Where do games come from?

Games... many of us play them, some of us play them with a basic understanding of how they work, others just know it works. Have you ever been the type of person who wondered how do they do this? If you have played a game like gears of war or a lot of shooters often they have used an engine such as Unreal or Havok where as a game like Spore would have its own engine written if an existing engine cant do what the company is looking for. All games have to be written in code and translated into a language the computer understands, 1's and 0's now you wont have to know any of that to make your own game. Now most professionals or university teachers will you that you need to learn C++ or some generalized programming language. This is a good thing to do and can get better results in the long run but I will be completly honest with you, its not the only option and quality games have come from no coding sollutions. Now some of you may be wondering "well you just said that all games have to be put into 1's and 0's?" this is and always will be true until a newer type of computer comes out I will go into how that works some other time. The way a no coding system often works is the program you are using has to be written in code which these no coding sollutions are then often sold to make profit from the non programmer aspiring to make games. But back to the point at hand what the program does can vary on the program. I will take a very basic program called 3D Gamemaker from The Game Creators http://www.thegamecreators.com/. What it does is you basically select a character, an enemy, a boss, a map, a weapon and they recently added a feature so you can design what the level is shaped like and after that is processes the data into a form the computer can understand and is playable. the game creators that I mentione above also have other no coding sollutions as well as full coding software for games, from programs like FPS Creator which can create advanced First Person Shooters with no coding. All of the no code programs work in a similar way but some offer more customability. Now if you decide to go the full code system it can be a bit more complicated depending on the language and system you use. But this will give you total control of how every little part of the game will work. Now earlier I mentioned an engine. An engine does not normally include its own coding language although there are exceptions like torque all an engine does is somebody usually a team of programmers took a system like Ogre3D or some sort of graphics system and a lot of math and they took the effort of figuring out how to set up all the complex things like camera angles, physics, collisions, sound, basically an engine is meant to take out a lot of the work. Two of the most commonly used engines are Havok and Unreal Engine 3. As much as I would like to say I have tryed these... these engines cause like well...... I dont know the prices arent listed I know its in the millions.

Before I end this post I figured I would post a few resources for anyone that I have sparked an interest in games.

Game Maker http://www.yoyogames.com/ A simple easy to use yet powerful 2d game creation system.

Game Editor http://game-editor.com/ I myself have never used this one but have read good things about it. It has a wide cross platform. 2D only.

The Game Creators http://www.thegamecreators.com/ Have a wide variety of products from no code products to products like dark basic which is a full coding game creation system using the popular yet simple language BASIC giving total control yet ease of use compared to others. They also offer graphics creation tools as well as art assets which can be purchased.

Torque http://www.garagegames.com/ Torque offers full engines including everything you need to make a working game with all the features of an engine you will need with no royalties and its affordable starting at $100.00 american

if you have any suggestions for topics for me to post or have any questions e-mail me at gaurdianaq@gmail.com