libSIEGE

I’ve moved the SIEGE website from e107 to WordPress, mainly due to security issues with e107 which could not be fixed (they were related to the contact form and the plugin meant to replace it did not work).

I’ll be moving the older news here as well.

It’s been too long since I’ve last updated this website.

However, believe it or not, me and Th3on3 have been busy developing SIEGE.

The wiki was finally put to use with some tutorials, in addition of which we now have Trac for bugtracking and source viewing (Trac’s wiki will not be used), in addition to generated documentation from the code.

Yes, I know I’ve promised SIEGE to go Alpha, but that promise has been delayed because I wanted to do bindings to a scripting language first. It seems that the bindings will have to wait…

There is an experimental port of SIEGE to C going on – if it is successful, this will replace much of the current D frontend. Instead, it will pave the way for multiple frontends – D, C++ and Python, for example.

Perhaps I should wait to see how CSiege goes before calling this one alpha, since CSiege is a big rewrite. Luckily, it doesn’t all have to happen in one go.

The SIEGE modules are now fully migrated to CMake (SIEGE itself not, because of problems with CMakeD, a CMake module for D) and SDL is now the primary backend for windowing and input — this is because GLFW refuses to cooperate in Linux.

Also, I’ve been looking for a good replacement for OpenAL. It would seem that OAL does not want to cooperate properly with ALSA (instead chooses to only work with OSS) on some PC’s. It’s also been giving me some trouble in Windows, not only Linux.

If anyone has any suggestions for other cross-platform audio APIs, I’m listening — just note that I’ve already looked at SDL_sound, SDL_mixer and FMOD.

Furthermore, I am still looking for developers. Right now, I’d need someone to build & test things in 32-bit Linux, someone to do the same for MacOS and then someone for whatever OS they’d like to see SIEGE work in.

If you want to contact us, the contact link is to the left; sometimes we can be found in #gamecraft on Freenode. A Java web client is available: irc.libsiege.org. Furthermore, there is a mailing list available, you’ll find its link at the bottom of any of the tutorials in the wiki; I’d prefer not to write it here for anti-spam reasons.

It’s been a long time with seemingly no development — but believe me when I say that we’ve been working hard.

SIEGE, which is the working title of the engine behind GameCraft is almost ready for alpha stage.

SIEGE went through two completely different designs, and now it is an event-based layer with an interchangeable backend. Right now, only OpenGL backend is available, but more are planned.

Once they are done, the same frontend will run OpenGL, Direct3D, SDL, Mesa, even PSP (Playstation Portable)!

What’s left are (very) minor changes to parts of the API, to clean it up and make it easier to use.

A demo will follow soon, but first, the bindings to Monster Script must be done.

Also, three(!) developers have expressed interest in helping code SIEGE and perhaps later GameCraft – two programmers and one artist.

The programmers have to learn D first, but they have agreed to help, and the artist is working on a logo.

I’ve added RSS feeds to keep track of the news on the website. They are available here or in the menu on the left.
Please note that I may remove the “comments” feeds later.

At last, GameCraft has a scripting language. The interpreter creation has stopped, because I’ve found a scripting language which was very similar to what GCScript would have became.

I am now cooperating with Nicolay Korslund, the creator of Monster – giving him some ideas for future development and similar.

More information on the scripting language can be found here.

Also, I’ve found a physics engine for use with GameCraft. It is called Blaze, and it has all the features that the engine will need.

I am also in cooperation with the creator of the physics engine, Mason Green. I am going to port the engine to Phobos, the official standard library for D (at the moment, it is only available for Tango, the alternative standard library).

If you would like to know more about the engine, see the project page on dsource.

So far, I’m pretty much the only guy working GameCraft (see below for others). While I’ve been making progress, it was much slower than what it could have been.

I could use another pair of hands to help me out.

