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Pyrogine
05-09-2007, 11:05 PM
RELEASE
pyroENGINE SDK v1.0.1.178 (Beta 1)

Welcome to pyroENGINE SDK ("PESDK"), a 2D rendering API for PC's running Microsoft Windows. This release is aimed specifically at Direct3D with 3D hardware.

PESDK is feature complete and can easily create any type of 2D game with D3D for rendering. It was designed to be easy to use, robust and feature rich and should be easy to use in your projects.

FEATURES
* Language support for Delphi 2007 for Win32 and C++ Builder 2007.
* Uses Direct3D 9 for fast 2D rendering
* 32 bit surfaces and textures
* Free scaling, rotation, alpha blending and other special effects
* Windowed and fullscreen modes
* Frame based timing support
* INI file configuration support with config file variables
* Unified Streaming system (memory, file, zip archive)
* Can render to default application window or to a specified window handle
* Advanced render target and swap chain support
* Textured fonts (includes a font editor tool and support for custom fonts)
* Graphics primitives (lines, circles, rects, points)
* Advanced polygon rendering (scale, rotate, control line segment visibility)
* Support for rendering large images (640x480, 800x600 for example)
* Advanced sprite management
* Polypoint collision system for fast precise collision detection
* Mouse and keyboard input management
* Unified audio system with support for WAV|MP3|MID|OGG|MOD|IT|S3M|XM streaming music and WAV samples
* Comprehensive math routines (vectors, angles, line intersection, clipping)
* Logfile support
* AI management via an event driven state machine
* Robust and feature rich

SYSTEM REQUIREMENTS
* Pentium class CPU, 366Mhz
* At least 64MB of RAM
* 20MB of free Hard Drive space
* Microsoft Windows 9x, 2000, ME, XP (NT is not supported )
* DirectX 9 summer 2003 runtime
* Direct3D compliant 3D video card that can do 3D in a window (minimum recommend card INVIDIA FX5200)
* DirectSound compliant audio card (optional)

INSTALLATION
* Add {installdir}\Bin to your windows system path
* Add {installdir}\Sources to Delphi search path
* Add ..\Bin as the output location for the examples
* When using C++ Builder, you have to add the .pas unit file to your project and the .hpp and .obj files will be automatically generated. Add #include <unit> and #pragma comment(lib, unit) in the include section of your source to be use this unit.
* See the docs and examples for more information on how to use PESDK

HISTORY
Version 1.0.1.178 (Beta 1):
Initial Release

KNOWN ISSUES
* Docs currently work-in-progress
* Examples & Tutorials work-in-progress
* The SDK has not yet been fully tested in C++ Builder
* You have to manually set the proper paths in Delphi/C++ Builder to use the SDK

DOWNLOAD
pyroENGINE SDK (http://www.pyrogine.com/index.php?component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,3/Itemid,58/)

SUPPORT
If you have any problems and/or suggestions & comments about PESDK you can reach us in several ways:
* Our Website - http://www.pyrogine.com
* Via Email - see the README in the distro
* Support Forums - at pyrogine.com and pascalgamedevelopment.com

arthurprs
06-09-2007, 02:13 AM
Recently im using SDL and asphyre and i will try Phoenix and pyro soon

Pyrogine
06-09-2007, 03:48 AM
arthurprs
Great! Let me know if I can assist you.

Over several posts I will talk a little about some of the great features in pyroENGINE. To start off I will speak a little about the Actor System.

In PESDK all objects are derived from a base class called TPEObject. This class implements fundamental functionality that is needed throughout the SDK so that all the different parts work together as a whole. An important feature that this class implement is that it's a node object and can be placed on a double linked list called TPEObjectList. An object can also be assigned attribute values (0-255). This is important because now you can query a group of objects based on these values. An object can be "blue" and be a "powerup" or "red" and can "teleport" for example.

