SAGE engine

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The forecast engine (also: SAGE engine ) is originally from Westwood Studios developed 3D engine today by Electronic Arts (EA) or EA-Pacific / EA-LA developed and strategy games will be used.

description

The abbreviation SAGE stands for Strategy Action Game Engine , which means that the term Sage-Engine is superfluous as it is a redundant acronym . The name has become so common. The Sage engine was originally developed by Westwood under the name "W3D-Engine" (Westwood-3D) and used for the real-time strategy game Emperor: Battle for Dune and the first-person shooter Command & Conquer: Renegade . W3D built on the SurRender 3D engine from Hybrid Holding.

Although Renegade is a first-person shooter , the Sage engine is by no means unsuitable for this genre . Because it offers skills in visualization processes, which are used for cut scenes (mostly in a non-first person perspective). In addition, this engine has always been developed for future strategy games. By dividing the code, for example, characteristic first-person shooter elements can be deactivated. Without this division, hidden mini-games in first-person shooter form could be built into strategy games. However, this was deliberately prevented.

Parallel to the development of Emperor and Command & Conquer: Renegade , the engine has already been extensively developed and adapted even more to strategy games. After the release of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 2 in 2000, Westwood Pacific, the Westwood subsidiary in Irvine (California) , was commissioned to further develop W3D for use in real-time strategy games. Around 2002 the engine reached its final status. It only became known to the public under the new name "SAGE" with trailers for the game Command & Conquer: Generals (in April 2003 the title was changed to Generals due to the indexing ), which was released in February 2003. For the associated add-on Zero Hour , some new explosion effects were added. Only for the game Battle for Middle-earth was the engine further developed again in 2004. New water and light effects were added, DirectX 9.0c support and higher-resolution textures. For its successor, Battle for Middle-earth 2 , new technical refinements were added: Soft shadows, a kind of bumpmaps , vertex and pixel shaders 2.2 and realistic water with waves were now part of the repertoire of this engine, which no longer looked like Quake 3 .

The last game published with this engine version was Command & Conquer 3: Kane's Revenge , the add-on to Tiberium Wars , which was released on March 25, 2008. The main game was released on March 29, 2007 and brought pixel and vertex shaders of the third version with it. After the release, according to Mike Verdu , the producer of Tiberium Wars , a new engine should be programmed for subsequent games, as the Sage engine will then be too old, overloaded and confusing. With the official announcement of Command & Conquer: Red Alert 3 it was announced that the game will now use the Sage engine again. However, Aaron "Apoc" Kaufman, the community manager of Electronic Arts for Command & Conquer , said that this game would definitely be the last game with this engine. In a forum post he said:

"Second, Red Alert 3 right now is running off of SAGE and the visuals you see are at a minimum on par with C&C 3."

"Second, [with] Red Alert 3 the SAGE is now running out and the effects you see are at least equivalent to C & C3."

The engine has been thoroughly redesigned so that it can, for example, display new water effects to make the sea battles appear more realistic. For red alert 3, she also got an appearance that is partly reminiscent of American cartoons. This new version of the engine was called SAGE 2.0. The SAGE 2.0 engine was also used for Command & Conquer 4: Tiberian Twilight , despite announcements to the contrary.

Published games

Play with the W3D engine
Play with the SAGE engine
Play with the SAGE 2.0 engine

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Majik 3D Project announces co-operation with Taika Technologies, Ltd. ( Memento of February 27, 2012 in the Internet Archive ): SurRender 3D is one of the leading 3D libraries on the market and is currently being used in many commercial titles such as Westwood Studios' Command & Conquer: Renegade.
  2. ↑ Michael Graf: The decline of C&C . In: IDG (Ed.): GameStar . March 2014, pp. 94-109.