NeoEngine 2 - Evolution (3D Game Engine)

[arithon]

We have been working for some time now on our new incarnation of our 3D game engine, NeoEngine. As we are moving closer to a stable 1.0 release we are now looking for developers interesting in trying it out for building games or game prototypes.

The engine itself is a fully featured 3D game engine written in C++ with all the features needed to build a game, including rendering, sound, scripting, input, scene management, animation, collision detection, physics and gui. The rendering backend supports both DirectX and OpenGL, and the engine itself supports Windows, MacOS X and Linux. It also comes with a full tool chain with exporters from popular 3D modeling apps, a scene editor, material editor, GUI editor, animation editor and various auxiliary tools.

The engine is available under both GPL and commercial licenses.

Available documentation includes API documentation (doxygen generated), a community Wiki, forums and bug tracker. We plan to put a lot of effort into the documentation over the next few months.

So where does this post fit into all of this? Since we are looking for more people to use the engine for different kinds of projects, we now offer anyone on these boards interested in trying out the engine to do so, and if you decide to use the engine for a game or game concept we will give you a commercial license for free.

Sounds interesting? Want to know more about the engine or the exact details of this license offer? Send us and email though our website (select NeoEngine Licensing as subject):

http://www.realityrift.com/company/contact.php

For more information about the engine itself see our webpage:

http://www.realityrift.com/technology/neoengine

Sources are available under GPL from

http://neoengine.tigris.org

[MrQ]

I saw neoengine a few years back and was quite impressed, good to see it's still going

[Jay_Kyburz]

This engine looks cool and perfect for indies.

Something that would make it even cooler would be a Python binding.

My ideal environment these days would be a 3d engine as clean and simple as blitz 3d, but with clean and simple language binding to something like Python.

Oh and I'm a big mac head these days so cross platform is important too.

I really like blitz max, and was really looking forward to max 3d, but as my projects got bigger, the shortfalls in the language (or libraries) really started to hurt me.

[arithon]

MrQ: If you refer to the old codebase I think you will like this new version even more. It's a lot more stable, well designed and has more features, as well as a much improved tool chain.

Jay_Kyburz: Cross platform is very important to us. As mentioned we support Windows, MacOS X and Linux. The build environments we provide support for is:

Windows: MSVC++ 7.1 or later, Code::Blocks+MinGW, SCons+MinGW
MacOS X: XCode 2.x
Linux: SCons

Regarding python bindings we have started making bindings for some parts of the engine to be able to integrate with Blender. We expect to complete this binding library before our 1.0 release, along with Blender support.

There is also Lua scripting support built into the engine with bindings to most higher-level functionality.

The engine itself is completely stand-alone with no third-party dependencies. The test-cases and tools use wxWindows, but we provide precompiled libraries for wx for this use.

[MrQ]

Great news Arithon,

And yes I was refering to the old neoengine1 codebase. I'm really keen to check this out, I will be keeping it in mind for any future 3d projects as I was really impressed with the what I saw of the old engine. Cross platform is a great bonus, you should look into some nintendo wii support for me

[oldschool]

What do you mean by blender support? I searched you wiki and forums and got nothing on blender(maybe I'm blind ).

DO you mean converting blender games to your engine. Now that would be great. Now if thats the case I'd like to know the price.

[chanon]

It would be nice if you had a demo application/game showing off the capabilities of the engine. (Or do you have one ...? maybe I'm blind )

Maybe you have it integrated with the source in the SVN?

Anyways, a prebuilt one would be easier to checkout.

[arithon]

MrQ: Wii is definitely something we will keep a close eye on and hopefully support as soon as possible after a 1.0 release for PC/Mac platforms.


oldschool: I mean offering the same kind of integration and exporting functionality as we currently have for 3DSMax. Have a look at

http://www.realityrift.com/technolog...e/maxtools.png

for a screenshot of the integration into the 3DSMax material system.


chanon: No, we haven't got any techdemo yet, it is in the pipeline for development once everything is ready code-wise in the engine for the 1.0 release. However, you could have a look at PowerChallenge for a commercial game using the engine:

http://www.powerchallenge.com
http://www.powerchallenge.com/?p=start&sub=screenshots

It is webbased at targeted to run on as low hardware as possible and is thus not using much of the advanced features of the engine. Unfortunately it is also not using the scaling capabilities of the engine to allow higher quality rendering on more powerful systems yet. The engine allows you to easily target multiple generations of graphics hardware.

[Jay_Kyburz]

I had a thought on the weekend. You guys should use this engine as the back end for an new pygame. Call it pygame 3d!

[impossible]

I had a thought on the weekend. You guys should use this engine as the back end for an new pygame. Call it pygame 3d!

I assume you've heard of PyOgre? I played with it a little bit and it seems pretty good. You could probably get some pretty nice 3D games up and running in Python quickly with a combination of PyOgre and PyODE.

Oh and I'm a big mac head these days so cross platform is important too.

Have you looked at Unity 3D? It looks really nice. Unfortuanately, the tools are Mac only (player is Mac and Windows...) so I haven't had a chance to play around with it, but if you're a big Mac head its definitely a good option.

[arithon]

impossible: Just to point out some important differences...

OGRE is a rendering engine, while NeoEngine is a complete game engine. You don't need to deal with a bunch of different libraries and APIs and coding styles when working with NeoEngine, everything is designed to work well together and present the user with a clean unified API.

Regarding Unity3D, we are probably targeting different markets. NeoEngine is not a click-and-play style creator/authoring tool, but intended for more complex projects developed in C++ and various scripting languages.

