My game engine

[Relfos]

Hello, I'm thinking of releasing my game engine soon (the one that was used for Sushi Quest, Splash Ball and Icarus Sky, all of them released on the App Store). This engine is a continuation of the LEAF engine that I released to the public some years ago. As far as I know this is the pascal engine that currently supports more platforms (windows, mac, linux and iOS), just write code once, and compile it for each platform (with an included resource optimizer)
While I'd love to release it for free, I want to port it to Android, and to fix the problems it currently has running on iPad and 2nd gen iPhones, and I need some money for buying the testing devices (I only have a iPod touch).

I could sell licenses for the engine (something not too expensive like $100), or I could setup a donation system.
Or if any of you here are interested in doing the Android port or fixing the iOS compatibility, then I would gladly release it for free.
What are your opinions?

Some of the features of the engine:
- Optimized openGL renderer, supporting lightmaps, shadowmaps, normalmapping, deferred rendering, toon shading, reflections, fur and more
- GUI system with support for animations
- Very simple to use API, fully class based (no components)
- Physics integration with Newton

[czar]

I believe who ever can make a engine that works well with XE2 will have a killer engine on their hands. I am assuming xe2 is what it is cracked up to be and that with a good engine making use of fire monkey we can make good solid casual games for pc, mac and ios. And being based on work that embarcadero has created and maintain it should also be much more stable across various hardware compared to the engines we see that have been put together by single person with access to limited hardware. Any that's my 2 c worth.

[Relfos]

I don't know much about XE2, will that be cross-platform?

[czar]

yes, with xe2 you can target pc, 64bit, macosx and iOS (ipad etc). Firemonkey is a new vcl that uses directx or opengl depending on the platform. Firemonkey also seems to allow access at a more basic level so it should be easy enough to create a engine that will work on a number of platforms. That opens up some exciting possibilities.

[azrael11]

I hope it will be free...

[czar]

What will be free? Delphi XE2 - the starter edition will be available from day on for $100 (I believe). And from what I understood cross platform will be in the starter version.

[Daikrys]

nice to hear :)

i like to see a donation system, if i would sell a game i would definitely donate some bucks to support you

[azrael11]

What will be free? Delphi XE2 - the starter edition will be available from day on for $100 (I believe). And from what I understood cross platform will be in the starter version.

Yes my friend this is true but...
I start really like the compination of Free Pascal and Lazarus and i like to see it action with the engine...
Plus don't forget...
To many projects out there is really a refreash of old projects and old ideas so anything free is good for the community...
And if you like delphi XE2 so many (without testing and working with it), maybe you take parts of this free engine and use it yourself....

Free always is a good choice... ;)

[czar]

sorry misunderstood - there was no context to your reply so I thought it was direct reply to my post. BUt I agree, I doubt I would pay for a delphi based game engine - it would have to be something very special in a market with many alternatives available.

[code_glitch]

LOL, I'm one of the other reason people simply because it hit the mobile platforms and looked a masterpiece too... And I've been meaning to get into mobile development a while now and the code behind the 3d on those devices is very much of interest to me. However, I only support open source so if putting in some extra help to get it over to Android (my target platform in the first instance anyway) is what it takes to get it open sourced I'd have to be honest and say count me in that boat.

[phibermon]

Sorry to keep on making this point but I feel it's important : Delphi XE2 uses FPC. all the 'features' that mean a damn to a pascal game developer are thanks to FPC, not XE2. IOS support? FPC. 64bit support? FPC. Mac support? FPC.

Firemonkey is impressive and will no doubt be useful, but if you're not using it for menus etc then all you're doing is using FPC with delphi as your IDE.

Buy XE2 for firemonkey, buy it for superior database client development, buy it for superior Windows 32bit performance, buy it for superiour debugging.

but cross platform game development? just use FPC. they'll be using GDB on other platforms. either that or they've been very naughty and not submitted FPC changes back to the community.

