Middleware prevents reinventing the wheel, a company can purchase off the shelf middleware and integrate this into their engine/game and see the results a lot faster and cheaper than if they were to write their own system. Middleware is used throughout the industry with examples such as speed tree for generating 3d trees across your game, FMOD for providing sound to the game. There are also a lot of free pieces of middleware you can use some are even open source providing you access to the code.
The task we were given was to create a piece of middleware which could be used in any game engine. The piece of middleware I wrote was the Navi Hint System, this gives the player a hint in the form of a string if they are struggling, it also has the option to display an image to further help the player. The system allows up to 3 hints per quest and comes with a easy to use visual hint editor which outputs to an XML to be read in by the system.
The rest of the module is about integrating other peoples middleware and forming a game out of it. The engine we are using to create the game is the Gamebryo engine.
Below is a screenshot of the progress made in my game
