Zive Engine -- Accelerate Your Game Development!

Tiptup300 · 11-06-2009, 09:40 AM

Now announcing the project I've been working on for a while. It's just a handy library that helps you create your games as quickly as possible.

- Full Input/Player Manager (Made for both 360 & Zune development)
-- For Zune Development this provides a handy PlayerGamepad class which will help make dealing with player's input a whole lot easier.

- 2D Animation Engine
-- Used in Slaam!, this little tool will take a spritesheet and turn it into a list of animations which you can switch around and modify.

- Advanced Drawing Functions
-- One of the bigger parts of the engine. Without loading in ANY content the engine is able to create/draw gradients, lines, rectangles, circles, & triangles at runtime with no significant hit to the FPS. Very VERY useful for debug physics information.

- Scene Management
-- Manage your games scenes in a very simple manner. Each Scene has a list of states to allow for easy programming of transitions. Also automatically implements the PlayerManager to handle multiple player inputs more easily [360/PC].

- Multithreading System (Made for loading/saving game content)
-- Simple system to load the content, while the game continues to update and has the abillity to show a little animation to show the game is busy while still showing it's not frozen.

- FPS Monitor
-- No more will you have to load in an irritating spritefont JUST to see how fast your game is running. Using the advanced drawing functions you can quickly and efficiently see the fps of the game with no hassle at all.

- Particle Engine
-- WIP

- Powerful Menu System
-- Very VERY robust menu system used in My Contacts, zBlade, & ZuneHome. Can be used for a very large array of different menus.

It should be out soon. I just gotta finish the particle engine and we should be good.

Red Sky · 11-06-2009, 10:50 AM

That sounds awesome. I look forward to its release. Also, what happened to that game you were working on (the one with the circle and the fire particles?)

God · 11-06-2009, 11:18 AM

Sounds very awesome, I will definitely use it if I ever get around to doing anything on the Zune again

Tiptup300 · 11-06-2009, 12:41 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Red Sky

That sounds awesome. I look forward to its release. Also, what happened to that game you were working on (the one with the circle and the fire particles?)

I stopped working on Sperks Mobile to finish the Zive engine first. So I could use the finished version of the Zive engine for it and not have to update the game over and over after each change to the Zive engine. See "My Contacts" for instance. It's running on an older version of the Zive engine. Actually I should probably release the new version of My Contacts.

Cobalthex · 11-06-2009, 01:04 PM

you can use my menu system, ill be releasing about 11 more of them too that you can use

BlackFox · 11-06-2009, 02:00 PM

W00t! Can't wait to use this in my games.

Berty · 11-06-2009, 05:44 PM

AHHHH, WHYYYY..........now i will never have the need to learn properly.............THANKS!

Tiptup300 · 11-07-2009, 12:54 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cobalthex

you can use my menu system, ill be releasing about 11 more of them too that you can use

The Zive menu engine doesn't draw anything. It's just the guts the engine. You have to make the menu your self.

Red Sky · 11-07-2009, 08:39 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Berty

AHHHH, WHYYYY..........now i will never have the need to learn properly.............THANKS!

In any professionally made game, they almost always use game engines (think of Havok physics, Unreal Engine, the Crytek engine, etc.). I guess you could say that the developers 'never learn properly,' but it expedites programming. Essentially, that's what XNA is to begin with... you don't really learn properly by using a ton of prebuilt libraries that make up the XNA framework.

BlackFox · 11-07-2009, 10:06 AM

So, I'm not sure I competely understand what an engine does. Someone explain to a noob?

Cobalthex · 11-07-2009, 02:41 PM

an engine makes game development easier, like instead of having to write your own graphics renderer, map renderer, physics handling, etc. a game engine automates all of it.

also, red sky, all programmers using engines have a thorough knowledge of C++ and the libraries (like DX, etc.), i can pretty much guarantee that

Berty · 11-07-2009, 03:34 PM

ima take wat both of u said and state this............Developers do not often practice full blown programming but yet practice using engines to simplify and accelerate game development!

Red Sky · 11-07-2009, 09:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Cobalthex

also, red sky, all programmers using engines have a thorough knowledge of C++ and the libraries (like DX, etc.), i can pretty much guarantee that

I am aware of that, but it's not quiet so cut and dry. They might be able to whip up a decent engine that does something (we'll use physics for example), but in the short amount of time that they have to make a game, there's almost certainly no way it will be as polished or realistic as if they purchase the engine from a company who specializes in making that engine. That's also why I said

'so I guess you could say,'

More or less I was illustrating a point.

Tiptup300 · 11-08-2009, 12:40 AM

Professional developers who use engines nearly always have the knowledge and general know how to build the engine themselves. The engines aren't there to teach them anything, it's just to save time so the developer doesn't have to create all these functions, methods, and overall framework from scratch for each and every game.

Tiptup300 · 11-20-2009, 09:29 PM

Also, the Zive Engine will probably not have a particle engine. I still have a limited knowledge of them and I don't want to release any "weak" code. I am currently reprogramming Slaam! from the ground up using Zive so half of the development that goes into that will go into updating the Zive engine to better accommodate a wider range of scenarios for different game designs. This does not mean that any of the Zive will be custom tailored for Slaam! in any way.

Also, added a FontManager, a NetworkingManager, and a few more misc. classes to help game development. (Transitions, Throttles, RedirectionLists) things like that.