Some time ago, I tried to find free, small multiplayer games that are fun and uncomplicated to play over a LAN. My results were not overly impressive, to say the least. Because I have always been interested in network programming but never got around to writing a network game, I thought, why not provide people (programmers, specifically) with the means to create network games with a minimum of fuss. I started researching and quickly realized that the way to do this was to enhance a scripting language (another area of programming I've always been fascinated by) with easy access to a graphics and network engine. The result from this idea is this work-in-progress project.

At this time, there are neither screenshots (wouldn't be too impressive anyway, it's only a windowed application with some ugly sprites displayed in a box) nor downloads (not interesting enough to try yet), but I can tell you that I got the network code, the heart of the project, working nicely by now.

Powered by scripting language

Features

• Network engine using UDP network protocol
  I spent some time in online forums asking people about network protocols and read lots of articles about Winsock and general network programming, and I decided UDP was the protocol I wanted to use. It is faster than TCP and provides the performance I need for the realtime games I target, it preserveres message boundaries, which is convenient, and its non-reliability is almost neglectible in a normal LAN environment. In fact, I was able to postpone the "reliable send" feature I planned to implement since it works so reliably. I'll do it eventually, of course, but for now simple "unreliable" sends work just fine.
• Scripting engine using the Lua scripting language
  In three words, I love Lua. It's incredibly small and quick, it's pretty easy to enhance with new functions, and it's free for all sorts of projects, even commercial ones. Visit the official Lua homepage.
  The use of Lua in this project is basically to write all the game logic of server and client. Whatever is time critical (like drawing code) or too complicated/impossible to write in Lua (like the network engine) is done in C++, and Lua is provided with an easy-to-use interface to these subsystems. There is already some basic network gaming functionality built into the C++ host application, like automatic transmission of entities, but the Lua program can send/receive messages as well; every Lua object can be serialized and sent over the network.
• Sprite graphics engine using GDI
  Yes, I realize that using GDI, the Windows graphics functions, for a game in 2002 is probably a bit ridiculous. But I tried DirectDraw first and found that for a windowed application, it is inacceptably slow, at least on my graphics card (which admittedly sucks, but I want to be able to use my own programs...): I got about three or four frames per second just blitting the back- to the front buffer. Besides, GDI's hardware independent bitmap format is so convenient to use, it makes my rendering routines so easy and short...
  Currently, I support 8 bit paletted PNG sprites, both opaque and transparent.
• Basic physics engine
  Maybe surprisingly, this part of the project (specifically collision detection; I don't know how much physics beyond bouncing objects off walls/other objects I'm gonna implement) is currently giving me the most headaches. However, I realize the importance of this subsystem: even for the simple "Ping pong" type game I'm writing to test the program, the ball sometimes gets stuck in the wall, so I have do to something more precise here.

We are currently working on a 3d game set in large outdoor terrains. The engine runs under OpenGL and is designed to run smoothly also on systems that don't have cutting-edge hardware (like mine, for instance ;)). A hardware accelerator card supporting OpenGL is required, but I think this is standard in today's (and yesterday's, for that matter) systems. To show you how it currently looks, I have added some screenshots below.
By the way, unlike our first finished project Hit&Run, this will most probably be in English because I just want to have a larger audience. I know my English is far from perfect, but with some help I think I'll be able to write some decent texts.

Good news: a nice guy called Jason McIntosh has contacted me via email, and we are at the moment working on a concept for a weird strategy/RPG game. I don't want to give away any details at the moment, but it sounds like it could be a fun and original game. This might really work out so we end up with a game sometime... You can still mail any story ideas or gameplay concepts to me, but I doubt I will accept them unless they are either _very_ convincing or fit into the existing concept somehow.

If you have been following the development of the engine for some time and have a look at the newer screenshots, you will notice the new, improved terrain texturing. This nice new feature (it is only available in engine versions starting with v0.5) is completely user configurable, so if you are interested in how to do it or the way it's implemented, you might want to check the Texturing doc that includes a short tutorial on creating terrain textures and some specifics on the algorithm itself.

Another recent addition (starting with v0.5) is the capability to display water surfaces. They are implemented in a rather simplistic way: simple textured, alpha-blended, animated quadliterals that are placed into the terrain. This makes them pretty quick to render, and despite this basic technique they can still look very nice. As always, a look at the screenshots will show you what I'm talking about.

The engine is still in an early stage, but you can already download an interactive demo. If you do, I would be very grateful if you sent me details about how it ran on your machine, just read the readme.txt. And for you fellow game programmers out there, I'm always open to any technical questions and propositions!

Features include:

• An implementation of the ROAM algorithm for fast real-time terrain
• Automatically adapting terrain detail to keep frame rate consistent
• Automatic terrain texture generation supporting an arbitrary number of base textures
• Terrain lighting with possible support for a dynamic sun
• Sky box
• Sprites
• Particle systems
• Transparent water surfaces
• Font engine
• Configuration file parser
• Console
• Optional software cursor
• A game DLL concept similar to the one many FPS games employ to facilitate game/mod development
• and many more to come...

Support for adding water surfaces to maps is fully implemented.
The water texture is dynamically offset, making it appear to sway around.





The new terrain texturing. It takes into account height and slope and is highly configurable.





Yet another texturing shot: with only two lines I transformed this landscape into snowy mountains.


Particle effects: After so many internal progresses, I decided
it was time for some eye candy. This looks even better in motion!


Another particle system, this one trying to simulate smoke.


The engine is now becoming highly configurable through the use of config files and this console.


A view at the terrain from above; note the smoother lighting in this version and the font.


Sprite support: sprites don't have to face the viewer, they can be orientated arbitrarily.