Game-engine question, regarding what is required to make it look good?

vald0069

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Mar 25, 2015
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When writing game-engines, for out the lighting element and physics isn t it really down to models and texture complexity if you re wanting to make your game-engine look really good. I know that it requires a lot more horsepower to render high poly and high res uv-maps in real time, but that isn t the question.

I d like to know what other things are contributing to a game-engine looking beautiful?

A bonus question is that I assume that API s like OpenGL (soon vulkan) and DX 11 (soon 12) really are just optimization and, the same quality can be written with enough code?