->

EDIT : Others have stated FPC is only used for IOS support or more specifically ARM support. It is reasonable speculation to say that if this is the case, you can expect the IOS intergration to be of a superior production quality (no messing about) when compared to what's currently available in the FPC community. Also, if it is their native toolchain for x86-32, x86-64, having a complete 32bit+64bit runtimes for windows + OSX? that makes the XE2 compiler a serious concideration for me. Linux support would of sealed the deal but alas, Kylix scared them off... ;)

[WILL]

I like your engine Relfos. In fact I think it could be good enough to liscence out to people. At $100 a license per game title, that's a damn good deal. Especially since it will manage just about most of the aspect of people games.

Now features are an issue, you'd have to list them off for people to make an informed opinion to be fair.

In case noone knows, or it wasn't mentioned yet, Sushi Quest was developed with FPC NOT Delphi. :) It may have started development with Delphi at first but it would have then been ported over to FPC eventually to get the current iOS support. I presume that the engine will be somewhat compiler-independent?

My preferred dev platform now is Lazarus with some of Stoney's setup tweaks, but that's because I plan on starting cross-platform development for all my projects with SDL and OpenGL as it's base.

I looked at your engine to consider it should I make a sequel to Garland's Quest (if I ever finish the damn game lol) and if it would work for a puzzle game akin to Eggerland or something more action-based like Polar Panic.

My areas of concern would be performance, code bulk & customization/functionality; Will it run smooth on an iPad 1/2 or iPhone and Mac/PC alike? Also, as I like to build my own game engine to make things lean, how much overhead will I have to deal with? Lastly, how much can I customize and what functionality it built-in and what can I add?

I am still very interested in this engine and would love to get an iOS game out there this might be a technology I'd like to use at some point. My choices are based upon the above set of questions and a list of features/API used. It would also be nice if it were able to be compiled right out of the box onto the iOS platform. I think a lot of people would got for that as it's an exciting new platform for development.

[vgo]

I'm definitely interested and I'd gladly pay $100 for it, any chance for a demo? :)

My own engine is in need of a major rewrite and I just don't have the time nor interest for it.

[Stoney]

I personally wouldn't pay for an engine, especially for there are so many libraries and frameworks available even if they're not Pascal.

If fixing the bugs for iOS would make the difference of it being free (with a MPL or MIT license, everything else would be beside the point imho) I would gladly volunteer for that task.

[WILL]

I think there is one crucial thing that Relfos forgot to do in his initial post and thats post this video.


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YtqUHq4VEhA

It gives a good preview of what game mechanics it boasts. This is what the game engine can do, not just display graphics and playback music. Anybody can make their own framework. I can see applications for platformer/puzzle gameplay using a Zelda-style perspective view. That said, what game engines give you this kind of functionality, built-in for free? :)

This trailer alone makes a strong case, for me to consider using it for a Garland's Quest game. Considering the kind of world and game play I want for my own game series. (in the planning stages, I have to release the first game before all that)


Again I'd ask... what are the list of features that would come with said engine? I'm more interested in game mechanics than mere graphics and sound specs. Though OpenGL, OpenAL and SDL would be nice. I know it'll work for iOS(fixes required) which means I could port to Windows and OS X easily in the future.

[czar]

That is a cool video. I am not a fan of these types of games but it certainly looks pretty good. Looks quite polished.

[Relfos]

Actually WILL in terms of mechanics, the engine is not tied to a specific genre (as you can in the other video with the kart game).
The engine basically offers a framework with everything that is required to build a game (graphics, input, audio, network and so on), so that programmers can concentrate on just writting the gameplay code.
I will try to write a complete feature list later :)

[azrael11]

What will be free? Delphi XE2 - the starter edition will be available from day on for $100 (I believe). And from what I understood cross platform will be in the starter version.

