Infinity Ward explains the difference between new and upgraded Call of Duty engines

Activision has been promoting the Call of Duty: Ghosts engine as a ‘new, next generation Call of Duty engine.’ But what exactly does that mean? According to Infinity Ward’s Lead Animator Zach Volker, it is an evolved version of their past engine. Volker said that it is “impossible to develop a new engine from the ground up in a two year cycle.”

“When we’re talking about a new engine we’re talking about upgrading significant systems within in that engine,” Volker explained. “We’re not talking about throwing it all away and saying we’re starting from the ground up.”

When he asked as to what necessitates a new engine, he said:

Or it comes out of a certain particular feature that we want to create that we haven’t been able to in the past. So looking at our current situation, focusing more on the next generation of hardware, we are now going to have the bandwidth to build many more things and our engine just can’t handle as much as we’d like to throw at it right now. And that necessitated the need to go onto a new engine.

Many fans are aware that the Call of Duty engine started off as the Quake engine, and Volker said, “The original engine years ago was built on Quake engine. We’ve done so many new engines and overhauls on top of that I’m not sure any of it still exists.”

SOURCE: Official PlayStation Magazine via Polygon