After a long absence due to exams and a lot of other work the Project Epsylon is back with a lot of news. The main work went into reworking the rendering engine to use a technique which is commonly dubbed Deferred Shading. One of the main benefits of this technique is that you can have much more lights than using conventional rendering and therefore you have much better control over the mood of your game. To take full control of this the Drag[en]gine has received a sophisticated Lighting system giving the game designer a lot of precise controls. One of the new parameters is ( besides others ) the Attenuation Exponent. This little fella allows you to shape your lights in a way not many game engines allow you to. Here just an collection of examples playing with this parameter ( all four detail images can be found here: Exp 2, Exp 1, Exp 10, Exp 20 ).
Furthermore the Effect Stack has been reworked. This facility allows the game designed to stack together post processing effects as well as geometry effects to alter the outcome of the rendering. Anything from simple blurring over to complex post processing can be done using this system. The world editor contains an own Effect Stack Window so you can test your Effect Stacks right away in a WYSIWYG fashion. There are a couple of example screenshots of effects in the gallery ( blur, desaturate, night vision ) including this screenshot of the editor in action.
As you can see, the Dra[en]gine is destined to provide lots of power for creative minds out there, no matter what budget class you work for. Besides those changes the Terrain System is heavily worked on by our terrain master. The results so far are very promising but we will not disclose more at this time. Just be assured that good stuff is coming along nicely.
Don't forget to click the full size links to see the images at their full resolution.
Until the next time for more updates.
![Drag[en]gine](https://media.indiedb.com/cache/images/engines/1/1/9/crop_120x90/banner_large.png)
Looking good!
Interesting lighting effects, sound like quite a bit of fun to screw around with. I really can't wait to get my hands on the engine so I can mess around with it.
I'm always watching your updates with interest. One step follows the next one precisely and in cold logic, enhancing the engine and multiplying its power each time. Quite impressive!
Will the Draggine one day support normal maps as well? I wonder where this project is going to. Is it possible to compare the final built to any other engine you had in mind while creating the project? Really curious about this. It might give "standalone modding" (I still find that expresion somewhat contradictive) a whole new stand!
Thanks again for coding this treasure chest!
SinKing
Nice dragon posing in exponent screens :D!
@SinKing
The engine already supports Normal Maps. Just have a look at the ground. It's a sort of "carpet" texture with a normal map. The dragon has none yet since there is no finished high polygon mesh yet.
What goes for the aim of the project it is clear: an AAA grade engine under the GPL ( hopefully boosting Linux Gaming for those still in doubt to venture there ). This is what I'm working for.
Concerning comparing the engines it will be a bit problematic since most engines ( especially AAA grade ones ) are black boxes and even as a licensed developer you not change much without a lot of rewriting. Hence those engines have a feature list and if your feature of interest is not listed you have to look somewhere else. Furthermore if the engine doesn't run for some strange reason on a gamers hardware it is usually futile to hope for a patch ( too many possible system configurations to support by one company ). So this is where my engine is different in that it has no fixed features. What features there are depends on the gamer and his choice of Modules. Also if something doesn't work with your hardware you can get yourself another Module until you find a combination which runs optimal on your system. Hence a comparisson is not easy since this engine here tries to accomplish a completely different goal than commercial engines ( resuability and adaptable by the gamer versus money making by blackboxing and licensing ). I hope this answers your questions.
excellent answer and I finally understood what you mean by "module system". I wasn't quite able to understand the concept before. Keep your style and have good luck and success with it!