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AthenaOfDelphi
06-07-2014, 12:39 PM
It was announced in the private developer forum, but I think it should be out in the wider community... we have started coding :)

We spent a bit of time getting our thoughts together and have come up with what we think is a pretty flexible architecture which we hope will allow us to create a great engine upon which we can build some great games.

We'll keep you posted with progress etc.

Since the project was announced, it's been decided that we will use Github to host the source code and other related items, including the feature tracking, so the feature request and issue reporting forums are going to be removed.

The project repository can be found at https://github.com/PascalGameDevelopment/PGDCommunityEngine

It's not too late to sign up as a developer... if you want to get involved follow the instructions in this thread - http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/showthread.php?32264-Sign-Me-Up

pstudio
06-07-2014, 08:02 PM
I've only taken a brief look at the design documents so I might have more questions later on but for now I have one question. I hope you don't mind me asking about your design decisions :)

Would you care to elaborate on the thoughts behind the Entity system? To me it seems like a peculiar mixture between traditional inheritance based object hierachy (TCEEntity, TCEPositionableEntity, TCELightEntity...) and then some component design. What makes the destinction that you inherit from TCEEntity to add positionable data but you must add a component to add a mesh to your entity?
I'm sure you guys have discussed this design in your private forums and have your reasons but I'm not quite getting it yet. Some clarification on how you envision entities will be used in your engine would be appreciated? IMO how entities/actors (whatever you want to call them) are handled in a game engine is the most important so I would like to understand how PGDCE will handle them?

AthenaOfDelphi
06-07-2014, 09:43 PM
I'll try and do my best to explain, but I didn't write that part of the design.

An entity within the engine could be many things. An in-game object for example. But to become those things you attach components to it. So for example, if you want an in-game item, it is an entity that has a mesh component attached to it and a material component. Thus you could have multiple instances of an item, they all look identical, whilst at the same time they have their own properties such as location and orientation.

That's about the best I can do at the moment in terms of an explanation/clarification. If you need more, hopefully one of the other's will provide it.

pstudio
07-07-2014, 08:11 AM
What you describe is a entity/component design. I get that. :)

However this design seems to me to be a hybrid of entity/component design and traditional inheritance based object hierachy. If someone could explain me the reasoning why e.g. positional or light data is a core part of an entity and not added through another component it would be appreciated.

Mirage
07-07-2014, 12:36 PM
However this design seems to me to be a hybrid of entity/component design and traditional inheritance based object hierachy. If someone could explain me the reasoning why e.g. positional or light data is a core part of an entity and not added through another component it would be appreciated.

There is no any strong reasons to not making light data as a component. So it may be implemented like that.

Position data is not as simple.
Positionable objects should be stored in a spatial data structure using their positions.
Also a transformation hierarchy should be maintained efficiently.
According to preliminary analysis having position data as a core part of each game entity will cause less indirect references to the data.
But during actual implementation this may be revised.

pstudio
07-07-2014, 03:52 PM
Ok, sounds fair enough. Curious to see the final design though it's obviously a long time away.

Btw. I'm sure some of you are aware of this site but http://gameprogrammingpatterns.com/ is a good first source for patterns to consider when implementing a game/engine.

I wish you good luck and hope you will keep us other nicely updated with any progress on the engine :)

dj_sharp
09-07-2014, 01:57 PM
erm... so... GOOD LUCK :P

Ñuño Martínez
14-07-2014, 05:09 PM
Great. I hope we can see a demo soon. :D

Dilan Rona
22-03-2023, 10:14 AM
Sorry to revive a necro thread.

Is the project still active?

SilverWarior
22-03-2023, 05:55 PM
Sorry to revive a necro thread.

Is the project still active?

Unfortunately this project never really took off. Trying to make a game engine from scratch is far from easy task.
In the end few of more knowledgeable members decided to join PGD member michalis with the development of his Castle Game Engine which was already pretty impressive at the time. Nowadays Castle Game Engine is probably one of the best pascal based game engines available.