and not intending on selling licensing to others.

But I suppose anything is possible - can you give me some examples?

Goodness, where to start...
4A Engine for the Metro games
Aurora for Neverwinter Nights
Build Engine Duke Nukem 3D
Anvil for Assassin's Creed
Dark Engine for Thief 1/Gold & T2
Dunia for Far Cry 2
Electron for Neverwinter Nights 2
Infinity for Baldur's Gate

The list goes on.