iDevGames

The Bork3D Game Engine was built for mobile platforms. It actually has its roots in Rude Engine, a high-performance graphics library for Pocket PC, Symbian and N-Gage. Performance and scalability is considered in every corner of the Bork3D Game Engine. If performance is a criteria for you, seriously consider this engine. Features include: all the source code, OpenGL ES abstraction layer, Debug-rendering API, Component-oriented game object system, High-performance static and boned mesh rendering system w/ tool pipeline for 3dsmax, Maya and Collada, Integration with the Bullet Physics SDK and more. f you or your business earns less than $100,000 per year you qualify for the $49 per developer Indy License. The Professional License is $199. (See the license agreement for exact details). Don’t let the price fool you. We’re just undercutting the competitors to get your attention.

• Related Link: http://bork3d.com

Power Game Factory is a game creation tool written in REALbasic. Released by Sawblade Software, it has now been open-sourced. This game engine is great for 2D side-scrolling action/adventure games. It features an easy to use graphical user interface and can compile stand-alone game applications that take advantage of the latest graphical technologies.

Power Game Factory is capable of producing games similar to many of the most highly regarded 8-bit and 16-bit console video games, but with far superior graphics and sounds. Best of all, no programming is required.

You’ll need a SourceForge account and REALbasic to take advantage of this game creation tool. Version 1.0 was released for the Macintosh in 2005, and the software received a substantial update in February 2009. The compiled engine includes a sample game called ‘Eskimo vs. Snowmen game.’ (see screenshot)

Related Links:

• Power Game Factory Game Engine: Source Code
• Sawblade Software

Unity Technologies, the developers of the Unity game engine, have announced that they are releasing the indie version of the game engine for free.

Today at the Unite Conference, Unity Technologies, the leading provider of the multi-platform game development platform for Web, PC, Mac, Wii and iPhone, announced that version 2.6 of its Unity Platform is available and that the feature-packed Unity (formerly known as Unity Indie and priced at $199) is now available at no cost at http://unity3d.com/unity/download to make it possible for all developers to get access to the best development platform available. Unity Pro will continue to be priced at $1,499 per license.

Addition info can be found in the Official Press Release.

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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A new release of the SIO2 game engine for the iPhone and iPod Touch has been released featuring improved stability and enhanced support for OpenGL ES v1.1. This release also includes numerous bug fixes and major
optimization — performance is up to 40% faster! SIO2 1.4 also include a new action strip based animation system, faster, smaller and more flexible than any previous versions. SIO2 can be used for free or for commercial products. The SIO2_SDK comes with a set of 20 tutorials, and video tutorials, documentation, online support through forum, email and IM, and also include outsourcing services.
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0 A.D. is a free, cross-platform, under-development, 3D, historically-based, real-time strategy game. If you’ve played or seen Microsoft’s Age of Empire series, then you’ll have a good idea of this RTS game. The developers recently announced that the code available as GPL and the art content is available as CC-BY-SA.

here’s roughly 150K lines of C++ for the game engine, and another 25K for editing tools. Gameplay scripting uses JavaScript. We build on top of low-level libraries (OpenGL, OpenAL, ENet, …), not an existing game engine (like OGRE). The code isn’t all extremely clean or extremely modular or extremely well-written. It’s been written by a wide variety of programmers, and it’s far from a “completed” codebase. We want to continue cleaning things up as part of the normal development process. We’re not averse to rewriting entire subsystems if that’s the most effective way to make them satisfy our requirements. But in many areas it’s quite solid.

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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.

Related Links:

• Atmosphir
• Torque Game Builder

Verge3 is a 2D game engine focused on making it easier to create 2D RPGs, similar to games from the Super Nintendo and Genesis 16-bit era of gaming (or earlier). Recent versions of this free project has added the ability to use Lua to script Verge games. VergeC, or just VC, is the C-like scripting language that is used to create the various aspects of Verge games, such as map events, menus, inventory, battle system, etc. verge3 is comprised of two applications, MapEd3 and ChrMak5. MapEd3 is the Verge3 Map Editor. It is a development tool that you can use to create and edit custom maps for Verge3 to use. You can edit and place tiles, set up obstructions and events, and do other map-related stuff. ChrMak5 is a character maker that creates Verge3 .chr files. This is an image file with a set of character animations on it. Unfortunately, these two vital tools are not currently available for the Mac, but have been under development for some time. There is however a SDL-based playable of a tech demo called “The Sully Chronicles” that runs on the Mac. fmod sound library is utilized to play all music and sound effects. The SVN does contain an Xcode project for adventurous C++ programmer who wants to help accelerate the Mac OS X release of Verge3. Please note that the tech demo will cause some chaos to your desktop icons.

Related Links:

• verge 3: Free 2D Game Engine
• Lua – The programming language

Platinum Arts Sandbox is standalone 3D Game Maker and 3D Game Design program currently based on the cube 2 engine. This open source application allows kids and adults to create their own video games, worlds, levels, adventures and quests. The developers claim that it is easy enough for kids to use but powerful enough for full game projects. Side-scrolling and RPG games can be made and it even features a powerful scripting language as well as the ability to import md2, md3, md5 and obj model formats. Version 2.3 adds:

• New 3D sidescroller Mario like mode
• Hotkeys that make it easier to save games, add materials
• Maps now generate cfgs on save! Also many various map tweaks
• Tons of under the hood bug fixes and features

Sandbox runs on Mac, Linux and Windows and contains code project files for VS, Codeblocks, Linux makefile and Xcode.

Related Links:

• Sandbox 3D Game Maker
• Cube Engine
• Power Game Factory

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:

1. TBA
2. TBA
3. TBA
4. Unity 3D – PC, Mac, iPhone, Wii
5. Blitz Games Studios – PS3, Xbox 360, Wii, PSP, PC
6. Infernal Engine – Xbox 360, PS3, PC, Wii, PS2, PSP
7. Vision Engine 7.5 – PC (DX9 & 10), Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, Wii
8. Bigworld Technology Suite – PC, Xbox 360, PS3, iPhone, PSP, DS, mobile devices
9. Vicious Engine – PC, Xbox 360, PS3 (VE2); PSP, PS2, Wii (VE)
10. 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.

Related Links:

• Start your engine
• Blender Game Engine
• Crystal Space 3D