Posted on March 1st, 2010 by Carlos Camacho
The Franklin Group released Franklin 3D 1.0, a professional 3d game and simulation engine that integrates with Runrev 4, the cross platform software design system from Mirye Software and Runrev. Franklin 3D 1.0 for Runrev Pro can build cross-platform, hardware accelerated games for Mac OS X (with OpenGL). Franklin 3D includes over 400 methods, including support for display control, model loading and callbacks. It includes the engine plus a collection of example projects.
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Posted on November 13th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
The ShiVa Editor allows developers to publish games and applications for the Web, PC, Mac and iPhone. This release adds stunning new visual effects expected in next-generation games such as depth of field, velocity blur, cascaded shadow maps algorithm, infinite ocean simulation with advanced shading system, dynamic textures, video streaming, Voice-Over-IP, DWF import, etc. The developer, Stonetrip, has also made a number of performance improvements.
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Posted on August 2nd, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
The Baja Engine provides a top quality 2d and 3d renderer based on OpenGL. Rendering scales across multiple screen resolutions and aspect ratios without the need to change your code. (Renders are consistent and high quality across all hardware configurations. When necessary, the renderer degrades to work on older hardware.)
Baja also includes extensive 2d rendering support for game interfaces and 2d games. Baja features exciting next generation technologies such as realtime reflections, high-quality water using shaders, and displacement mapping. It also includes framebuffer effects like blur and glow. Baja’s scripting environment incorporates Lua.
Baja runs on both Windows and Mac OS X — your game will run on both platforms with absolutely no changes to level files or source code. Your game content (textures, scripts, models) can also be packed into compiled files to protect your intellectual property. All this can then be packed into a commercial-quality installer that looks as good as any game put out by a large studio.
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Posted on July 16th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Cross-platform game creation tools seem to be on our agenda this week. Today, we highlight Atmosphir, a free Nintendo-like 3D adventure game and creation tool. In a nutshell, this is a 3D platform game with a very slick level editor. The level editor allows you to create new maps (worlds) and populate them with custom characters, challenges, platforms all without programming. This is done by dragging and dropping bridges, platforms, doors, objects hazard props in a 3D isometric view — very intuitive and LEGO-like. Atmosphir runs on the Mac and PC and plans for consoles are also in the works. Although it is strictly single-player game, the developers are working towards adding multi-player options in future versions.
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Posted on July 6th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Cafu, formally known as Ca3D-Engine, is coming to Mac OS X. Cafu is a 3D engine that boasts multi-player network support and cross-platform portability. Written in C++, it currently runs on Windows and Linux (GCC 3.x and 4.x). Features include:
- First engine ever to combine light-maps with dynamic lighting effects!
- Radiosity-based, physically correct lighting.
- Dynamic, shader-driven, per-pixel lighting for both worlds and models.
- Support for ATI and NVidia programmable GPUs and shaders.
- Employs fmod for all sound, audio and music effects.
- A powerful Graphical User Interface (GUI) System (or short: GuiSys) is integrated with the engine.
- Can directly import models in ase, mdl (Half-Life 1) and md5 (Doom 3) model file formats. (Importers for 3ds, lwo, obj, mdl2 (Half-Life 2) file formats are in preparation.)
- Provides continuous-level-of-detail, permitting very large out-door scenes.
- Supports Scripting based on the Lua programming language!
- Full support for curved surfaces (Bezier Patches) as seen in Doom 3, from the CaWE editor through preprocessing to dynamic lighting and shadows.
While not open source, Cafu licensing is within the reach of most indie developers. Be sure to drop the developer a note if you wish to encourage or help him speed up his Mac port.
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Posted on June 24th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Develop Mag, a UK-based website for game developers has a series of articles that rank the best game engines for game development. The article kicks off with a look at the console market amid the current economic situation with Start your engines.
Each of the 10 engines featured in this month’s round-up (starting over the page) has, in its latest release, improved its toolset to enable rapid iteration (if it wasn’t using that as its USP anyway). Gone are the days of twiddling your thumbs waiting for the latest build to tick along and then almost inevitably fail; now designers, artists and programmers can instantly change object placement, parameters and even whole scripts without requiring a recompilation.
The top 10 thus far are:
- TBA
- TBA
- TBA
- Unity 3D – PC, Mac, iPhone, Wii
- Blitz Games Studios – PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PSP, PC
- Infernal Engine – Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii, PS2, PSP
- Vision Engine 7.5 – PC (DX9 & 10), Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii
- Bigworld Technology Suite – PC, Xbox 360, PS3, iPhone, PSP, DS, mobile devices
- Vicious Engine – PC, Xbox 360, PS3 (VE2); PSP, PS2, Wii (VE)
- Torque 3D – PC, Mac, Xbox 360, Wii, iPhone, PS3, PSP
With Unity 3D only making number four in their list, it will be interesting to see the top three engines.
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Posted on June 21st, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Panda3D is a 3D engine — a library of subroutines for 3D rendering and game development. Game development with Panda3D usually consists of writing a Python or C++ program that controls the Panda3D library. It runs on Lac, Linux and windows and includes tools to package games into redistributables. Features include:
- Special Maps: Normal Map, Gloss Map, Glow Map
- HDR Rendering: Tone Mapping, Bloom Filter
- Cel Shading: Threshold Lighting, Inkin
- Performance Monitoring
- Full Python Integration with debugging tools
- Convenient installer packages for Windows, Mac OS X and Linux
- Powerful interface between shaders and engine
Panda3D is open-source, cross-platform and free for any purpose, even commercial development.
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Posted on May 27th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Cube 2: Sauerbraten is a free multiplayer/singleplayer first-person shooter, built as a major redesign of the Cube FPS. It’s been almost a year since the last release and there have been many changes:
- new playermodel, IronSnout X10K
- new weapon models
- new sound track
- new splash screen and logo
- 28 new multiplayer maps!
- 1 new singleplayer map
- new “protect” and “insta protect” game modes
- bots that work for both MP and offline play
- ragdoll physics
- texture blending and new flame/smoke particles for map editing
- in-game movie recording and also PNG screenshots
- new engines features like ZIP archive support, better grass, pre-compressed DXT1/3/5 textures for faster loading, fixed-function shadowmaps & dynamic lights, low cost blob shadows, particle culling, faster shader loading, revised post-process effect system, and more
- support for custom server ports, server passwords, public key crypto, and server-init.cfg for easier server configs
The engine supporting the game is entirely original in code and design, and its code is Open Source (ZLIB license, read the docs for more on how you can use the engine).
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Posted on April 15th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Nebula Device is an Open Source realtime 3D game/visualization engine, written in C++. This 3D Engine runs on Mac, Windows, Linux, Irix, and Xbox. It includes scripting via TCL, Python and LUA. Current progress on the Mac OS X port is not know, however the engine does seem very promising.
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Posted on April 11th, 2009 by Carlos Camacho
Panda3D is free 3D Engine that can be used for any purpose, even commercial development. Panda3D has tutorials and an active support forum. Highlights of this engine include full Python integration, performance monitoring, depth & shadow textures, installers for multiplatforms, Cg shader language, sample programs, HDR rendering and Cel Shading. The Mac OS X one-step installer includes everything you need to get started with Panda3D: the engine, the python libraries, tons of utilities, and lots of sample programs. Currently, it requires Mac OSX 10.5 (Leopard) and the NVIDIA Cg Toolkit.
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