ebmar

Thank you for the insight! Very much appreciated.

And about-

Quote

If you are familiar with Unreal Engine...

I'm not, modding KotOR is the first time I get into another part of video-games outside of actually playing them.

Anyway, about engine- does graphics included as the engine or separated? As we know that KotOR engine was indeed Odyssey, can I think of Odyssey the same as I think of Frostbite or RAGE?

Think of it like a car engine - it's not just a solid lump of metal, it's a complex piece of machinery comprised of many individual parts. A game engine is no different. It's comprised of different sub-systems that control various elements - a renderer, a physics engine, etc.. It's possible that the renderer can be updated or entirely replaced, while the rest of the engine remains fairly much the same. A good example is The Witcher, which used Bioware's Aurora engine (used for Neverwinter Nights, and the predecessor to Odyssey). Aurora (like Odyssey) uses an OpenGL renderer, but CDPR gutted that in their version and replaced it with a DirectX renderer. Something akin to boring out your block and fitting new pistons, perhaps.

To your specific question, generally whoever is coding an engine will code a renderer as part of it. While there probably are third party (typically referred to as middleware) renderers for indies and the like, I don't recall any engine of note making use of one (although I think there are some open source examples floating around). That sort of thing is more generally the province of stuff like physics and sound. For example, Havok and PhysX in the case of the former, and WWise in the case of the latter. The renderer is such a fundamental component of the engine, it's not typically something you'd want to pick up off the shelf. You'd be better off just licensing a complete engine package like Unity/Unreal/CryEngine rather than do that.

Many thanks for the details, DP! I get the picture now.