In video game parlance, “in-engine” refers to graphics that are done within the gameplay generator itself, rather than as cinematic cut-scenes, which are rendered as pure animation. Generally, in-engine graphics are a lot harder to get right and high-quality (a common question when new game trailers come out is “are these graphics in-engine,” because if so, it’s a much better indicator of the graphical quality of the final game). Game-Artist.net has been running a contest over the past few months for designers to recreate famous movie shots within gaming engines (Unreal3, Source, and CryEngine2 mostly, which respectively were developed for Unreal Tournament III, Half-Life, and Crysis, though other games also use them), and they recently announced the winners.

The winning team (aptly named The Replicants) recreated the underbelly cityscape of Blade Runner with an amazing amount of detail and realism (see above screenshot). This looks so good I’d play this game in a heartbeat, despite knowing how mediocre games based on movies usually are. Here’s another shot. (Click on any of the images to see the full-size version.)

The second-place team did Hook, and though it doesn’t hit me as quite as “wow” as the Blade Runner shots, it’s very, very nice in a more cartoony way. Looks like Guybrush Threepwood (of the Monkey Island games) could pop out for an Insult Swordfight at any moment.

The whole contest can be found here, though I admit I wasn’t able to find a good solid description of the challenge in concise terms. Apparently I’m not familiar enough with the forum. All the official entries are in this thread, though each project has its own thread in the main section with comments and critiques. And the winners thread is here – the other runners-up did X-Men 2, I Am Legend and Aliens. Sci-fi is a popular genre among game designers, clearly.