Unreal Engine

The Unreal game engine is a significant game engine as it was the first to integrate rendering, collision detection, AI, visibility, networkng and filesystem into one complete engine. (Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Unreal_engine).

 Unreal Engine 1 was created in 1998 with the game “unreal”. After that, Epic have made two other variations. Unreal Engine 2 in 2003 then Unreal Egine 3 in 2006. Currently in prduction is the Unreal Engine 4, to be released for PC’s and the next generation of consoles.

Unreal Editor Terminology

Active brush: another name for the red builder brush

Actor: object in three-dimensional virtual space

Alpha Channel: information contained within an image file that can be used to determine the intensity of different material properties such as opacity and specularity intensity among other things

Brush: piece of geometry that builds the virtual space

BSP: Binary Space Partition; static data structure method used by game programmers to determine correct front-to-back polygon visibility, so that scenes are rendered realistically

BSP Hole: building bug, yields unwanted invisible obstacles and players falling into geometry and dying

Canvas: the class in the Unreal engine that is responsible for drawing items directly onto a player’s display

Class: type of an object, an object’s class defines how an object is implemented; derived from or instantiated by an object, from which it inherits clearly defined attributes. A class can contain: static data members, objects of another class, pointers and references to types and objects of the same or another class, declarations of another class, member functions, and friend classes

Emitter: an Actor responsible for creating a particle effect

Masked: color blending type; makes part of a Texture transparent

Mesh: three-dimensional representation of an Actor in virtual space (like weapons, pickups, players)

Mover: movable Brush (for doors, elevators and visual effects)

MyLevel: a special name for a package; using this tells UnrealEd to embed a resource in the current map file

Node: the polys that are seen in Zone/Portal view; they correspond to surface polygons split by BSP cuts

Object: abstraction that typically is assigned clearly specified characteristics; in other words, a chunk of data with a certain class associated to it; the class describes the data structure and contains the code that deals with objects of that class

Package: a file containing resources for America?s Army (like code, decorations, sound, music, maps, or all of it)

Pivot: point about which a brush is rotated or scaled

Polygon: two-dimensional, flat, closed shape in three-dimensional space, like a brush surface

Property: individual item of an object’s data; defined by the object’s class

RGB8: texture format with three channels (red, green, blue) and 8 bits per channel

RGB8A: texture format with four channels (red, green, blue, alpha) and 8 bits per channel

Sheet: a brush which does not enclose a 3D volume, usually because it’s a single polygon

Subclass: class derived from another class (its base class, or superclass); inherits properties and methods from the superclass unless they’re expressly overwritten

Trigger: an actor in a level which, when touched, will activate some effect, or other event

Vertex: point in (normally two- or three-dimensional) space; point where polygon edges meet

Viewport: window in the AA Mission Editor which shows one view of the map that is loaded; a class in UnrealScript that represents the local player

Z-Axis: the third axis in a 3D co-ordinate system; in FPS games, this also refers to things (architectural detail, enemies, etc) being above or below the player

Zone: portion of a map’s space that is sectioned off, either to achieve special effects (gravity, water, etc.) or for engine optimization

Zone portal: type of polygon (usually built with a sheet brush) which tells the engine where zone boundaries lie

Source: http://wiki.beyondunreal.com/wiki/Terminology