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[György Straub]

XRhodes v1.8.0 is released.

Welcome everyone!

XRhodes is a game dev library I have been working on for donkeys' years. It started off as a learning project, and in about three major iterations it has reached a ...state? (or was it I that has reached it?) where the API is stable (it's modern C++), the documentation is thorough, and there are tests and examples. All in all, it can be used for what it was made for.

It is not an engine - it is more of a set of building blocks that you can build your game (engine) with it, some of it is insanely specific, but all of it is, or at least aims to be, generic.

Bullet point list of features!

• aims to reduce the amount of code you have to write to get a game working, but not the flexibility or performance you have at hand with C++.
• is written in C++; the desktop versions use SDL2 & OpenGL
• supports Win8+, MacOS I dunno, High Sierra+?, Linux Ubuntu 16.04+ (64 bits), and more to come
• supports all the "primitives" you'd expect from a very generic game library (and hopefully more)
   - low level building blocks;
   - signals and generic callbacks;
   - lowish level palatable graphics library / abstraction, now multi-threadable, yeah boi;
   - SDF / bitmap fonts and UTF-8 text;
   - sprites and texture packs;
   - asset management with dependencies, offline building, async loading, options;
   - math library;
   - keyboard / mouse / gamepad support;
   - README.md!
  
• It comes with examples and unit tests
• And now we have a super easy to use template to create your own projects.

Questions. Discussion. GO!

[Gainsworthy]

Uh... yay? I hope. Though, that post was somewhat vague to one such as myself. Guess I'll wait for the pipeline to deliver.

[György Straub]

Gainsworthy: thanks for the input - the pipeline has delivered! let me know if I can make the project any less vague for you.

and in the meantime, please comment!

[Hideous]

COLLISION DETECTION IS FUN-TIME HAPPY

Or something. Anyway, uh, I'll probably try this out, but not right now

[increpare]

The osx version just crashes on me

[kyn]

So... What am I looking at here really?

I mean, there's nearly no content here that I can comment on. It's just these balloon thingies rotating and moving around with the touch of some keys.

Is that all there is to it, or am I just missing something?

[cmspice]

So... What am I looking at here really?

I mean, there's nearly no content here that I can comment on. It's just these balloon thingies rotating and moving around with the touch of some keys.

Is that all there is to it, or am I just missing something?

uh, I believe it's a game framework that you can put your own content in. So... Instead of rotating balloons you could put... other things in their place.

[György Straub]

Thanks guys, now I see what Gainsworthy meant by the first post being "vague". I guess I'm just too excited about the stuff and I forgot to to step out of my head for a minute. Okay now!

XRhodes is a game framework. It aids game development in C++, by building on the basic features of the language, and also the SDL and OpenGL library. Now, as I thought about it, I should have pointed out that what I'm aiming at is something like a "Game Maker" for those who speak C++, but don't want to start game/multimedia development from scratch.

No. I know. The functionality and ease of use of Game Maker and MMF is unparalleled. Back when I was having a shot at them I felt that at some point they aren't very flexible, have bugs, doesn't support multiplatform development. I've heard how much they have evolved in the recent years, and that even some limited multiplatformability is at hand. That's very neat.

XRhodes is NOT a content creator. It is a high-level C++/SDL/OpenGL library. The main thing about it is how it deals away with lengthy and tedious tasks which are generic to game/multimedia development. Handling of subsystems initialization, memory management,  fonts, animation, stuff I've listed up there.

Instead of

Code:

uint		flags(SDL_OPENGL | SDL_GL_DOUBLEBUFFER | SDL_HARDWARE);
if(isFullScreen) {
	flags |= SDL_FULLSCREEN;
}

uchar		bppGiven(::SDL_VideoModeOK(width, height, bpp,flags));
SDL_Surface	*pScreen = ::SDL_SetVideoMode(width, height, bppGiven, flags);
	
if(pScreen == NULL)	{
	std::ostringstream	buf;
	buf << "SDL_SetVideoMode failed: " << ::SDL_GetError();
	throw Exception(buf.str());
}

// set clear values
::glClearColor(.0f, .0f, .0f, 1.0f);	// clear color is black
::glClearDepth(1.0f);
	
// set viewport
::glViewport(0, 0, width, height);
	
// enable texturing
::glEnable(GL_TEXTURE_2D);

