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Retrocomputing

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  • Would not the Wolf3D engine have come before Doom? Commented Mar 7, 2017 at 14:17
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    @BrianH it would have, but AFAICT people didn't talk about "games engines" before the mid-90s (as you mention in your answer), after Doom's release. Commented Mar 7, 2017 at 15:00
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    If it's any help at all, I had a quick search for information around Freescape, which via the 3d Construction Kit was technically the first licensed game engine. The kit's video refers to it exclusively as "the Freescape system". Previews of earlier Freescape games like Driller and Castle Master talk about "the amazing new 3-D technique called Freescape" and "the Freescape system" but never use 'engine'. Although hardly conclusive, I think that's evidence towards the term not being in common use up to the early '90s. Commented Mar 7, 2017 at 22:31
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    @Tommy - there were definitely licensed engines available earlier than that one. A couple I did some work using were 3D Game Maker, which did generate a handful of commercial releases (e.g. this one) and perhaps more memorably The Quill which was used in releases from several top tier publishers (e.g. Melbourne House, Firebird, Games Workshop). Commented May 24, 2018 at 15:10
  • Freescape may have been in many ways more impressive, but it certainly wasn't the first. And neither of the above systems (nor others I recall, e.g. HURG, which wasn't licensed commercially AFAICT, although its publisher did offer to publish any suitably high quality games made using it) used the term "engine", so I think you must be right: somebody would have thought to call at least one of them by the name if the word was in use, I'd think. Commented May 24, 2018 at 15:11