Me and Th30n3 are now working on the GCEngine part, currently the organization and design (how the functions are named, how they are put into modules and similar)

Here are the positions that are yet to be filled:

• Vector Graphics Designer – Someone to create a logo and an icon for the program and its filetypes. They should be in Tango style.
• GUI Designer – Designer the graphical interface of the IDE
• D Programmer – If I have another pair of hands helping me, the progress will be faster
• Article Writer – Someone to write some Wiki articles, create a good description of the program and such
• Game Programmer – Someone to create example games, test the IDE out, etc etc
• Beta-Tester – Tester of the games that the game programmer creates – I have trust in the game programmer to create a bug-free game, but the problem is the engine behind it may be buggy.

We will also need a set of resources, to help the programmers start. Here’s what we need:

• Sprites – The main ingame art. Formats that erase the per-pixel precision (such as JPEG) will NOT be accepted. Prefered format is PNG.
• Tilesets – The guidelines are similar to those of sprites, only that this time they’re for floor/wall tiles (and similar).
• Textures – for the floor, background textures and such. Prefered formats are PNG and JPEG (no JPEG if it requires precision or if it contains transparency). A rule of thumb is to just send PNG, and I’ll conver them as neccesarry.
• Music – Prefered format is OGG, but I’ll convert anything else as neccesarry. If the music was made in MIDI format, keep it that way.
• Sounds – Same rules apply as in music.

I may have forgotten something, and if you don’t feel like you’d fit any of these, but still want to help, feel free to contact me via the form, the mailing list or (if I’m there) on IRC.

We’re always looking for ideas, so, if you have one, it is very welcome.

As I said, I’m almost the only guy who works on GameCraft. ALMOST.

I would like to express my gratitude to:

• Th30n3 for currently being the only other active member of the project.
• Nicolay for creating Monster script, and therefore creating a scripting language to be used in GameCraft
• Jenfri for creating the site banner
• CheeryBounce and Anteusz for giving me tips about the scripting language (before I found Monster) and about the program itself
• SourceForge for support of free projects and creating a home for the Subversion repository of the project
• Walter for creating the D Programming Lanugage
• All the GUI designers who made mockups in gif/png/jpeg formats

If I’ve left anyone out, do tell.

I’ve done some plans for GameCraft, and ended up with the following diagram (click for bigger image):

The working title of the engine is “SIEGE – Simple Interplatform Entity Game Engine”

As visible from the diagram, both the engine and the language will be used for other projects, too.

There is also a new mailing list (just append @libsiege.org – this was done to prevent spam):

• Posting: list
• Subscribing: list-subscribe
• Unsubscribing: list-unsubscribe
• Help: list-help

If you have any questions, feel free to contact us.

We’re still alive, and we do bring news. Good news.

Well, the website has been down, because of some problems with the domain registrar…
We’ve hoped that the issue would get resolved, but it never did.
It’s still on the same server, only under a different (sub)domain – gamecraft.soulbreakers.com (but, since you’re here, I assume that you already know that).

On other news, the bytecode interpreter is almost done… All that’s missing is functions (easy), some more work with the arrays and external calling of the functions.
The tricky part is the compiler, and we hope to get that done until June.

What are we going to use for the backend of GameCraft?
Well, this is what we plan to use, but it’s not written in stone:

• Graphics: GLFW (window functions, events, etc) + OpenGL + FreeImage (for image loading)
• Sound: OpenAL or fmod
• Physics: Chipmunk Game Dynamics

Yes, we know that 1st of April is a bad date for news, because everyone assumes that the webmaster is just making fun of them…
Just to make it clear, this is not an April fool.

We’ve decided to put aside all the scripting languages that are there and start making our own.

We have started working on GameCraft Script (or GCS in short). There isn’t much to tell just yet, except for the fact that the script will have C-like syntax.

The SVN directory for the scripting language is located here.

Well, we can finally announce that our website is now open. At the moment it is located at a subdomain, but that is to change once we get a decent userbase.

The site is still under development and configuration, but there won’t be any major changes after we get the forums up and running (which will happen as soon as we think of which forum sections and categories to put in!

So, how’s the project doing? It’s doing well. Though our original plan was to compile the script, we’re most probably going to move onto runtime script running. Shouldn’t be noticable with games.