// enable blending
::glBlendFunc(GL_SRC_ALPHA, GL_ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA);
::glEnable(GL_BLEND);
	
// enable scissor test
::glEnable(GL_SCISSOR_TEST);
	
// disable lighting
::glDisable(GL_LIGHTING);

// setup projection matrix
::glMatrixMode(GL_PROJECTION);
::glLoadIdentity();
::glOrtho(.0, width, height, .0, .0, -width * 4.0f);

// setup modelview matrix
::glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
::glLoadIdentity();

// setup modelview matrix
::glMatrixMode(GL_MODELVIEW);
::glLoadIdentity();

if(::glGetError() != GL_NO_ERROR)	{
	std::ostringstream	buf;
	buf << "OpenGL initialization failed: " << ::glGetError();
	throw Exception(buf.str());
}

you write

Code:

XR::GFX::Init(width, height, isFullscreen, bpp);

The downloadable application isn't XRhodes, it was written with XRhodes (see readme.txt, no, seriously). I'll include client code to demonstrate how little code was used to achive the functionality you see in the demo.

[Dacke]

I get what it is, I'm so proud of myself!

I still like to do all the tedious things myself, as I'm still in a learning process and would risk loosing out on some necessary basic understanding of things if I were to take shortcuts.

Though I must say that some of your shortcuts seem very attractive indeed! If you get some networking in there as well (though it might be very hard to do in a nice general-solution way?) it would almost be impossible to resist making small quick games with this.

Game maker is horrible, inflexible and hard to learn. This seems much more in my taste! Very nice initiative! 

[György Straub]

Dacke=) thanks for the comment. I absolutely understand how you don't want to lose out on the learning process. As it happens, writing XRhodes is the learning process itself for me (well, mostly).=) I'm hoping to combine convenient with economic.

[michael]

this sounds really awesome! but it doesnt seem to work at all on my mac. im running 10.5.4

[György Straub]

Increpare (sorry for the delay in getting back to you) and Michael: strange. the program sends some error messages to stderr. they are for probably the only situations when this application has crashed on me, so I haven't got much clue. how did it crash for you?

as you don't run the game from the compiler I'm not sure how to get out a console window (system.log maybe?), or where do messages from stderr get dumped (and exit codes from main)... anybody?

EDIT: ah, got it! the console is Applications/Utilities/Console.app, and the messages should be at the bottom, after a sea of error messages referring to _NSAutoreleasePool() which I don't know about. they start with "ERROR:".

Michael, thanks for the encouragement.

[increpare]

I can't paste in the bloody console output because of the spam-filters 

It says that the SDL_image framework library wasn't loaded, because some image wasn't found... I think...I'd love to paste in the output...but this forum won't let me 

[György Straub]

I can't paste in the bloody console output because of the spam-filters 

It says that the SDL_image framework library wasn't loaded, because some image wasn't found... I think...I'd love to paste in the output...but this forum won't let me 

thank you! that's mysterious, I'd rather imagine it the other way around if anything (missing SDL_image -> couldn't load images). now SDL_image is sitting amongst the project's linked frameworks, but for some reason it doesn't show in the .app. Same goes for SDL_mixer -- but SDL itself is there.

I'll investigate.

[György Straub]

problem fixed. some minimal extra functionality, corrected documentation and source included in the new downloadables. both platforms. 

[increpare]

There's one quite nice effect whose intentionality I'm not entirely sure of, namely the lines that appear in the images

[György Straub]

There's one quite nice effect whose intentionality I'm not entirely sure of, namely the lines that appear in the images

not sure what you mean...

the pixelation of the sprites too close to the camera are achieved by

Code:

::glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_NEAREST);

as opposed to

Code:

::glTexParameteri(GL_TEXTURE_2D, GL_TEXTURE_MAG_FILTER, GL_LINEAR);

(intentional; just a question of my taste, I thought small pixel sprites blurred don't look good. I think I'll leave an option to switch between the two (as for the framework))

the lines in the LDI logo is achieved by a set of Paint Shop Pro effects I barely remember. (intentional)

something else / irony? (unintentional)

[increpare]

Oh wait, it was just the lens flare  :D :D :D

Also: the CPU-usage is pretty respectable.  Good stuff 

[György Straub]

ah. yeah. :D

[György Straub]

it's coming.

happy, happy, joy, joy.