Castle Game Engine 4.0.0 released

[michalis]

I'm proud to announce a release of Castle Game Engine 4.0.0, an open-source 3D game engine for FPC/Lazarus.

This release adds a lot of features to make the engine really comfortable for game developers:

1. We introduce a nice API to make 3D games, with out-of-the-box intelligent creatures, items, levels, nice game data layout and more. Finally it's really easy to make a complete 3D game using our engine.
2. Everything is also very flexible under the hood, everything can be extended by overriding appropriate methods in classes, new types of creatures/items/other 3D objects can be defined, with specialized behavior.
3. We have a couple of new examples, in particular examples/fps_game/ (in engine sources) shows how to easily make a fully-working FPS game using our game. It has a lot of comments in the code describing how things work.

We also add a lot of new documentation in this release:

1. We have a nice tutorial that introduces basic engine concepts.
2. Classes overview.
3. And a guide to creating data (3D models, XML configuration files etc.).
4. And, as always, a complete API reference.

I put a lot of work into this documentation, hopefully it will be useful to new developers that want to try our engine

You can read the full news announcement here.

Engine overview, with all the links to downloads and documentation, are here.

Engine features at a glance:

• Reads many 3D model formats, focusing on VRML/X3D standards (so you can make 3D models in pretty much every 3D modeling software), but also supporting Collada and other popular formats.
• We use OpenGL for graphics, and we have many eye-candy features (shadows, mirrors, bump mapping, screen effects, shaders etc.).
• The engine is basically integrated into Lazarus (you can drop TCastleContol on Lazarus form, and a couple of non-visual controls, on the form), although it can also be used without LCL (we have our own TCastleWindow).
• The engine is open-source, license is modified LGPL (same license as FPC RTL and Lazarus LCL), so you can make both open- and closed-source games with it.
• More features listed on engine page.

Have fun! We welcome people that want to use our engine, and/or contribute of course. If you want to make a game using our engine, give it a try!

P.S. I created also a news announcement about this release on the main page of PGD, it's waiting for site admins to pubilsh it

[Cybermonkey]

Now these are really great news. I hope to find the time soon to do a little game with this awesome engine. Thanks a lot, Michalis.

[azrael11]

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Την μηχανή σου την κοιτώ εδώ και κάτι μήνες και έχω μείνει καταενθουσιαμένος...

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Mprvo michali
Congragulations , monster job...
I look your machine about couple months and i must say it is extremly good...

Keep programming...

[WILL]

Yeah this does look great. So is this a "serious" game project in the works or just a demo for the Castle engine?

I don't think I've seen much in the way of a game with your engine since "The Castle" way back in 2005.

[michalis]

Yeah this does look great. So is this a "serious" game project in the works or just a demo for the Castle engine?

You mean the game visible in the video, with knights? That's just a demo of the engine (examples/fps_game/ in sources), not a start of a real game.

I don't think I've seen much in the way of a game with your engine since "The Castle" way back in 2005.

Indeed. It's a shame, but I didn't manage to do any real (larger, somewhat finished) game since the old "The Castle". Although "The Castle" got quite a few updates since 2005, like "DOOM E1M1" level and some technological demos (like the "Fountain" level).

I was working a lot on the engine and there was never enough time to make a real finished game. There are some game attemps in engine examples, besides examples/fps_game/ there is also examples/fixed_camera_game/ (video from it on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=daIrz3ehN_I ) and even simple 2D isometric game (examples/isometric_game/ ). But nothing that can be considered a real game for actual players.


I do hope to fix it this year Now that I have an engine I can be proud of, a real game using it should be done

[phibermon]

I'm really happy to see a pascal game engine tackling more middle-ware features, a lot of the 'game engines' here are actually graphics engines, sometimes with audio, window management etc often enough extras to be considered engine frameworks.

High level things like scene management, path finding, AI and customizable entity/creature classes are not often represented so you get a big thumbs up from me! any commercial game engine comes with such things and indeed, commercial rendering engines are defined by the lack of such components, being designed so companies can drop in a wide range of middle-ware or to integrate into their own engines.

There are more than a few game ports that have switched rendering engines in such a way, an example that sticks in my mind is the game 'Bully' (Canis Canem Edit) which switched it's entire rendering engine for the enhanced PC version in order to take advantage of more modern graphics features.

This example and others like it highlight the fundemental difference between graphics engines and game engines and I believe looking at your feature set you are accurate to call Castle Engine 4.0.0 a game engine.

Keep up the good work!