Nope 100$ Nope IOS and MACOSX in starter version... sorry :(
Take a look at this.... http://www.greymatter.com/mcm/embarcadero-shop/delphi

[azrael11]

I will try to write a complete feature list later :)

Please do this....

[czar]

Nope 100$ Nope IOS and MACOSX in starter version... sorry :(
Take a look at this.... http://www.greymatter.com/mcm/embarcadero-shop/delphi

No matter I have ordered two licences one of RadStudio Pro and the other just Delphi XE2 pro

[phibermon]

WILL is spot on as usual, there are many frameworks but so much more is an engine. This is certainly one of the most feature packed pascal engines around (along with the honorable mention of Cast II and in a more abstracted way, GLScene). I work on my engine and I have to say that I learnt much from Reflos's Leaf 2, it's a well designed object orientated engine. I have learned that while flat functional programming in an engine can have certain advantages (many would argue performance and in given scenarios, learning curve), an object orientated approach can yeild after time, incredible benefits in terms of progress made and flexibility.

So in my humble opinion, if this is Leaf 2 plus a few more years in development, it will be by now a very capable engine.

I have not voted that I'd pay because my interests lie more with learning about and creating an engine. And assuming it had a price, I would concider first the already free Cast II engine and see if it had what I needed as it is also a very good engine.

However, Cast II does not yet have a GL renderer (but it has an abstracted design that facilitates adding new Graphics APIs)

so for the time being (if released) this engine looks to be one of the better choices for 3D, cross platform, fully object pascal game development.

GLScene deserves a mention because it too has facilitated quality 3d games. But I know of no current IOS developments and there's a lot of immediate mode GL2 design patterns, potentially hampering the implementation of GLES and GL3+ techniques so I personally don't expect to see such support for a while yet.

[pstudio]

So are we gonna get a full feature list? I can't really make an informed decision when I know nothing about the engine/framework but what I've seen in the video.
Is it actually an engine or is it "just" an advanced framework? Are there for instance game objects which are handled by the engine? How easy is it to extend it with new functionality?

However I can say that it has to be really really really good if I have to cough up with the money. And I would actually want to play around with the engine before paying for it. Maybe do a license where you only pay for the right to do commercial projects though it may be a hazzle to handle if it's only you doing the work.

[Relfos]

"Maybe do a license where you only pay for the right to do commercial projects"
Yes, this would be fine for me.

Here is a feature list:
Audio (OpenAL)
- Native support for WAV, MOD and OGG (and MP3/AAC on iOS)
- MIDI software decoder (requires external soundfonts)
- Audio streaming
- 3D audio support (including reverb effects)
Custom resource importer/optimizer
- Textures: Supports PNG, BMP, TGA, JPG, GIF
- Models: Supports Milkshape3D (with animations), OBJ, 3DS, MDL and SMD (animated)
- Package system (supporting compression and encryption)
Platforms supported
- Windows, Linux, Mac, iOS (supported NintendoDS in older versions, dropped due to lack of floating point processor)
- Android support coming soon
- Wii support currently planned
- Various types of input supported (keyboard, mouse, gamepads, wiimote, touchscreen and accelerometer)
- Multithreading support
- Timers
Integration with Newton physics engine
Custom UI system
- Fully skinnable
- Supports animations (fades, moving, scaling, rotations)
- Custom screen transitions
- Includes lots of pre-made widgets (Window, Label, EditText, Button, Icon, Slider, Bar, Combobox, Checkbox)
- Extensible with custom widgets
Renderer (OpenGL/GLES)
- Advanced texture support (Render to texture, volume textures, dynamic textures, including streaming from GIF, AVI and webcam)
- Supports cubemaps (including render to cubemaps)
- Cloth renderer
- Decals
- Bitmap font rendering (including Unicode support)
- Skybox, Skydome and Lens flares
- Reflections
- Deferred rendering (supporting directional, point, spot and volumetric lights)
- Shadowmapping (supporting directional and spot lights)
- Shadow volumes
- Bloom
- Color correction
- Normalmapping
- Terrain rendering (including voxel support)
- Toon rendering (with or without outline)
- Entity management (frustum culling, octree)
Network system
- Based on UDP (with reliable packets)
- Packet compression and encription)
- Session management (login, logout, ping)
- FTP uploading
- STMP Email support
- HTTP streams
Artificial Inteligence (path finding, behaviors, state machines, boids)
Math and Geometry classes (BoundingBox, Frustum, Octree, Ray)
String Localization support
Utility framework (Arcball controller, Solid shapes, texture atlas generation, UV unwrapper, Tesselator, software rasterizer, Collisions, CRC, FFT, XML, Perlin Noise)