[impossible]

impossible: Just to point out some important differences...

I'm aware of the differences. I know that Ogre is not a full game engine and NeoEngine 2 is clearly a more complete package. I wouldn't quite call Unity 3D click and play, it seems more along the lines of a 3D flash equivalent, but I agree that your target market is different. I was asking Jay if he had evaluated those options. Jay seems to be looking for a complete Python binding to a fully featured 3D engine.

[Musenik]

Jay seems to be looking for a complete Python binding to a fully featured 3D engine.

He's not the only one. I'd buy a 3D system that works as well as pygame with Python. I'd even be grateful for NeoEngine's Lua alongside Python. Then I could optimize at appropriate level of coding. Like this:

1. Rapid prototype in Python until you get worthwhile gameplay.
2. Spot optimize during development, in Lua.
3. Final optimizations with profiler and c/c++.

Python makes coding and recoding (ad naseum) game designs not only pleasant, but damn efficient! I'd rather work on 2D games with pygame than 3D with C++. And I get to decide, 'cause I'm an INDIE!

I've been knocking on Unity's door, asking them to drop in IronPython, but they want to stick with a non-standard, look-and-work-almost-alike.

Oh well, I got plenty to keep me busy, for the next few months. Maybe my dream, fully python enabled, cross-platform, 3D game engine will fly out of a monkey's butt by then. :-)

[Bad Sector]

I still can't get what you guys like in Python and LUA :-).

[electronicStar]

Have you tried Panda3D ?

He's not the only one. I'd buy a 3D system that works as well as pygame with Python. I'd even be grateful for NeoEngine's Lua alongside Python. Then I could optimize at appropriate level of coding. Like this:

1. Rapid prototype in Python until you get worthwhile gameplay.
2. Spot optimize during development, in Lua.
3. Final optimizations with profiler and c/c++.

Python makes coding and recoding (ad naseum) game designs not only pleasant, but damn efficient! I'd rather work on 2D games with pygame than 3D with C++. And I get to decide, 'cause I'm an INDIE!

I've been knocking on Unity's door, asking them to drop in IronPython, but they want to stick with a non-standard, look-and-work-almost-alike.

Oh well, I got plenty to keep me busy, for the next few months. Maybe my dream, fully python enabled, cross-platform, 3D game engine will fly out of a monkey's butt by then. :-)

[Musenik]

Have you tried Panda3D ?

It's Macintosh support wasn't very good, when I last checked. Has it gotten better?

What I dream for is a really tough thing to do! I'm not capable of doing it. Few people are. I count my blessings that Pygame is as wonderful as it is.

[Jay_Kyburz]

I agree with Musenik.

For those of you who don't get Python you should play with it for a while.

oh yeah, and neither Ogre or Panda have current mac support. 2d is ok for me for now.

[oldschool]

I'm spoiled and don't want to work harder than I have to. I build up my sprites in inkscape and finish them in photoshop or gimp.

Why can't I have that in programming too. Prototype in GameBlender and convert to your engine and finish up, and where its slow allow me to augment the python, supplement it with lua or outright replace it with C++ for speed.

Otherwise, luxinia, Torque and Darkbasic got you beat with me. Because I don't know C++ and don't have time to learn it. I just bought 2 Java books and can't say I've finished the first chapter of either.

I hope you consider my plea
In either case good luck with your engine.

[arithon]

It was never our intention to make an engine that is supposed to be used only through some other language than C++. It has always been the goal to make an engine that you use mostly through C++ with some parts in a scripting language of choise.

From that point of view I guess you are not our ideal client However, since we have gotten some feedback asking about (for example) complete python bindings we will consider improving these bindings to the level where such a use is possible. Stay tuned.

[Musenik]

However, since we have gotten some feedback asking about (for example) complete python bindings we will consider improving these bindings to the level where such a use is possible. Stay tuned.

Wow, that would be a wonderful commitment, and challenging too. I once helped create a set of Modula-2 bindings for all of Inside Macintosh. It was a brutal, dull grind. At least Python has Pyrex and Ctypes and a few other helpers to make the job easier.

best wishes,

[electronicStar]

It's Macintosh support wasn't very good, when I last checked. Has it gotten better?

What I dream for is a really tough thing to do! I'm not capable of doing it. Few people are. I count my blessings that Pygame is as wonderful as it is.

I don't know, the problem is that the panda devellopers have released the latest version but have done practically 0 communication on it in the news section and it's difficult to know what is inside.
For example it's supposed to manage shaders and bump mapping but it's detailed nowhere on the site, only on the forums.
All I know is that this engine is practically 100% python, at least it's tailored for it and a python programmer should be very happy with this engine.
And performances are very good, there is a downloadable demo shoot em up prototype that is rather impressive.

[electronicStar]

It's Macintosh support wasn't very good, when I last checked. Has it gotten better?

What I dream for is a really tough thing to do! I'm not capable of doing it. Few people are. I count my blessings that Pygame is as wonderful as it is.

I don't know, the problem is that the panda devellopers have released the latest version but have done practically 0 communication on it in the news section and it's difficult to know what is inside.
for example it's supposed to manage shaders and bump mapping but it's detaile nowhere on the site, only on the forums.
what I remember is that this engine is practically 100% python, at least it's tailored for python and a python programmer should be happy with it.
And performances are very good, there is a demo shoot em up prototype that is rather impressive.

[arithon]

Today we added a DirectX 8 based renderer backend which we hope will suit the indie market.