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Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Tue May 18, 2010 10:26 pm
by boyamer
Time have come to post my project, Alimer Game Engine..
Alimer Game Engine is professional 3d game engine with full editing toolset, the engine is structured in three parts, core Engine, Content Pipeline and Sandbox editor.

Engine Features:
- Shader-based material system with built-in common shader library and visual shader editor in Sandbox.
- Component-based scene graph system with support for lights, cameras, models, particle emitters, and physics collision objects.
- Easy-to-use text and sprite rendering, with complete 2D support.
- Plugable physics system (using PhysX/Bullet physics).
- Full indoor/outdoor support with heightbased terrain, realistic water and sky scattering system.
- Deferred & Light Pre-Pass rendering with SSAO and FXAA.
- Volumetric light shafts and big range of compositor effects.
- Complete 3D audio system with WAV and OGG support.
- Full vector math library with 2D/3D math and 3D object culling support (SIMD, ARM, NEON instricts).
- Per platform mouse, keyboard, touch, gestures and gamepad support.

ContentPipeline Features:
- .NET based content importing and processing.
- Built-in importers from all knows image files (DDS, PNG, JPG, BMP), model importing from Fbx, Collada.

Sandbox Features:
- Plug-in based and full configurable editor based on .NET with WPF support.
- Thumbnail content editor with browse, search, import, export support.
- Realtime WYSIWYG scene editing.
- In-place model editing and
- Visual material editor with node composition.
- Visual texture editor with node composition.
- Visual scripting and action based editing.
- Full Coeherence noise composition library for creating noise inputs using more than 10 generators and 20 operators,real-time previewed in content browser.
- Full dockable windows panes, command actions and input routing.
- Text editor for HLSL/GLSL/CG shaders.

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Tue May 18, 2010 10:46 pm
by madmarx
What about toolsets?
For a professional game engin, there is no 3dsmax / maya exporter / xsi ?
I am just curious (the whole thing seems nice) :D

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Wed May 19, 2010 11:25 am
by DanielSefton
Looks awesome :)

I've lost track of microsoft technology -- so the whole editor is written in C#?

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Wed May 19, 2010 11:37 am
by boyamer
DanielSefton wrote:Looks awesome :)

I've lost track of microsoft technology -- so the whole editor is written in C#?
Well yes.. But it would be possible to run also on Linux and OSX (throung the mono project http://www.mono-project.com/Main_Page) and IPhone throught MonoTouch.

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Wed May 19, 2010 11:39 am
by Wolfmanfx
<take it with a smile>C# is the best GUI toolset :)

Looks nice :) do you use a special component for the property grid ?

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Wed May 19, 2010 11:42 am
by boyamer
Wolfmanfx wrote:<take it with a smile>C# is the best GUI toolset :)

Looks nice :) do you use a special component for the property grid ?
Yep,i used the Krypton component factory ( as it has nice styleable UI ) and then i'm using DynamicPropertyGrid system,to show/hide properties while editing them and sort of course them.
Glad you like it. :)

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 9:19 am
by xadhoom
Hehe, looks like you have been "influenced" alot by Ogitor beside the icons :wink:

Good luck going commercial with your engine! :)

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Thu May 20, 2010 12:52 pm
by dudeabot
very interesting, mainly the connecting controls

do you plan making a video?

cya!

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Sat May 22, 2010 11:50 am
by Zeal
Looks nice! How did you render all the gui stuff (specifically those nifty 'strings' connecting various gui elements)?

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 10:37 am
by boyamer
Ok,more work has been done.
We've started implementation of 2D into Alimer,so what this mean?
We potentially will have full 2D environment for creating stuning 2D games,
we've successfully even implemented Physics engine,both Farseer and Box2D
are implemented ( http://farseerphysics.codeplex.com/).
We're preparing the 2D environment into Sandbox,so you can merge both 2D
and 3D,sprites are fully batched and optimized,so you can draw million and million
of sprites and the FPS still doesn't drop.
Sprites are fully integrated with Ogre material system,internally of course,
so you can apply rotation,scale,uv scroll as you're doing into the TextureUnitState
class.Sprite batches can be rotated,scaled,apply flip effect (vertically,horizontal),and even transparency (see screenshot)
they are ispired by XNA SpriteBatch class :)
We have build in core Shader effect to apply on Sprite Batches,like
Refraction,Saturare,Negative,and we plan to add expandibility to this.
Runs both DirectX and OpenGL,so fully cross platform.
A little screenshot from this.We've preparing simple platform demo for you.

Image


Hope you like it,
As always,critics are welcome,any idea can be posted to alimer engine forum.

