Mr. 2D Engine

[Hammerit]

Well thought I would let everyone here know that I'm currently coding a full fledged 2D graphics engine. Well it's no "real" 2D, but rather orthographic 3D, but it's main purpose will be to create 2D games. (However I may add Mesh- Loading support at a later stage as well, just in case I or anyone else feels like doing an isometric 3d game . If theres anyone among us with some knowledge of C++ and OpenGL willing to help ... feel free to hop aboard *g*.

Current Features:
- multi- layer support
- alpha blending support
- static tileset support
- sprite animation support
- supported Texture Formats: TGA, BMP
- supported Resolutions: all 4:3, 16:9 and 16:10

WIP Features:
- animated tileset and ranged tilesets
- texture compression support
- nogo map support
- perspective-based sorting (only draw priority support atm)

Planned Features:
- Message Interface
- Game Content Editor Toolset (at first just a tileset and map editor)
- supported Texture Formats: PNG, compressed textures
- 2D Collision Functionality
- Script Interface
- Pathfinding and AI mapping support

Once most of the basic functionality has been implemented I'll start the first of a series of milestone projects (of which all will result in an individual game) aiming to refine the engines usability. So if one of you feels like contributing in any way (may it be music, graphics, storywriting, or content design) feel free to contact me .

well here's a small screenshot of some fun place most of ya should know ^^ ... it isn't much, but what do you expect from a test scene lol? The Tiles are from Terranigma ... the Sprite Animation from SOM, all scaled (16x16->64x64) for aspect ratio testing ... the pic is a composition of 2 background layers (one with the room, one with just the table), a shadow layer and a sprite layer.

[Blade]

This looks good, although I understood merely "trainstation" from what you were talking about

[psychokind]

haha I wanna see Contra-Models everywhere!

[Hammerit]

If you provide some . Taking the features still not yet supported into consideration a scrollshooter may be the only game I could use it for at the moment (though coding those without polygonal collision support is a real pain ).

[Jason Tandro]

Man. It humbles me to see a REAL programmer at work!

That's freakin' awesome man!

[EverPhoenix]

that looks awesome. what are the sprite sheets like? ive seen a few, but only rpgXP (of what ive used) had sheets that were actually used in-game. and the SoM character here turned out a lot better (as in he actually looks normal) than my attempts in rpgxp.

so yeah, awesome work, cant wait for an interactive thing to mess around with running off this

[Hammerit]

that looks awesome. what are the sprite sheets like? ive seen a few, but only rpgXP (of what ive used) had sheets that were actually used in-game. and the SoM character here turned out a lot better (as in he actually looks normal) than my attempts in rpgxp.

What tilesets are used is entirely up to the user (since how the cells of the tileset are mapped depends on what format the layer they're assigned to has been initialized with. Meaning for each individual layer you can use an entirely different kind of tileset (which can be either rectangular or hexagonal). However if you want you can assign multiple layers to the very same tileset as well (meaning you don't have to create a new tileset for every layer, but can rather just create one and use it for all background layers. This allows you to do some nifty tricks (eg. temporarily modifying parts of the level, by just putting the new tile on the above layer and hiding and unhiding it on demand . Other than in real 2D not just the uppermost layer, but all are drawn and which layer what is on just defines it's sorting priority and to which display group it belongs.

Custom shaped sprites allow to be handled as seperate entities (eg. a character running around) while everyone of them gets assigned his very own layer. The SoM character above is such a sprite and assigned to a sprite layer which is the sum of all sprites organized in the same group.

[Azure Phoenix]

what can i say except that it's awesome? other than that i hardly understand what a lot of the things do, but that doesn't matter, as long as i can test it (without manual) i can do stuff, so it's easy for me to give a good rating to stuff.

btw, is it simple to use?

[Hammerit]

Depends on what you want to do ... if you want to create just another pseudo- isometric 2D RPG (like FF or whatever) you'll be good to go with very basic scripting and no coding skills. However as soon as you want to do something special and unique you can no longer rely on the basic functionality, but rather have to script the functionality yourself. As any engine it's like a framework you can use to create whatever you have in mind nice and smooth as long as you stick to certain standards. So basically the more you want the more you'll have to do and the harder it will be .

[Azure Phoenix]

could you possibly create MMOs with this by any chance?

[Hammerit]

Yes if you implement the required Networking code yourself (which is an extremely complex thing to do for mmos, regardless of what networking style they're actually using).

[Azure Phoenix]

i see... i'll have to check it out sometime then, thx for the info.