Advanced 2D game engine...

I am glad to hear you have a killer 2D engine -- I look forward to trying it someday.

About your question: well, here is a question for you. What is your 'engine'? Is it a bunch of code in libraries that requires a programmer to use, and make games with? Or is it a game builder, that someone with minimal programming experience can make mind blowing games?

I ask, becase you mentioned HGE and RPGMaker, 2 very different things. If yours is more like HGE, as I suspect, other 2d 'engines' (or SDKs or whatever you want to call them) that have been used in commercial development are: PTK, Playfirst's Playground, Popcap's SexyApp, Torque(?), and I am sure there are others. These all require a programmer to make them work: they are simply code modules. (Although most, like HGE have some tools available, but they themselves are not a single 'mother' tool).

RPGMaker falls into a different class, which would be called 'game makers' I suppose. In that realm you have your standard RPGMaker XP etc, as well as Game Maker, Torque Game Builder, and a few others.

So I suppose that is some of your competition. Hopefully they might give you some nice ideas. One thing that is very important for you to consider is, "who is your target demographic"? Hardcore c++ programmers, or non-programming designers?

Anyways, good luck, and don't forget to post back here when you have a release candidate =)

The design up to this point has been built only for my personal use, it is only recently that I have decided that I may want to use it commercially. As a result, the engine is kind of "morphing" into a combination of a game maker, and a library. Because it was built for me, I usually stick to making similar types of games, so far, it best fits with either overhead games or sidescrollers. The engine can work for anything you want it to do, but either of the above will make the dev process go much faster.

As for the format, I designed it to be patheticly easy to use. So far, yes, the engine is locked inside a bunch of DLL's but here's the deal, those DLL's are already incorperated into the program for you. All of them are reffered to in one code file called "Laq_Core" (Laq is the current name of the engine). There is another page of code also included that has 2 modules

Start_Game
and
Main_Game

Everything you want to personally set-up such as character positions, and things that only need to be defined once go into Start_Game. From then on, all scripting goes into the slot "Main_Game". This design makes it so you don't even have to do anything to set up the engine. You just press compile and you have a fully working blank directX screen.

You can chance how you want directX to be set up of course. Anyway, a lot of functions are built in to begin with, such as lighting.

There is a function called "Create_Tile". This basicly draws a square with a custom texture on it. of course, when you render and try to see it on the screen, you cant. You have to first say "Create_Point_Light", and define some variables.

From then on, all things inside the game such as sprites, tiles, backgrounds, everything are automaticly lit accouring to the lighs you set up.

That's just a small sample though, sorry if I'm rambling.

Quote:

Original post by TheKrust On a side note, do you agree that there should be more 2D engines? I mean good ones that could include HDR, Light morphing effects (like the heat above fire), advanced physics, ect. Personally, the most prevelant ones I see are things like RPG maker that are good, but are in no way capable of pumping out mind blowing graphics. For one, you can get away with MUCH more special effects and dynamic lighting in a 2D enviroment. I really do think that it would encourage designers to make beautiful looking 2D games rather than horribly crappy 3D ones (simply because 3D graphics are so much harder)

If you're saying that there are many 3D engines with the features you'd like to see more in 2D engines then just take such a 3D engine and use an orthographic projection matrix et-voila you're rendering in 2 dimensions with z-sorting [smile]

Quote:

Original post by dmatter If you're saying that there are many 3D engines with the features you'd like to see more in 2D engines then just take such a 3D engine and use an orthographic projection matrix et-voila you're rendering in 2 dimensions with z-sorting [smile]

This is true, however most engines work off of a fixed pipline and most free / lower priced ones don't bother to put in advanced special effects. The effects they do put in (ie water and material reflections, physics, billording) are either usless for 2D, or they simply can't work without a 3D enviroment.

Not even to mention that you would be crazy to invest in a real game engine for a few thousand dollars and then make 2D games.

In my 2D engines, I have portals and 2D occlusion and line of sight algorithms. My engine is for a top down shooter multiplayer game though. Also I'd be curious how you are handling your point lights. I'm currently still working on my algorithm that renders them. Here's a really old version .

I'm a huge fan of top down shooters, so your engine sounds cool.