Cheers,
Amer Koleci

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 10:43 am
by boyamer
madmarx wrote:
What about toolsets?
For a professional game engin, there is no 3dsmax / maya exporter / xsi ?
I am just curious (the whole thing seems nice) :D
Well currently you can import/export models using OgreMax or any Exporter from Ogre Addons,but we'll implement Our exporter in future (this is sure),but another cool feature (I think) is the FBX support,our Sandbox currently has a nice working FBX importer,still testing it and fixing,so you can easily import FBX models (previously exported from 3ds max,maya,blender) and use it inside,more formats will be supported in future like 3DS,Milkshake3D,Wavefront OBJ models,DirectX .X models and so.

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 11:19 am
by pratty70
Hi tried the download link on the page but it seems to go nowhere. Is it only available via Beta test? Would be interested in having a play.
Cheers

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 11:26 am
by boyamer
yep,currently is under beta testing,but you can easily access to testing throught forums or sending mail to team..
But we plan to release it very soon.

Thanks

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 3:46 pm
by novaumas
Looks like a very nice toolset so far, it'll be interesting to see where the progress goes from here.

It's also great to finally see the Toothrot library put to some good use. Yay for node based UIs! :D

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Thu Jun 03, 2010 4:30 pm
by boyamer
novaumas wrote:Looks like a very nice toolset so far, it'll be interesting to see where the progress goes from here.

It's also great to finally see the Toothrot library put to some good use. Yay for node based UIs! :D
Well yes,Toothrot looks very good,we have also personal style implmentation
of it,and we love it,super fast and easy to use.Nice work you've done on it.
As always i glad you like it and i'd like to see you using it also and many
other Ogre users too.

Thanks again

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Sun Jun 13, 2010 6:31 am
by Kohedlo
I am glad see and know your engine. :lol: Dont stop on created. I see architecture of sandbox remind me Unreal Editor 3 by Tim Sweeney. Do you write code of AGE himself or as team7

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 1:12 am
by Beauty
boyamer wrote:At moment there are potential things implemented and I personally lost time on porting Ogre plugins to .net version..
Alimer Engine has a PInvoke wrapper,optimized as more as possible and would be easily to be invoked on Linux and OSX,throught Mono Project..
Which .NET version you mean?
If you mean Mogre - it doesn't work on Linux/OSX, because Mono doesn't support the C++/CLI wrapper commands (so I read it).
If you mean OgreDotNet - did you create a new version (by SWIG)?

When you port plugins or write/update wrappers, it would be nice if you give this improvements back to the community. (I know you don't have to so, but it would be great.)


Which physic library you use?
Ok, now I see you use the Farseer Physics Engine - I never heard about.
Would it be an alternative to Newton for Mogre users?
Why you decided to use this engine?

Which types of object formats can be imported?
(Ogre only or also Blender, VRML, X3D, etc.?)

Now I read the answer on further posts.

Is it a commercial project and/or can your engine be used for free?

You wrote something about an interface to XNA - it's interesting that Ogre can be combined with XNA. I didn't know that this is possible. Be welcome to post more details about.

Do you use Ogre 1.6 or 1.7?

Which terrain manager(s) you used?
Or did you use the new terrain interface of Ogre 1.7 to create an own one?

Alimer Engine comes with Sandbox with realtime scene editing
Which type of scene files you use?
(DotScene, Collada, an own XML/text/binary format?)

Yes, many question for your interesting and large project :D

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 8:10 am
by boyamer
1) Which .NET version you mean?
I'm using .NET 3.5 and further .nET 4.0
2) I'm not using Mogre and even OgreDotNet,i have created own wrapper,i've used PINVOKE technique used into Irrlicht NET CP.
3) About plugins i can create a guide how to wrap Ogre plugins easily. :)
4) Which physic library you use?
I'm using PhysX for 3D physics simulation with whole support,implementation is based on (http://physxdotnet.codeplex.com/) and Farseer for 2D physics simulation ( As Alimer Engine has whole 2D support,when i say whole i mean really whole,even deferred shading system is integrated into 2D rendering with light support and shadows)

5)Which types of object formats can be imported?
Well,we have created a interesting Content importer system,as always just like XNA does,currently we can load Ogre3d models (.mesh),.obj and .fbx(autodesk format)

6) Is it a commercial project and/or can your engine be used for free?
There would be various license,like indie,commercial,full-source and non-commercial license too.

7) About XNA? You should put hands on Engine to see what i really mean. :)
8) Do you use Ogre 1.6 or 1.7? Ogre 1.7
9) Which terrain manager(s) you used? the new Sinbad's paging terrain system.
10) Which type of scene files you use? As always we use our own scene format which saves scene into Binary file or XML file,choose at your own,but you can even import DotScene (but we'd like to support Collada).

Feel free to ask any question.

