The Drag[en]gine is an free software project with a highly modular structure based on the GLEM System. Its design is similar to an operating system. The entire functionality is provided by Modules comparable to device drivers. The engine itself acts like a system kernel managing modules, resources and abstracting the underlying system. Due to the loose coupling of the modules with the system and other modules it is very easy to exchange or improve them without interfering with the rest of the engine. As a result the modularity extends from the developer to the end user who can now choose the optimal module combination for his personal computer even down to per game setups ( and even while running a game ) if required. Developers do not have to worry anymore about low level concerns keeping them concentrated on their game. In contrary to other engines (including high-end commercial ones) the Drag[en]gine provides true 0-Day portability of games with no extra costs and no troubles neither for the developer nor the end user.
Advantages of the Drag[en]gine
... for the Game Designer:
- Use your Scripting Language of choice.
- Hardware is fully abstracted. You only have to know how your chosen Scripting Language works
- Updating the engine and modules is handled by the respective teams. You only have to worry about updating your game
- No need to write specific content for specific systems. The users choice of modules takes care of this for you
... for the Module Coder:
- Play around with individual parts of the engine without disturbing any other part. Test easy and fast new algorithms or features
- Various debugging features help to debug fast and easy modules even during run-time
- Loose coupling and high encapsulation yields in a more stable game engine
- Platform specific code is only handled in modules increasing portability
... for the Customer:
- Choose the optimal combination of modules for your system. The Drag[en]gine adapts to match your system not the other way 'round!
- Open standards and free file formats ensure unrestricted and easy modding using free software applications
- Various Launchers allow you to use the Drag[en]gine for more than just gaming
- The Crash Recovery System prevents a game from crashing to desktop. While CRS is running change parameters or entire modules and continue your game from where it went out for lunch.
For more information check out the Drag[en]gine Wiki.
Features
Due to the modular nature a fixed list of engine features as other engines provide is not possible since it all depends on the customer's choices. To avoid cluttering the summary find the features list in this article:
Articles
Audio System Improvements
Most of the work this time went into improving the Audio System. The audio system up to this point had been rather basic. I always had bigger plans for the audio system before doing the first release of the game engine. Now has been the time to do so.
I never liked to manually place audio zones to simulate different environments often requiring lengthy pre-production steps to calculate audio data. This approach is slow, cumbersome and especially fights against agile game developing. For me it is important to be able to modify content on the fly as I work on it with little friction. Present time game engines are just poor at this task. So the main goal for the audio system had been:
- Does not require pre-production computation
- Does not required manually placing audio zones
- Automatically modifies audio parameters as the environment changes
- Does not require proprietary middle-ware or frameworks
- Does not depend on GPU, OpenCL or these new RT chips to produce a basic result.
Out of all these conditions the new created Audio System arouse. The system only runs on CPU and does use a ray-tracing based approach to simulate audio in a dynamic way. This leaves OpenCL or other hardware acceleration as bonus options to improve the accuracy and performance of the results.
Physically plausible sound has been one part of the changes. It is now also possible to use layer masks for microphones, speakers and components. This allows now to fine tune which speaker can be hear by microphones and which components affect sound between the two. This opens up a lot of possibilities for game mechanics with no extra work.
I've also created a Demo Audio Test Application to show-case the different scenarios I wanted to get working. This test application will be available as Drag[en]gine Game Project for download and learning once the game engine is released. The video below shows the demo application with all the test rooms (so it is maybe a bit lenghty).
These texture properties have been added for use with the Audio System:
- sound.absorption
- sound.absorption.lower
- sound.absorption.upper
- sound.transmission
- sound.transmission.lower
- sound.transmission.upper
- sound.none
Behavior Elements
Besides working on the Audio System I've also put in place the Behavior Elements. This had been another component which I wanted to be present in the game engine before the first release.
Basically the behavior elements are based on the existing Scenery Elements system the Epsylon game project is build upon. While this is a powerful and flexible system it requires still a considerable amount of scripting to achieve all the results. The behavior elements add a layer that allows to compose behaviors to do fast, reusable and dynamic game development even for complex projects which is just a pain to do with other game engines.
Since underneath the behavior elements are just composed elements they retain all the power of them but expose their power with little amount of scripting (and reusable on top of it).
I'm not going to add more text here. The system is described on the Wiki and I'll add more documentation for it as time goes by.
Coming Next
With the Audio System and Behavior Elements out of the way there are now only 2 topics left before the first release can be done. We are getting closer to the best part.
In the mean time... don't get your ass bitten :D
Dynamic Conversation in the Security Park
Epsylon 1 commentHere it is, the 2nd Part of the News Updates. This time we visit the Security Park and enjoy some Dynamic Conversations.
From Zero To DELGA
News 1 commentHow quickly you get started with the Drag[en]gine Game Engine and the IGDE.
Investigate the Main Menu
Epsylon 3 commentsImproved XML Gui-Theming and new Interactive Main Menu with a bit of detective theme.
Colorful Lights And Skies
Epsylon 3 commentsSometimes you need to put some fancy colors into Lights and Skies. The Drag[en]gine makes this easy and fun.
Games
Epsylon
AdventureEpsylon - The Guardians of Xendron takes the player on a journey to a futuristic world investigating a very special Science-Fiction setup. With a team...
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Hello. Can someone point me, where can I download Drag[en]gine? I can not find it on theyr website, can't find on their Wiki, nor could I find it here. No prebuilt engine, no modules, no sources, nothing. How can I try it?
It's not available to the public yet. There are a few things I need to clean up and finalize first before I open up the repository. I prefer a solid first release than endless patchwork.
wow, this engine looks really promising. Sadly I use a mac and can't run it, Is there any plans for a mac version? It wouldn't be to hard to port it if it runs on Linux.
The engine is POSIX based. Only thing that has to be ported is the launcher as the rest would work out of the box. Only problem: I've no access to a mac. If anybody donates a mac strong enough to run advanced graphics it could be done. Otherwise I'm afraid not for the near future.
Darn, the problem is that macs are fairly pricy, It would be hard to find a person willing to donate a up to date mac.
Also just wondering, what is the launcher written in?
They are written in C++. This is though not mandatory. Every language able to link to a C++ library can be used to write a launcher.
Looking for some updates, I have hi hopes for this engine. Anyway to keep the mouse pointer a normal pointer tho?, that looks like it will stunt my productivity.
The updates are there (huge ones) but it's all too connected to split apart. I'll inform in due time. Concerning the mouse pointer it is just my developer system. Neither the game engine nor the design tools force any mouse pointer on you. That would be really stupid :D
Really love the video and how the dragon was modeled
Hi, could this be used for example, to make a game that's a combination between Civ and Total War?
In general you can use it for any kind of game. The engine is build on prodiving a generic approach with common game building elements without limiting you on a certain game type.