An actor (TPEActor) is the base level object that can exist and have representation in the game world. It has a OnRender, OnUpdate, OnCollide and OnMessage virtual methods that you can override to make your actors behave in a specific way. They live on a derived TPEObjectList class called TPEActorList. You just create an instance of your actor and drop it on a list and during the game loop call the Update and Render methods of the list object and all the actors will come to life. Since an actor can have up to 255 attributes set, if you wish to only render or update certain actors, you just pass this attribute value when you call TPEActorList.Update/Render.

Another object called TPEScene allows you allocate as many lists as you desire to manage a whole scene of actors. For example, you can have your particles on list #0, your player on list #1 and the enemy actors on list #2. When you call TPEScene.CheckCollision you can specify which list to do collision checks on. In this case you would test collisions between the player and an enemy and avoid looping through the many particle objects that would never be part of the collision. This makes collision detection even more efficient. This can be combined with the fast and accurate PolyPoint collision system of the SDK.

In addition to grouping actors by attributes, the object list supports a message system. You can broadcast a message to every actor in the world or expect an actor to respond to your message. An example of using broadcast is where you drop a nuke and it will destroy all objects in the world out to a certain distance. When the nuke spawns, it will send out a message saying "I'm a nuke and if you're are 100 units or less from me you must die." When the actor's gets this message via their OnMessage event handler, then can respond accordingly and destroys themselves.

The TPEEntity object is a high level class that is made from a group of sprite images. It can be positioned, rendered, scaled, rotated and more. It includes such methods as Thrust, RotateToAngle, RotateToPos and many more that can make it really easy to have robust and dynamic objects. For example, the ThrustToPos method can rotate the entity towards a position and it will accelerate towards this position until it reaches a slow down distance at which point it will start to slow down as it comes near. The entity object is derived from TPEAIActor and has a StateMachine that allows you to manage your AI. I will talk more about AI in a future post.

Pyrogine
06-09-2007, 01:39 PM
The AI is based around an event driven state machine. The basic AI class is TPEAIState which has virtual OnEnter, OnExit, OnUpdate and OnRender methods that you can override to add your own functionality. The class to manage these states is TPEAIStateMachine. After you have added your states to the state machine, if you change states, the current state's OnExit method will be called and you can free any resource used, then the new state's OnEnter method will be called and you can set this state up to execute. Next the current state's OnUpdate and OnRender methods will be called each frame to update and render this state. You can also set a global state which will be also be executed along with the current state and you can revert back to a previous state. TPEGame/TPEDemo both have state machines in addition to TPEAIActor and TPEEntity classes.

The PolyPoint collision system (TPEPolyPoint, which the TPEEntity and TPESprite classes have) will auto trace arbitrary shaped sprites (this was not easy to get working) with a polygon outline. The line segments in this polygon is then used to test against intersection, the result is a fast and accurate system for testing collisions between sprites. Since entities are created from a group defined in a TPESprite class, you can also copy the PolyPoint mask from the same group that can be defined in the TPESprite class. This will minimize the trace time when you have multiple entities on screen.

pstudio
06-09-2007, 04:44 PM
Wow. It sounds like you've worked really hard on this engine. And from you list of features and you rdescription it sounds quite impressive. I hope to get a chance to check this out, as soon as I get Delphi installed on my new comp. :D

The only negative thing is that it uses Directx and not OpenGL but I can live with it. ;)

Oh and it sounds really impressive with your auto trace sprite contour :shock:

arthurprs
06-09-2007, 04:52 PM
I actually like to do much as i can with my hands, but these features sounds much great :)

What is the licence of the SDK ?

NecroDOME
06-09-2007, 06:33 PM
Any screenshots?