Some of those things still probably need to be updated though as I didnt use them for some time.

[czar]

wow you are a busy beaver. List is very impressive. kudos.

[WILL]

Yeah that's a pretty impressive list of technical features! :)

I'm curious though, what about the level of game design on top of all those technologies? I mean would I be able to design worlds using my own graphics and characters and animations with the same level of functionality as the Sushi Quest game? Same type of object models and game mechanics, etc...

For clarification as to what I'm asking. When you play a FPS that uses an id Software engine or one of the Unreal engines, you expect to be able to have that FPS game mechanics built in already. Will this game engine have the same thing for me should I want to make a game using the same practicalities as what you have done with Sushi Quest or will it just be another plain-slate just like as if I would be using any other framework with different technologies?


Personally, I'm not looking for another framework (I don't need that!) what I'm interested in is making a game using an existing game engine that I can hone to my own game play and story of my making using an existing game engine and not have to rewrite most if not all of the game mechanics myself. Modification is another thing, I'd like to be able at add or remove features used in Sushi Quest to my own title. This is how professional game developers do things as well.

[Relfos]

wow you are a busy beaver. List is very impressive. kudos.
Looks like a big list but it took about seven years to get there ;)


I'm curious though, what about the level of game design on top of all those technologies? I mean would I be able to design worlds using my own graphics and characters and animations with the same level of functionality as the Sushi Quest game? Same type of object models and game mechanics, etc...
No, gameplay code is not part of the engine. I don't think that kind of thing should be included, as it imposes limits. I can usually sketch a new game prototype in one day using this framework (for example, the prototype that appears on Sushi Kart video was done in two days, and my Splash Ball and Icarus Sky were created and released on the App Store in a couple of days)

[pstudio]

That is indeed an impressive list.
Would you care to elaborate on entity management? Are entities full objects in a game world with physics, logic and graphical representation or is it only graphical? In my book a game framework first becomes a game engine when it has a system in place to easily and quickly create objects in the game world.

[Daikrys]

Will is more likely looking for a template ;)

as Relfos said coding the engine for a specific game or genre would cause hugh limits to the engine itself
but a good engine provide that all core programming is done and you can immediately start to code the game mechanics

for me as a gamedesigner with limited programming skills it would be nice to have a big amount of samples shipped with the engine
samples with typical game scenes are fine (like the Asphyre spriteengine samples, they helped me alot)
do you plan to release samples that show how to use the features in a typical game environment?

[Relfos]

That is indeed an impressive list.
Would you care to elaborate on entity management? Are entities full objects in a game world with physics, logic and graphical representation or is it only graphical? In my book a game framework first becomes a game engine when it has a system in place to easily and quickly create objects in the game world.
Visual only, they are are meant to be used as subcomponents of custom entities that handle the logic and gameplay.



for me as a gamedesigner with limited programming skills it would be nice to have a big amount of samples shipped with the engine
samples with typical game scenes are fine (like the Asphyre spriteengine samples, they helped me alot)
do you plan to release samples that show how to use the features in a typical game environment?
True, examples would be a very important thing to have, I will be sure to release enough examples to explain how to use most of the features :)

[WILL]

Unfortunately I'm not interested in a 3rd party framework. I'd much prefer to code that myself for performance. I was interested in a game engine with the features shown from your Sushi Quest video trailers. I'd even pay double what you are proposing.