Thanks

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 9:22 am
by syd
boyamer wrote:i've used PINVOKE technique used into Irrlicht NET CP.
so... you are calling __?mangled@symbols directly?
late binding isn't slowing at all?

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 9:29 am
by boyamer
Nope,i'm doing cdecl calls,quite clear and fast :)

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 9:44 am
by syd
so you use a C wrapper got it :p

I may use Neo Axis one of these days.
how would you convince me to use alimer :)
any specific programming approach? is the designer pluggable?

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 10:28 am
by boyamer
syd wrote:so you use a C wrapper got it :p

I may use Neo Axis one of these days.
how would you convince me to use alimer :)
any specific programming approach? is the designer pluggable?
Well,only trying it can convince you,i plan to make video or demo in this days :)

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Thu Jun 17, 2010 2:16 pm
by Beauty
boyamer wrote:i have created own wrapper,i've used PINVOKE technique used into Irrlicht NET CP.
Wow, nice to know. I didn't know that there is one more way.
Why you decided to create your own wrapper?
Was it so easy? (much things automaticly)
I suppose you don't use Mogre, because it doesn't work on Mono.
An other way for Mono support would be to use the common SWIG wrapper, which was used by OgreDotNet. (As I know OgreDotNet is outdated, because its maintainer switched to PythonOgre and other C# people just used Mogre.)
I don't want to critice your own way. I just want to compare the differences and advantages/disadvantages.

Do you plan to publish the third way of wrapping Ogre to C#?
So if somebody wants to create an application by C# with Mono support he would have an interesting option.
Or maybe just show interesting pages which tell how to wrap? (I suppose somewhere on the Irrlicht page.)


3) About plugins i can create a guide how to wrap Ogre plugins easily. :)
This would be great! ..... best would be to use the wiki for this.
Marioco (the last retired Mogre maintainer) wanted to write a guide how to wrap for Mogre. Unfortunately he didn't do. He had less time and then he leaved our community.
Which wrapper way you mean? PINVOKE?
Are PINVOKE wrapped add-ons usable for Mogre applications?

4) Which physic library you use?
I'm using PhysX for 3D physics simulation with whole support,implementation is based on (http://physxdotnet.codeplex.com/) and Farseer for 2D physics simulation ( As Alimer Engine has whole 2D support,when i say whole i mean really whole,even deferred shading system is integrated into 2D rendering with light support and shadows)
2D physics is an interesting thing - I never thought about, but nice to know.
When I searched for a usable physics library for Mogre, I just found Newton.
There were one or two other ones (e.g. ODE), but nearly none information about how to use with Ogre/Mogre. So the PhysX project sound also interesting :D

6) Is it a commercial project and/or can your engine be used for free?
There would be various license,like indie,commercial,full-source and non-commercial license too.
Will the non-commercial licence be for free or is there also a need to pay money?
I suppose a free to use licence would be much more better for advertisement and world wide spread.
10) Which type of scene files you use? As always we use our own scene format which saves scene into Binary file or XML file,choose at your own,but you can even import DotScene (but we'd like to support Collada).
Is it possible to export scenes to the DotScene format? Or is it planned?
Because for my scientific application (sonar simulation) I have the problem that it's not easy to create scenes (e.g. harbour buildings). I use my own scene format, but think about to include a DotScene importer. On the other hand I saw that there seems to be different versions and somewhere I read it's outdated. But I don't know what's right. (at this point I noticed that someone added a new DotScene loader to the wiki, see here).
Feel free to ask any question.
You see I do. And sorry for some lines of text which are not directly related to your engine.
boyamer wrote:Well,only trying it can convince you,i plan to make video or demo in this days :)
Yes, publish videos! :D

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 2:14 am
by syd
Beauty wrote: An other way for Mono support would be to use the common SWIG wrapper, which was used by OgreDotNet.
that's how he did it. he wrapped Ogre into pure C functions, and uses PInvoke (http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/Aa712982).

msdn wrote: PInvoke has an overhead of between 10 and 30 x86 instructions per call. In addition to this fixed cost, marshaling creates additional overhead. There is no marshaling cost between blittable types that have the same representation in managed and unmanaged code. For example, there is no cost to translate between int and Int32.

For higher performance, it may be necessary to have fewer PInvoke calls that marshal as much data as possible, rather than have more calls that marshal less data per call. Or somewhat more memorably: prefer a chunky over a chatty API.
so, is Alimer's wrapper chunky or chatty? :wink:

Re: Alimer Game Engine (Beta Stage)

Posted: Fri Jun 18, 2010 8:27 am
by Wolfmanfx
I also use my own wrapper generated via swig which generates a PINVOKE cpp file, and it does not feel laggy or slow. ( i mean the runtime performance and not the generation time ;) )