Pyrogine
06-09-2007, 09:07 PM
pstudio
Thanks. Yea, an enormous amount of work has gone into the SDK. It's been evolving now for more than 10+ years. It represent solutions to all the different problems and circumstances I've dealt with in game development. The engine started back in 1994 as a high speed blitting library for Turbo/Borland Pascal and used Mode 13h (remember that graphics mode. *sigh* that sure does take me back). I've been enhancing it all these years with each new project I've release (or worked on but never finished). As I would run into a new problem and solve it, I then would try and generalize it and add it to the SDK. So, indeed lots of work and now as result, proven solutions that you can take advantage of that "just works." There have been several forks over the years that included a 3D version first using OpenGL then DirectX8. The 3D version was developed when I worked on an unfinished 3D space combat game.

The first shareware game that I released that used the SDK was Astro3D, followed by Astro3D II and Xarlor. A3D1 was 32bit DOS mode 13h and A3D2 and Xarlor used Windows version of the SDK. Man, those were the good old days when I was learning about all this stuff. Forgetting to init your pointer and rebooting your computer because your now trying to write to invalid memory. In fact back in the DOS days, I made a routine called GV_Reboot that did just that, wrote to null pointer and would reboot your system. Hehe. Those where the days. Around 2000 I started working on what would eventually become pyroENGINE. The first project that I released using this new code base was a 2D space combat game called FreeStrike. The prior 3D game I was working was taking way too long to finish so I decided to make some smaller 2D games that I could actually finish in a reasonable amount of time. So I worked on a framework that would allow me to do this where I could make 3-4 games a year before I had to do a major overhaul on the engine. In order to do this, I would need all the features in the SDK to be ready and working where I could concentrate on making the game.

arthurprs
I understand what you mean. I am the same too. The nice thing about PESDK is that it is both low and high level. They are designed to work together, but if you need to just establish the graphics mode and render some textures you can do this. If you want high level objects in your game world with your own entity types, you can just derived your class from TPEActor and implement it yourself. The is the great flexibility that is offered. You can use as much or as little as you like. You want to implement your own collision detection, no problem, just override the Overlap and Collision virtual methods, which is how I've implemented the offered collision system. Overlap check for radius overlap, then Collision calls the PolyPoint collision routines. Very robust in that you can use the SDK the way that you feel most comfortable with. Again, all those years of development with careful thought about implementation is the result.

About the license: you can use it free of charge in your freeware projects and a commercial license is required for any project that you make money from. I am a big believer in high quality, affordable development tools so the commercial license will be very affordable. The final price has not been set, but in the range of $14.95-$19.95US for the 1.x version, no royalties. This way, you use the SDK as long as you desire to see if it meets your needs up to the point where you're ready to ship your product and for a small fee you can go to commercial.

NecroDOME
I will post some screen shots soon. In the meantime the SDK has pre-compiled examples that you can run right away.

arthurprs
06-09-2007, 09:10 PM
Yeah freeware, thats what i like to hear.

Pyrogine
07-09-2007, 03:11 AM
Another interesting feature is support for configuration. For simplicity, I am currently using INI files, there is a TPEIniFile class to deal wih this. In addition to basic INI management there is a TPEConfigFile class that supports the notion of configuration file variables. This class has DefineXXXVar methods where you can define a variable of type boolean, integer, float and string. Now, any data written to these variables will be automatically be saved and loaded from the INI file when TPEConfigFile.Save/Load is called. TPEDemo/TPEGame declares a TPEConfigFile object and loads and saves configuration data automatically for you. You just have to define your variables and forget about manually saving/loading them. There are Init/Load/SaveConfig virtual methods that you can override to do specific things.

Also, the SDK support object streaming. Any object that is a descendant of TPEPersistent can be streamed. After the class type is registered with the streaming system you can override the virtual Save/Load methods to deal with data transport. I first used this object streaming system in Astro3D and it was very effective.

Other features include swap chains, multiple view ports, dynamic textures (you can lock and update your textures in real-time) and texture render targets. I will talk more about these features in a future post.