So I'd change my vote from Yes to a... not interested for the framework, but for a working game engine that I can modify a big yes. :)


As for what actually interested me about your proposal...

For me the restriction of working game mechanics in an engine isn't an issue because that's the type/genre of game that I want to make, not a limitation in this case. Should I want to change something I'd like the option to modify code that allows me to do something different, but I want something in place I can work with not a clean slate. I know I can code everything if I want to, but I'd like to be able to just design a game for a change. So I was interested in some of the code that you did that I might be able to leverage for a 3D extended journey into the world of the Grand wizard Garland. :)

I think I'll focus my efforts on the first one for now though.

[azrael11]

Big list .... Too many features... Great work...
Do you have plans to add some basic video support?

Well when it come to us free ;)

[Relfos]

Big list .... Too many features... Great work...
Do you have plans to add some basic video support?

Well when it come to us free ;)
There is already basic video support, including using video for textures, but right now only for Windows, I'm looking for a better solution that would work on other platforms, including iOS. About releasing it for free, it would be an option if I found enough people interested in fixing some of the current problems and extending the engine with new features.


So I'd change my vote from Yes to a... not interested for the framework, but for a working game engine that I can modify a big yes. :)
What if the framework included a example of a small game that you could extend?
Sushi Quest code is about 4000 lines of code, but most of it is just coding of the different entities logic (like bombs that explode when they touch fire, barrels that move in the water, etc)
Also, this engine is fine tuned for performance, when I first ported it to iOS, the game runned at 12fps, I spent a week optimizing the engine (things like removing all allocations
except when really needed, and lots of openGLtricks). and now it runs at almost 60fps without fullscreen antialiasing (with it on it runs at about 30fps)

[Carver413]

About releasing it for free, it would be an option if I found enough people interested in fixing some of the current problems and extending the engine with new features.

I would be very interest in something like this where those that use it give something back. we would all benefit form such a project. so many engines end up in the bit can because they don't have a community to support them. and as we all know the pascal gaming community isn't getting any bigger. perhaps if we all spent a little time working in the same direction instead of everyone doing there own thing. we could show the rest of the world that pascal is not dead and that it can hold its own in the gaming world. when was the last time you saw anyone asking for help on gamedev for a pascal game. even python is doing better and that is really pathetic.

[azrael11]

There is already basic video support, including using video for textures, but right now only for Windows, I'm looking for a better solution that would work on other platforms, including iOS. About releasing it for free, it would be an option if I found enough people interested in fixing some of the current problems and extending the engine with new features.

I think that you asked for a good community support... that is the only that matters... Only good community keeps the project alive... I am already inside In Reflios Ngine Community....
About programming to little time to spent but i hope this end soon so i have more time to spent in pascal and your engine....
I see a new and strong community here..... :)

[phibermon]

Impressive feature list! I look forward to seeing what you decide upon for release terms

[WILL]

What if the framework included a example of a small game that you could extend?

Hmm... well that's a possibility I might consider. Perhaps if you were to throw in add-on units that I could use to get some basic behaviors that you could get in a top-down platformer to work with and modify. Essentially if it was a more flexible version of something that resembled a Sushi Quest engine, then I might go for it for say a sequel to Garland's Quest. (Name similarity is a strange coincidence. :))

What I would do, besides calling it Garland's Journey not Garland's Quest 2 :D, is have Garland walk as he does in the first, has his staff which would give him different things he could do than the scrolls and he'd have similar puzzles to that of Garland's Quest that help him carry on from level to level until he reached his new enemy with a different plot. It would be in 3D as SQ is, but act just like GQ with my own enhancements. This is what I'd have in mind for your "engine" if you were to offer something that would match my requirements for what I'm looking for.

For those that are unfamiliar to my Garland's Quest project you can read past thread posts here (http://www.pascalgamedevelopment.com/showthread.php?3439-Garland-s-Quest).

