Welcome to IndieZen.org

IndieZen.org provides support for Open Source Game Development projects. We are more than just a group of projects sharing a server. We are a community of developers and users collaborating on game development software with an open, unrestrictive software license. First and foremost is our desire to create high quality extensible software that leads the way in the field of game development.

Background

IndieZen was founded by Tony Richards in October, 2006 with the goal of creating a community of artists, game designer and programmers that collaborate and create games more effectively.

Individuals and teams collaborate on creating a common framework and implement common plugins and starter kits that everyone can use.

Everything is implemented as plugins using a versatile plugin system. This allows game developers to choose among a wide variety of components and piece together a game engine tailored specifically for their game, and in most cases no programming is required.

Once the custom game engine is assembled, game developers are free to concentrate on making their games.

The end result is ultimate freedom... freedom to choose, freedom to create, and it's truly free (as in free beer).

All IndieZen.org projects are free, come with the source code, and are licensed with the ZLib license. This allows you to use the software free of charge, commercially or in open source projects. You are not required to re-distribute the source code, and you are not even required to give IndieZen.org or the other contributors credit for the software. You can even package it and resell it without changing a single line of code.

Projects

All of the top level projects are currently still under development and in various stages of completion.

Zen Framework

The Zen Framework consists of all of the framework libraries. This framework provides all of the abstract interfaces and defines the interaction among the components and plugins. The Core libraries in the framework implement common functionality that is useful for the rest of the framework and components, including multi-threading, events, memory management and the core plugin system.

The Core libraries are mostly complete. We're in the process of fine-tuning the memory management, improving the startup / shutdown sequence, and enhancing the event modeling, but what is currently finished is usable as-is.

To get started with this framework, check out the ZOSS Compiling Guide page. It shows you where to get the source code, the dependent libraries and it has the complete build instructions.

Zen Engine

The Zen Engine consists of the plugins and components used for assembling a game engine.

The plugins include components for

• Scripting Languages - Python, Lua, Torque Script
• Databases - PostgresQL, MySQL, SQLite
• Physics - PhysX, Bullet, ODE
• Render Engines - Ogre3d, LeadWerks Engine, OpenSceneGraph, Torque Game Engine
• Networking - RakNet, ZenNet
• etc...

Note that some of these components are not open source. The plugins are open source but you must acquire a license of the underlying component in order to use the plugin.

Zen Engine also includes frameworks and plugins for specialized game types:

• Arcade Games - 2d and isometric 2.5d games, board games, card games, etc
• Role Playing Games - Support for classes, skills, NPC, quests, dialogs, etc
• Real Time Strategy Games - Specialized cameras, move managers, etc
• Navigation - A* and other implementations of pathfinding, plus a framework to allow you to customize your own
• AI - Additional AI components for goals and behaviors
• Racing Games
• First Person Shooter Games
• Game Rules - Framework plus pre-built plugins for Capture the Flag, Defend and Destroy, Escort, Resource Gathering, etc complete with a framework for allowing completely new game types through scripting and/or C++ code.
• Game Behaviors - Framework plus pre-built plugins for standard game behaviors, plus fully extensible for creating your own.

This project is quite mature and is expected to have a 1.0 release in February of 2009.

Zen Studio

Zen Studio is an open source game development IDE that includes support for scripting languages, scene editors, 3d modeling applications, etc.

Fully integrated with Zen Engine to allow world editing using your game engine's renderer, plus drag and drop behavior editing and in-IDE behavior customization, development and debugging.

Zen Worlds

Zen Worlds consists of the plugin, components and framework for creating virtual worlds and online games.

Plugins include support for interacting with IBM and Linden Lab's virtual worlds and the Open Grid Protocol.

Zen Spaces

The Zen Spaces project is a high performance compute cluster, data grid and application server. It is primarily intended to be used by Zen Worlds, but it is also versatile enough to be used for general purpose compute clusters and data grids.

Deprecated: Projects Page TODO: Move the projects page to new pages reflecting the new project names.

Contributing

There are several ways you can contribute to IndieZen.org.

• Use the IndieZen.org software and provide feedback, feature requests and bug reports
• Contribute patches and fix some of the reported defects
• Become a submitter
• Implement one or more of the requested features and submit them
• If you have a tool or a component useful for game engines or game development, consider creating a plugin so that it will work with the rest of the Zen software.

If you're interested in contributing, please sign up on the forums and/or PM Tony Richards.

Core Developers

The developers of IndieZen.org generally hang out in the forums, or on IRC.

John Givler, Ph. D. Computer Science

Founding member, research scientist, senior architect and advanced software developer, Dr. Givler has contributed a significant amount of research and development to the Memory Management, Event Modeling and Threading libraries. John also contributed to the core framework design, providing the other developers with an impressive set of design patterns to follow. With over 30 years of software development experience in companies such as IBM's T. J. Watson Research Labs, John provides a steady guiding hand to the rest of the developers, as mentor and as a heavy-weight architect, designer and coder.

Tony "SgtFlame" Richards

The primary Founding member of IndieZen.org, Tony has been programming in C++ for over 20 years. Tony worked very closely with his mentor, John Givler, for several years, working out the details of the design that would eventually become the core of the Zen Framework. Tony has also made significant contributions to Zen Studio, Zen Worlds MMO and RPG Middleware, Zen Spaces Compute Cluster and Data Grid and the base Zen Engine implementation.

Tony also designed and implemented the core Zen Plugins system, which is the heart and soul of the Zen Framework.

Matt "Hatboyzero" Gray

One of the early adopters of the IndieZen software, Matt has spearheaded the design and implementation of the core Zen software and has championed the use of IndieZen.org software among scientists and military serious game developers. Matt is also one of the hard core C++ developers on the team, providing a vast amount of experience and talent.

Walt "Arcanor" Collins

Primarily contributing as a "game contributor" focusing on the implementation of Arcanoria, we're pleased to have Walt on our team. He provides us with a significant amount of broad MMO RPG features and specifications, and he brings a lot of software development talent to the group.

Curt Franklin

A heavy-weight programmer with over 20 years of C++ experience, Curt is contributing primarily to the Zen Spaces Compute Cluster and Data Grid components, as well as the Zen Enterprise software. Although most of this software is still in the design and incubation stages, we're looking forward to the significant hard-core software Curt is bringing to IndieZen.org.