Possible Inkubator Project

[geezusfreeek]

Recent (and not so recent) posts in the game design section of the forums have made me think....

I had sort of recently made a topic about customizable, scripted game engines. I wasn't planning on implementing it.

That worms/lemmings game idea has become quite popular. One of the more recent posts in that topic brought back my old idea of the naked guy running around in public. It also mentioned a flexible, scriptable game engine. In the context of that particular post, he meant that an engine me made for the worms/lemmings game and then modded to make the naked guy game.

My proposal is not a game, but an engine. A flexible engine. Not necessarily a development environment such as Coldstone, but a just fleshed out, scriptable engine. There can be sub-projects, such as the worms/lemmings game and the naked-guy game, running on the engine, but the main project is the engine.

My basic vision is what is described here (minus the lame/incomplete example game ideas):

http://www.idevgames.com/forum/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1666

I am not 100% sure yet whether I want to make this a project or not. I want to know who's interested and how much help there would be. If I can find even one other person willing to help from the very beginning, then it's pretty much a definite go. If it looks like I will have to start all by myself (more likely), then I may or may not go with this.

[Feanor]

I don't know if you just haven't noticed, but engine-writing is not that popular with a certain subset of members. I myself have nothing against them, but I wait with interest to read OSC's response.

I will mention that there are already a lot of engines in progress all over the internet, and maybe one or more of them might be appropriate as a foundation for your game ideas. In which case, would it not be better to offer your efforts to them, instead of starting yet another engine?

Then again, it may make sense to look at the Hooptie codebase and consider what can be abstracted from that, extended, and made into a resource- and script-driven system, and voila! your engine.

[geezusfreeek]

True. I have no intentions of making this an unnecessarily from-scratch project. I plan to use any libraries that will make it easier. If there is a lower-level engine to build upon that is even better. Basically whatever will get the job done cleanly and with as little overhead as possible.

Most 2D engines with any power are too specialized, most designed strictly for RPGs, or, at best, tile-based games. I have yet to see a decent 2D engine with a good basis for arcade and action games along with powerful scripting.

[Kjurtyl]

Hmm.. if your intention is to head towards something other than a tile-based game then most of Hooptie's drawing routines would have to be modified if not scrapped. Considering that's a large portion of the code in itself, I question the wisdom of such a move.

What's your opinion of SpriteWorld, too specialized? It seems to be more along the lines of what you are looking for although it could use some "modernizing". Granted, it's more a library than an engine but I think the idea is that a set of frequently used functions for 2D is probably better than a full fledged engine. As for scripting ... hmm...

I realize I'm not doing much else than musing on your proposal but I would say keep your idea in mind for now. I am currently looking into 2D OpenGL with Cocoa and I think I've finally come to terms with it. Right now it's nothing more than a few test projects but perhaps after Hooptie is publicly released our ideas might meet.

- Kjurtyl.

[geezusfreeek]

My specific ideas on what is too specialized are probably not far different from SpriteWorld. I haven't looked at the source code, but judging from the way the game feels, I would say that the uDG game Smiley Tag runs on an engine similar to what I was thinking.

I've been thinking about concepts and stuff, but no real planning has been made on this yet.

[ededed]

I dont mean to sound evil but why would it matter whether a certain subset of iDevGamers dont want to write and engine? Wouldn't it be best to get those who do to try and create one?

Then again, it may make sense to look at the Hooptie codebase and consider what can be abstracted from that, extended, and made into a resource- and script-driven system, and voila! your engine.
I really dont think this engine should be grid based.

This engine could be very extendible if it was scriptible and allowed lots of additions it could be used as an RTS engine, a RPG engine or even a naked guy engine (tactical espionage).

[OneSadCookie]

You can ignore our advice all you want.

Just let us say "We told you so" later ;)