[Relfos]

Nice, I will this month try to finish some demos (including simple games that could be extended) to teach how to use the many features of the engine.
Also right now I'm very inclined to setup a website for the engine, release the whole engine for free, and setup a donation button (and I will use the donations to make the engine better, probably paying for someone to help in the Android port)
Another idea I have is to add a "bounty" page, so that people (and even myself) can ask for new features (or bug fixes), and offer a small price for it.

[WILL]

Well that does sound good. So we are talking 'engine' here NOT 'framework' or 'library', right?

Having different genre-specific templates (in the form of demos I guess) could help define it as more of an engine, yes but it also depends on how much of the game mechanics I or anyone else would have to write. Just think of the Quake or Unreal engines for an example of what a common 'game engine' is. You can still modify it quite a bit, but much is already established.

I think an engine would be much better for a release these days as we already have so many libraries or frameworks that allow higher than API functionality. To release another one at this point would be less significant than a really good game engine. Mind you the idea of a game engine that can be used to develop for more than one specific game genre would be something kind of new to Object Pascal I think.

[Carver413]

Any news? I've been impatiently waiting to see if anything comes of this

[Relfos]

I've been working on it, I don't have much time nowadays though. I need to create some user friendly tools and more samples before releasing it, otherwise people would get frustrated

[Carver413]

what sort of tools are you looking to create?

[Relfos]

what sort of tools are you looking to create?

Particle editors, and better asset converters, the ones I have right now only run on the command line.

[WILL]

So how is the engine/framework/templates coming along?

What requirements are you aiming for?

[Relfos]

I got a website almost ready to go live, all critical bugs of the engine were fixed, and I'm now trying to finish the samples/tutorials.
This will come with different licenses, free to to use for non-comercial projects, and a paid license for comercial stuff (will be very affordable though).
Also Android support should come soon, and I'm currently playing with the idea of supporting Flash too (meaning projects written with this engine could be also released on the web as a Flash game).
This weekend I published my 5 game written with this, so I can assure that it is quite ready and tested for serious use (including lots and lots of optimizations)
My plan is to make this the most extensive/portable pascal engine of all time :)

[azrael11]

I got a website almost ready to go live, all critical bugs of the engine were fixed, and I'm now trying to finish the samples/tutorials.

Just give us the url...


This will come with different licenses, free to to use for non-comercial projects, and a paid license for comercial stuff (will be very affordable though).

Great news.... Great thoughts...


Also Android support should come soon, and I'm currently playing with the idea of supporting Flash too (meaning projects written with this engine could be also released on the web as a Flash game).
This weekend I published my 5 game written with this, so I can assure that it is quite ready and tested for serious use (including lots and lots of optimizations)

I am waiting for this... Android support...


My plan is to make this the most extensive/portable pascal engine of all time :)

Pascal Community is behide you... to support and help...

[paul_nicholls]

Awesome mate! Keep up the excellent work, looking forward to the release :)

PS. is your avatar one of the characters from the Japanese Anime Naruto (the shark dude)?

[Relfos]

Just give us the url...
Sorry, it's not online yet, as soon as I put it online I'll show the url here.



Great news.... Great thoughts...
I am waiting for this... Android support...
Pascal Community is behide you... to support and help...
Thanks! :)


Awesome mate! Keep up the excellent work, looking forward to the release :)
PS. is your avatar one of the characters from the Japanese Anime Naruto (the shark dude)?
Thanks!
And yes, that's where my avatar is from :)

[Andru]

My plan is to make this the most extensive/portable pascal engine of all time :)
Seems you have a competitor in portability, which is exist long time and currently moves to Android too :)

[Relfos]

Seems you have a competitor in portability, which is exist long time and currently moves to Android too :)
Yes, I know about you and ZenGL, you helped me sometime ago with some problems I had porting the engine :)
I guess the main difference between them is that ZenGL main focus is 2D and mine main focus is 3D games.
As far I as know there are no other portable pascal engines that also support iOS and Android, I might be wrong though.