Pyrogine
08-09-2007, 10:39 PM
PESDK support dynamic updating of your view port and you can even write to multiple view ports during a pass through the render loop. If you need more power, then PESDK supports Swap Chains as well. A good example of using swap chains is when making some type of game editor. I first added swap chains support a few years ago when I started working on a tile editor (I need to finish this). I think I had like 3-4 swap chains active on what I had working of the tile editor. So, swap chain support is in and it is very handy for making tools and other special effects where you need to render to multiple windows.

As a result of adding swap chains I created a class called TPEList to keep track of the chain list. You you can think of it has an extension of Delphi's TList object. TPEList allows you to either add a new pointer or dynamically allocate memory and keep track of it. You reference the pointers in index order like TList. What is nice is that if call TPEList.AddItem(MyPointer, @MyIndexRefVar) you pass a pointer to an integer variable it will write the index to this variable and if the list changes, the index reference to the pointer will automatically be updated. So, if for example you delete a pointer from the list, all the pointers that has reference, the reference variable will be automatically updated to reflect the new value.

I recently added support for 2D positional audio (it will be available in the next build). You can start a sample playing and using PE_Audio_2DPanning/Volume/Frequency routines you are able to dynamically update these values in real-time. PE_Audio_2DFrequency allows you to specify a Doppler shift value. PE_Audio_2DVolume/Frequency both supports a maximum distance to operate over.

PESDK also has plugin support via standard DLLs. Make a dll project and include the pePlugIn unit. You plugins are extended from the the TPEPlugIn class. You simply have add this block of code to the bottom of your plugin dll unit to auto register the PlugInProc when the dll is loaded

// DLL PlugInProc
procedure PlugInProc&#40;aOperation&#58; TPlugInOperation; var aPlugIn; const aFileName&#58; PChar&#41;;
begin
case aOperation of
pioCreate &#58; TPEPlugIn&#40;aPlugIn&#41; &#58;= TPlugIn.Create&#40;PlugInProc, aFileName&#41;;
pioDestroy&#58; PE_FreeNilClass&#40;aPlugIn&#41;;
end;
end;

initialization
// Register DLL PlugInProc
PE_SetPlugInProc&#40;PlugInProc&#41;;


Next create an instance of TPEPlugInManager and after you call TPEPlugInManager.Load('your dll path'), a list of loaded plugins will be in the plugins property. Updates, add-on and other dynamic features are possible with PESDK.

If you just want to dynamically bind to a routine in a dll, you can do this with the TPEDLL class. just call TPEDLL.Bind(MyProc, 'myproc', 'MyDll.dll'). After this call you can call MyProc(). It will keep track of loaded DLLs. You can load/unload them by name.

Pyrogine
12-09-2007, 04:07 AM
Version 1.0.2:
* Updated all demos to used updated TPEGame unit. It will display a startup dialog of which you can click the [more] button to set program options.
* Merged TPEDemo/TPEGame into just TPEGame and added support for plugins.
* Added screenshot support in all the demos.
* Renamed the all the TPEXXXList properities to end with an 's' in TPEGame/Demo. For example TextureList is now Textures and so on.
* Added DynamicSample demo to showcase 2D positional audio support.
* Added routines: PE_Audio_2DPanning, PE_Audio_2DVolume and PE_Audio_2DFrequency to 2D position audio.

DOWNLOAD
pyroENGINE SDK (http://www.pyrogine.com/index.php?component/option,com_docman/task,doc_download/gid,4/Itemid,58/)

wagenheimer
12-09-2007, 04:43 PM
What DirectX version does it requires?

Pyrogine
12-09-2007, 07:31 PM
wagenheimer
DirectX 9, summer 2003 runtime.

In the latest build:
* I reworked the plugin interface. Now it is even easier to use them, just call PE_Plugin_Register (in your DLL's initialization section) and pass in your plugin type.

