Castle Game Engine 4.0.0 released

[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]

Μπράβο Μιχάλη...
Καταπληκτική, τεράστια δουλειά...
Την μηχανή σου την κοιτώ εδώ και κάτι μήνες και έχω μείνει καταενθουσιαμένος...

Συνέχισε την καταπληκτική δουλειά...


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!

[WILL]

Well next competition or "jam" we have you mst participate with a gme or game prototype

PGD got you into making a game engine (it seems) and we're gonna get you back to making games. (where the real fun is at!) lol

...ok game engines and libraries can be fun too, but games themselves are more fun!

[LP]

For people working on their own engines, on GameDev.Net it is common to point to this article: Write Games, Not Engines.

There are *so* *many* *engines* being developed each day, all in 3D and with some cool features, but very few seem to become an actual game and most fade away once the author gets bored.

This project seems rather promising, but when are we going to see actual game coming out of it? This same question would apply to "nxPascal" thread that is currently active.

I'm not trying to discourage you, but I think it will be more productive for the community to have some great 3D games that show off the potential of Pascal, and for you to have a good portfolio of actually finished games, which may even generate some revenue. Developing an engine is a learning experience, but it's counter-productive learning experience, since developing a game implies much more than working on its engine (which, according to Pareto principle would take only 20% of time and effort than the rest of the game).

The problem is that once the "yet another cool game engine" is finished and you decide to make a game out of it, you may find it unsuitable for that purpose, because characteristics of uber-cool 3D game engine do not correspond to the functional and/or non-functional requirements of the game spec. This is why, it is highly recommended, to work on actual game rather than engine.