[paul_nicholls]

yes, that's where my avatar is from :)

haha! I thought so :)

I have been watching loads of Naruto lately (can't get enough of it!). While I was looking at your avatar last night, it occurred to me that those red bits on the clothes might have been red clouds like the bad guys wear, and that his head looked a bit like the shark dude! LOL

[Relfos]

I have good news, I've got some help in the Android port, and the engine is soon going to be available for it, including full 3D graphics :)
Also I already got lots of sample code written, so hopefully everything will be ready to release in some weeks.
Get ready to get surprised by all features that this engine is going to provide! :)

[Legolas]

Good news! I'm looking forward to the release :)

[azrael11]

Get ready to get surprised by all features that this engine is going to provide! :)

Just a moment.....
.....
.....
I am ready.... ;)

[Relfos]

I already got a website online (just finishing some details before showing it here, to make sure everything is working).
Now I'm writing the wiki documentation (that will contain very useful info about everything related to the engine).

Also I will only exclude some parts of the engine in this release, basically anything that I did not use yet in my games, that I don't consider in a production ready state (as in, fully optimized and tested). This means some the terrain rendering and some other classes will only be released later (hopefully in some months).
The android port I also need to test it thoroughly, before releasing it.
However Windows, Linux, OSX and iOS support is ready for shipping real titles (as I already have published 5 different games using this engine, for all of those platforms)

There was also support for nintendo DS, is currently now broken but I'll try to make it work soon (however I'll probably only support 2D games for this, while I did make the 3D part of the engine run on it, the lack of floating point makes it unusable).

The engine will be free to use for non-commercial projects, otherwise an indie license will be required (price will be 100$).

[paul_nicholls]

sounds awesome :)

[WILL]

Very exciting. Can't wait to see the final results. How many game templates will be available at the beginning?

[wagenheimer]

What are the 5 games that you published with this engine? I think I only know the Sushi Quest!

[Relfos]

sounds awesome :)
Thanks!


Very exciting. Can't wait to see the final results. How many game templates will be available at the beginning?
I expect at least two in the beginning, along with lots of smaller demos.


What are the 5 games that you published with this engine? I think I only know the Sushi Quest!
Here's a list of my games written with this engine (they are all on the App Store):
Sushi Quest (adventure/puzzle, written in 3 months)
Splash Ball (marble style puzzle game, written in 2 weeks)
Exam Quiz (simple quiz game, written in 1 day)
Icarus Sky (sidescroller, written in 1 week)
Paint Panic (match3/puzzle, written in 3 days)

Sushi Quest took 3 months since I was still finishing the engine, and I also spent lots of time porting it to OSX, Linux and iOS, I expect to be able to write it in 2 to 3 weeks if I started again :)

[Relfos]

I have good and bad news.
The bad news is that I don't have all the samples/demos I wanted ready to release (and I want those for the 'official' release)
However, the good news is that I'm going to start a beta testing of the game engine right now.
For more info, check the official website, www.pascalgameengine.com
You can find there a wiki with the engine documentation, and a forum for any suggestions and questions related to the engine :)

[Stoney]

I signed up for the beta. :)
Is FreePascal 2.6.0 RC1 supported?
What I noticed looking at the wiki that types don't have the usual T prefix that is specified by the Delphi coding guidelines. Is there are special reason behind this?
Also, you should install the phpBB forums, when I clicked the forums link a few minutes ago, the install thingy popped up.

[Andru]

Congrats with start :)

About a site - it's a bit difficult to read a text with font which is used on the site. I don't know how it looks on MacOS X, but on Linux and Windows - thin and messy... Only big Titles(e.g. TERRA game engine) looks good.

