Zen Engine + Zen Studio feature list

[Tony Richards]

Features marked with italics are planned features that are incomplete as of this writing. The non-italic features are features that are complete today and ready to use.

General Features

Object-Oriented Design with three API layers. A simple to use script based interface, a fairly easy to use but more flexible C++ starter-kit interface with support for game rules, behaviors, and simple to use network examples, and a more advanced yet extremely flexible C++ API. For most features, game developers can use the outer script and/or C++ layers to accomplish most of their game design goals.

Only under rare circumstances should you actually be required to modify the Zen Engine framework. In most cases, extension points or other clear-cut interfaces exist to help you extend the existing functionality without modifying the original source. But, you get all of the ZOSS source code, so you are not prevented from modifying the source.

Most architectural decisions have been left to the developer (i.e. you choose your architecture, not IndieZen). ZOSS includes examples of a variety of well-known and commonly used architectures and each of them are well suited for use with ZOSS and Zen Engine.

Source code example using an Service Oriented Architecture for supporting n-tier enterprise services including a C++ Enterprise Application Service container is included as an advanced example for MMO games and enterprise virtual worlds for commercial and entertainment uses.

Other examples include a variety of peer to peer and client / server architectures pre-tuned for use with specific game types including Arcade, FPS, Racing, RPG, RTS and MMO games.

Support for virtual worlds, MMO games, browser based games, and games of a variety of genres, including sample games and starter kits for 6 different genres

High performance memory management system with automatic garbage collection.

Scripting

Completely custimizable and extensible scripting. Base interfaces exposed by the core framework to the script engine can be easily extended and enhanced based on the needs of the game. Choose which subsystems should be exposed to the script engines to the extent ranging from all to none. (i.e. make a game entirely in script, or make a game entirely in C++, or choose somewhere in between).

Choose your scripting language from a variety of object oriented languages. Support for Lua, Python, Ruby, JavaScript, with an easy to use plugin system that allows you to integrate other languages as required.

Package the scripts as bytecode, embed them in your custom DLL's, or store them in a database or other cache system.

Editors

A variety of editors, including Zen Studio's WYSIWYG World Builder for editing virtual worlds, Game Builder for editing game rules, and Brain Builder for editing AI and automatons, plus other editors such as the Ogre scene editor, material editors, partical editors and more.

Includes mesh exporters and converters for Maya, 3D Studio Max, LightWave, Blender, MilkShape, Collada, NWN MDL, and more.

Look here for complete list of editors and digital content creation tools available for use with Ogre.

Starter kits will also contain additional editors for editing game-type specific features such as spells, levels, skills, inventory, etc for the RPG Starter Kit

Compatible with third part editors such as L3DT for creating huge terrains.

If you're using ZOgre, click here for a complete list of exporters.

Physics

Physics plugin system, currently with support for Newton and future support for other systems such as PhysX, ODE, and Bullet.

For a complete feature list of Newton, check out http://www.newtondynamics.com/.

Rendering

If you're using the ZOgre plugin, you get full access to all of the features available in Ogre, which can be found here

GUI

The last integration point that remains with Ogre is to integrate with a GUI system. The first integration will be with CEGUI and we'll consider others in the future.

[kay_Eva]

Are you guys considering useing Right Brain Games GUI instead of CEGUI? Right Brain Games seems really really great.

Ogre Forum Post:
http://www.ogre3d.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=32929

Videos:
http://www.rightbraingames.com/Windows.wmv
http://www.rightbraingames.com/Editor.wmv
http://rightbraingames.com/Gui.wmv


Will Hydrax and SSAO be built in to this engine? I know you can code it in yourself but will it be geared towards providing easier access to such features as these? Thank you

[Tony Richards]

We'll definitely take a look at Right Brain Games GUI, but it won't be "instead" of CEGUI.

The way we're doing the GUI makes it so that it's pretty easy to pick which GUI you want to use... (i.e. we're building a generic framework but allowing extensions to take advantage of specifics for each library). It's a bit like the Ogre plugin system, except it applies to more than just rendering extensions.

SSAO, Hydrax and deferred shading are built into the ZOgre plugin, so you can easily use it without having to do any extra coding.

[kay_Eva]

Is this project usable at all at the moment. Can I begin testing it with some very basic projects?

[nightmare]

Is this project usable at all at the moment. Can I begin testing it with some very basic projects?

the project is quite usable already its just that currently not much tutorial-like documentation exists and that makes it a bit harder to sink your teeth into unless you're willing to search through the source for what you're looking for. Hopefully that situation will change a bit once 0.5.0 is released and we start to focus on creating starter kits.

[kay_Eva]

okay I see, I'll try to keep track of what's going on here