It's something I've thought about a lot.(the relevance of making my own entire engine)

The main shindig in my motivations here is that I want full access to what's going on behind the scenes. I like working with systems I know everything about.
Royalties are another issue. Using other peoples'/companies' engines brings up the question "What do you want so I can use your engine?". Which almost always involves money.

I'll only be reinventing the wheel as much as I have to. I'll probably draw in as much outsourced code as I can to provide functionality early on. Over time I plan on replacing all the code that has costly royalties associated with it.

My goal is to create my own environment to work with. While I would be much better off using another engine,(not to mention-- As you said, the time it would save) I'd like to have my own 'platform' to work with. Partly for the sake of just saying 'I made an engine', but not entirely.

As for cross-platform considerations, I want as many people as possible to play games I make. I'm going to try to make it as dynamic as possible, but I'd probably take the platform-constraint if I had to so I could provide functionality. And eventually work out of that over time. My main concern is that it works on Windows, and that's not really something I'll have to worry about.

Thanks much to everyone for the support and criticism so far!

I might pop in tomorrow.

I think a good substitute for 'bad' in this case is 'subject to (at least moderately) heavy criticism'.

My recommendations are:

a) Unless you actually use other platforms then you may want to consider cross platform support. Certainly you can make the decision to decide what libraries to use, but just remember that if you don't actually understand the platforms that you want to port to, then your own code is likely to contain code which won't be cross platform compatible any ways. Secondly, if you don't use those platforms how do you expect to test code on them? So for now, just concentrate on a single platform (Say Windows for the PC) and then either learn how to get it onto the other platforms later or pay someone to do it for you.

b) A lot of the things you have planned out are just basic necessities of graphics, sounds and input. But there doesn't seem to be much in the way of handling interactions between entities (physics).

c) Tool sets, will you have any?

The layout you have at the bottom is pretty simplistic, but it depends on the types of games you plan to support. At the moment, a simple arcade game could probably use that sort of layout.

As I've been told before, in order to make a good, decent game engine, there needs to be case examples, otherwise all you're really doing is making a tech demo.

Thank you for the advice!

En response:

a) I have Linux, Mac, and Windows in mind mainly. I have copies of all mentioned OS', and have the ability to test the engine on all of them.

b) I have a custom collision engine, but it lacks triangle->triangle collisions. It's not *physics*, though.

c) I uhhh...  

I guess this could be conisdered more of a framework as I currently have it.

What would you recommend as far as layout?

As far as case examples-- I'm not sure to how answer that one.

@ latest post
That's great advice, thank you.
The engine's purpose is for myself/team projects.
Either one or several games will be made with this, and I'd like it to be flexible between 3D and 2D game programming. I doubt I'd release it to other developers-- Unless I decided to go and create documentation for it.

Eek. I have had this deadly fear of animating basically every frame from scratch 

Oh well, I'll go for it!

I'm currently building a C++ engine, with the use of OpenGL and OpenAL mainly.(for cross-platform and freedom of royalties)

Where is some good documentation for designing an engine? Or likewise, does anyone here have any helpful advice on how I should?

So far I only have basic engine functionality planned out:
Image support(PNG, BMP, GIF(?) loading)
Sound support(WAV, OGG Vorbis loading)
Keyboard support
Timer support
Small vector-based math extension
3D rendering support(not sure how much I'm going to put 'behind the hood' yet)
Joystick support(maybe, eventual addition)
Achievement system support(entirely unnecessary, but it'll save time in my long run if I want them)
Instance manager classes(vector and map containers available)
--Including image and sound resource managing classes.

What else is there?
Everything I'm making has an abstraction layer to the API-specific code, so much of this functionality could be easily ported to other 3D or sound APIs, etc.

Right now I'm currently using a function layout for my project very similar to how it's done in XNA:

Code:

namespace Z4R
{
    class Game
    {
        private:
        //Initialize all game-wide data here
        resource_manager gfxResourceContext;

        public:
        void Init()
        {
            //Place user created code here
        }

        void Logic()
        {
            //Place all logic here
        }

        void Draw()
        {
            //Place all draw code here
        }

        void CleanUp()
        {
            //Place all code for cleaning up resources, after the process is terminated.
        }
    };
}

Everything is way too stiff. try doing that same thing and you notice ur whole arm moves to get the gun momentum.

It would also be a nice touch to have the body move.

Yeah, I went and did it myself,(After failing several times at spinning my cheap airsoft gun.) and noticed a lot was wrong.

I'm not sure how the rest of the body would move, but I agree. Maybe I could make the shoulders adjust a little bit to go along with the rotating motion.

Just an early animation w/o colors or any touch-ups.

I'm looking for crits on the motion. Is how fast the gun spins a problem to anyone? If it is, any ideas how I can make it look smoother?(without increasing the animation frames)

I demand an Android port.

(even though I've already bought it and am loving it in all it's portable goodness.)

I'm under the impression they have extra support for use in Flash-- Because he mentions the TTF files are there.(TTFs are a standard font type, and most software supports it.)

Just install it to your OS's Font folder(Usually can be done through right click, depending on OS), and it should appear on any font list dialog, including those in Game Maker's Font editor.

I agree with abbreviation in some cases. OpenGL uses a kind of abbreviation I generally agree with.
Example being glVertex3f. gl means it's an OpenGL function, 3f means you're using 3 floating numbers as the arguments. It's hardly an obstruction, and I think necessary.(if not necessary, helpful and useful.)

But in the case of using 'm_' I disagree. It's unnecessary and I've found it to be only a burden to using the variable. If you have two variable names clashing, then simply, that's your fault.

There's also the case of "my", which in some cases I do agree with. But again, I think it's just obstructive to use it large quantities.

[EDIT]
"this->" is a really good method, I think. It's simple, and you still have clean variables to work with. When you're working with variables that might clash, you just throw that in front of the member variables.

I'm currently decrypting the package files for Borderlands. Whooo~! So excited. Let's do some co-op, TIGuys(/girls) 

Cheers for epic manbaby post 


No, I don't believe there is. The list should pretty much make itself after you've played a couple of the games from each genre.

Quick and dirty, but there's a lot about the game you can get from that.

Thanks. Yeah, I liked the left one more, myself. Although I still made the pants thicker.

Here's my latest additions:


The pose is now much more plausible for platforming.

And, I'm thinking about doing a game with this. Everything has been pretty much pen & paper until this sprite. Although I do have a pretty complete game engine ready to use. As for the game itself, I've wanted to attempt an adventure/fighting game type for years now. Kind of like Kingdom Hearts meets Devil May Cry meets BlazBlue(OR insert favorite fighting game here.)

So in short terms: Platform fighter adventure.

Scruffy:
To be, or not to be? That, is the question. 

The proportions are really funky there, the arms are really tiny, and the head is too oversized, even for a stylish look, because if you ARE going for big head style, the limbs should also have different proportions.

Well I'm not going for Chibi, but I would like the head to be a bit big. I'll mess around with it some more.

[EDIT]
My kitty kat keeps getting bigger


I think this one's much more correct. And although the limbs are pretty slim for the proportions, I think it's to good effect.

Tons of revising later:


I plan on trying to 1up the 'cute factor' a little bit next, then I move onto the body and stuff.

You've lost me. Yes, please explain what you mean be proper/non-shallow violence. 

[serious]

Please crit the crap out of this. Don't worry, it won't hurt my feelings. 

Taking a huge shot in the dark with this sprite-- I think I need some serious help with fur.