[paul_nicholls]

Congrats with start :)

About a site - it's a bit difficult to read a text with font which is used on the site. I don't know how it looks on MacOS X, but on Linux and Windows - thin and messy... Only big Titles(e.g. TERRA game engine) looks good.

I noticed that too about the site, and this was on a 30" LCD monitor at work :)

[Relfos]

I signed up for the beta. :)
Thanks, should be available next week ;)


Is FreePascal 2.6.0 RC1 supported?
While I did not test it with that version, I'm pretty sure that yes, since all of the engine is written in Delphi mode, and only uses the language features from Delphi 7.


What I noticed looking at the wiki that types don't have the usual T prefix that is specified by the Delphi coding guidelines. Is there are special reason behind this?
I don't use it since I think it makes the code look ugly. However that's a good point, since most people are probably used to it, I will add more types definitions, as TRenderer = Renderer, so that both can be used :)


Also, you should install the phpBB forums, when I clicked the forums link a few minutes ago, the install thingy popped up.
Thanks for the tip, the forum was actually installed, but yesterday I accidentally did overwrite the config file, I was able to restore it now.


Congrats with start :)

About a site - it's a bit difficult to read a text with font which is used on the site. I don't know how it looks on MacOS X, but on Linux and Windows - thin and messy... Only big Titles(e.g. TERRA game engine) looks good.
Yes, that's true, I'll change the font when I get home, thanks for the suggestion :)

[Relfos]

TERRA is now available for download at www.pascalgameengine.com (Also includes a wiki and a forum)

It comes packaged with sample demos and the full source code of one of my games (and I plan to release the source of other of my games written using the engine).
Right the package only includes support to Windows, I'm currently fixing some small problems with the Linux and OSX versions and I'll release a new update this next week.

Along with Linux and OSX support, the next update will bring support more of the TERRA API (currently only about 60% of it is exposed in TERRA_Engine.pas), with stuff like support for leaderboards (similar to the Game Center in iOS, but works on any platform), networking (with matchmaking, no need for external servers), animated textures (video and webcam), along with more samples.
Support for iOS and Android will come soon too :)

[Darthman]

Stroked lines in Features section looks really scary.
And like ppl says in previous posts foonts seems to look very thin and uncomfortable for reading.
Anyway, greets!

[Relfos]

Stroked lines in Features section looks really scary.
And like ppl says in previous posts foonts seems to look very thin and uncomfortable for reading.
Anyway, greets!
Stroked lines are the features that are implemented but currently not available to the public yet (either due to lack of documentation/samples, or the code is not clean enough/stable)
The site really needs a better font, and some other changes, I still had no time for improving it :(

[Darthman]

Yeah, that known to me. I have no time for website improvement for very long time. But now I do and I'm very happy about it. It's simple and pretty right now (but still need content to go 8) )

I think that you must not to stroke this features, but "disable" it by using low contrast font, gray for example. It will be fell like disabled (for some reason) features and not so weird. Also you can write at the bottom of the page that grayed features are planned, and will be available soon. IMO ofc.

*I answer "not interested" in poll cause I use my own engine, however I'd like you to finish it someday.

[Ñuño Martínez]

Nice! I must try it.

Right now I'm in another project but I have another one that may need it. :)

[Relfos]

Yeah, that known to me. I have no time for website improvement for very long time. But now I do and I'm very happy about it. It's simple and pretty right now (but still need content to go 8) )

I think that you must not to stroke this features, but "disable" it by using low contrast font, gray for example. It will be fell like disabled (for some reason) features and not so weird. Also you can write at the bottom of the page that grayed features are planned, and will be available soon. IMO ofc.

*I answer "not interested" in poll cause I use my own engine, however I'd like you to finish it someday.
Thanks for the suggestion, I already changed the font, and once I get some more free time I'll test having some grey test for the disabled features :)



Nice! I must try it.

Right now I'm in another project but I have another one that may need it. :)
Nice, in case you need any help integrating TERRA with your projects, I'll be eager to help :)