* The TPEDemo/TPEGame class has now been merged and streamlined (now it called just TPEGame). I basically rewrote it from scratch and now it's much more efficient and easier to work with. I added support for plugins. It will now load any plugins that maybe available on the path specified from the PluginPath variable. This is a TPEConfigFile variable so it will automatically be saved/loaded from the application's config file. You can simply change this path to specify where you want your plugins to be loaded from. By default it will look in a path in the current folder called plugins

Pyrogine
25-09-2007, 12:54 AM
I've added database support in PESDK. It can use DBase3 compatible files/indexes.
program dbftest;
&#123;$APPTYPE CONSOLE&#125;

uses
SysUtils,
peApi,
peDatabase;

var
db&#58; TPEDbFile;

begin
try
db &#58;= TPEDBFile.Create;
try
// define fields in table
db.ClearFieldDefs;
db.AddFieldDef&#40;'Name', ftString, 20&#41;;
db.AddFieldDef&#40;'Score', ftInteger&#41;;
db.AddFieldDef&#40;'Skill', ftString, 10&#41;;

// define index for table
db.ClearIndexDefs;
db.AddIndexDef&#40;'NameIndex', 'Name', ixDescending&#41;;
db.AddIndexDef&#40;'ScoreIndex', 'Score', ixDescending&#41;;

db.Open&#40;'HighScores'&#41;;

db.Empty;
db.ActiveIndex &#58;= 'NameIndex';

db.Append;
db.FieldValues&#91;'Name'&#93; &#58;= 'Mike Jones';
db.FieldValues&#91;'Score'&#93; &#58;= 527455;
db.FieldValues&#91;'Skill'&#93; &#58;= 'Normal';
db.Post;

db.Append;
db.FieldValues&#91;'Name'&#93; &#58;= 'Jimmy Smits';
db.FieldValues&#91;'Score'&#93; &#58;= 7776453;
db.FieldValues&#91;'Skill'&#93; &#58;= 'Easy';
db.Post;

db.Append;
db.FieldValues&#91;'Name'&#93; &#58;= 'Tommy Two Toes';
db.FieldValues&#91;'Score'&#93; &#58;= 999993;
db.FieldValues&#91;'Skill'&#93; &#58;= 'Hard';
db.Post;


if db.Locate&#40;'Name', 'Mike Jones'&#41; then
begin
db.Insert;
//db.Edit;
db.FieldValues&#91;'Name'&#93; &#58;= 'Pyrogine';
db.FieldValues&#91;'Score'&#93; &#58;= 45863;
db.FieldValues&#91;'Skill'&#93; &#58;= 'Hard';
db.Post;
end;


db.Close;
finally
db.Free;
end;
except
on E&#58;Exception do
Writeln&#40;E.Classname, '&#58; ', E.Message&#41;;
end;
end.

This should (hopefully) be in the next build.

arthurprs
25-09-2007, 01:58 AM
I liked a lot the framework =)
porting from asphyre to it now :)

Pyrogine
25-09-2007, 02:26 AM
arthurprs

Good to hear that using PESDK is working out for you. Keep me posted on your progress. If you have questions/comments and/or need help, let me know.

Thanks

Pyrogine
27-09-2007, 10:15 PM
Version v1.0.3.266:
* pyroENGINE Registered Developer license is now available for purchase from our website at www.pyrogine.com.
* Added new Scroll demo that shows and example of doing virtual 4 way parallax scrolling using the TPETexture.RenderTitled method.
* Added TPEGame.BeforeLoadPlugins method so that you can change the plugin path before the plugins try to load and/or if this function returns false it will not attempt to load any plugins.
* Added a new C++ Builder TestBed demo to test pyroENGINE usage with C++ Builder.
* Added C++ Builder header/library and project to build this library. To use PESDK with C++ Builder, just add #include "pyroENGINE.h" in your project.
* Enhanced PE_RunGame routine and TPEGame.Run method with better error handling.
* Renamed TPEGame.Scene property to TPEGame.Scenes.
* Optimized automatic freeing of undisposed resources.
* Added TPEPrototype/TPEGraphicsProtype classes for quick idea prototyping.
* Added basic DBase3 compatible file/index support.