Laboratory2D : A free 2d game engine

[FuzzYspo0N]

Hello superfriends.

TL;DR information
Code : C++
Scripting : Javascript ( V8, spidermonkey )
Platforms : Windows, Mac, Linux (and ports to iOS, Browser plugins)
Networking : Yes
Packed data files : Yes
GUI : Gwen / Awesomium / Berkelium
Shaders : Yes,
Source : About to be open (full source on github, almost ready)
etc.

Obligatory shiny picture



EDIT: There is a reddit thread going on with some interesting questions if you are curious.

The rest
This is something I have been working on for fun over a long time and trying to get polished up for a '1.0' kind of release.
It started as a game and got far along, but I just can't keep up with this, my commercial game projects and community projects all by myself :)

SO! I need help!

Testers

This is the most important area I need help. The documentation is usable (i think), there are a bunch of hacked up tutorials, and there are the example projects that I am busy working on.

If you could, test how the engine comes across. Is it easy? What parts don't make sense? What parts are undocumented? What tutorials would be better? What could be explained in more detailed.

These are the things you can help A LOT with and hopefully shouldn't take up all your time.

Coders / Scripters

If you enjoy using the engine, and you fancy yourself willing/able - You can do tutorials, examples, games whatever.
Any help would be appreciated of this nature.

Engine level

There is a lot of stuff in the C++ side that could be improved, like more GUI controls exposed, or things like that.

Links and more information

http://laboratory2d.com/ for the links,
http://laboratory2d.com/forums for the community pages, tutorials, etc.

I have mentioned it on a community before, I have made some 'games' with it and I am in the process of making a full scale commercial game with it right here in our back yard. I have also been blogging about it for over a year on my other site.

Some more information on the other ports :
iOS port required additional binding of Spidermonkey, I did the binding, there is just a few minor issues left.
Android port was put aside for no (no device to test on etc).
Browser port (embedded plugin) was working well, just need to fix some paths and deployment issues.

Some more information about my plans :
Editors : I have written a bunch and working on this while i work on my game.

You can email me if you have any more questions or obviously just post here.

Any, and all feedback is greatly appreciated!

[Abel Toy]

Yay! I have an android, I could help you testing there :P (skype?)

About the javascript, could it be possible to integrate it with CoffeeScript? (beautiful javascript)

Edit: Btw was too excited about it and forgot to tell you this is SO AWESOME

[FuzzYspo0N]

Edit : I added CoffeeScript support quick. You can use exec.coffee to be able to use coffee script in the engine..

Oh, and for android : I was targeting NDK with 2.3+, the code is portable, you will only need to link to v8 for the most part. The rendererer has a 1.1 GLES code path, and I haven't made any moves toward ES2 but its simple enough.

And thank you!

[Cranktrain]

This looks very promising, I'll be keeping an eye on this. If it offered Python as a scripting language I'd probably already be hacking around, I'm not familiar with Javascript. Does look good though.

[FuzzYspo0N]

Thanks cranktrain. I wonder if CoffeeScript suits you more?

I have looked into other languages, it isn't a lot of binding to do on the C++ side to add other languages, like lua or game monkey or python, It just doesn't interest me and my goal was to take same game code to all the platforms I wanted to launch on (which includes a browser, since it runs javascript too).

The other factor is that a lot of the lightweight game related code like sprite classes and things like that, they are all written in javascript. Adding a python binding means writing a lot of the engine over, in python. I prefer parity between ports and especially modules (files you can share), finding a helpful module in the wrong language is something I don't enjoy :)

Not to say that it isn't possible, people are free to bind whatever they like but officially, the engine is Javascript for many reasons.

[FuzzYspo0N]

Something i'm working on today, one tester reminded me that editing the json file is a bit primitive :)

[jonbro]

Hey man, sorry to be a pain!

I can't figure out how to get it running on osx, it just dumps me immediately, no errors to the console or anything. I know I know, I should figure it out myself, but I have been in an airport for 56 hours now and am starting to feel a bit crazy.

[FuzzYspo0N]

Haha, no worries. Though, The crash log (report button) should show what it crashed inside? I can't really gleen any more info on that, so far no others have had a crash..

[Abel Toy]

Make sure the json files are correctly formatted. I'm on a mac too and when modifying json files, I made a syntax error, and when opening the app it just closed, so maybe it's that.

[FuzzYspo0N]

That is true, the game.init.json is strict formatted. In the latest repo there is actually a fix which logs this error properly, continuing with execution. It usually just the trailing comma, make sure there isn't one.

[mcc]

This sounds... REALLY interesting, and the samples look really attractive.

I want in my next game to have the ability to integrate game code written in C++ with code/scripts written in some kind of a language like Lua/Javascript/Python, but I'm sure if I wrote scripting integration myself from scratch it would take forever and the game would never be produced. I'm currently looking at Polycode [LUA] and this [Javascript]... Javascript is actually much more interesting than LUA from my perspective as I already know it, of course, the game I want to make is 3D...

[FuzzYspo0N]

Ah, yea 3D is ridiculous scope :) 2D i can manage. Are you asking if I am considering 3D or, are you just conversing?

Binding scripting can take quite a while depending what you do. You might look at something like jslibs, it has bindings for openGL and more http://code.google.com/p/jslibs/ but uses spidermonkey, and I am not sure if it has anything game related.

[mcc]

I was thinking out loud.

I think, though, I'd wonder, how difficult do you think it would be with your engine for me to use the 2D parts for things like interface and HUD, draw my own 3D for the "game itself", and just add additional javascript bindings to cover the 3D/physics stuff I'd need?

[FuzzYspo0N]

I don't think it would be too hard at all, the problem isn't the difficulty but more the amount of work it would take.
I have considered a few times making a 3D pass as well, but as soon as I start designing I get into the realisation of just how crazy that actually is and carry on with my games :P

But of course, doing it in another branch or fork is totally plausible. Come to think of it, you could easily bootstrap a 3D renderer library as part of the engine, much like phoenixCore is a standalone 2D renderer that I wrapped, you could probably wrap a renderer for 3D that already has all the work done, and focus on the bindings to script.

EDIT: i see horde3d had a new release beta recently. If i had to choose a renderer to wrap I would choose something forward thinking like horde). I also know it uses the same window manager and I have seen ports to mobile for it as well.

EDIT AGAIN: Hah, I just embedded Horde3D quickly to see how hard it would be to get it together. It worked.. So I will add it to the project with a define and see where it goes from there.

[mcc]

Neat! I think the main question I had was, how difficult is it to get a "trap door" in the Laboratory2D engine and do your own stuff meshed together with what Laboratory2D is drawing. Like maybe writing my own 3D code isn't a problem, it's just all the stuff around it in the game that gets irritating.

Huh, horde'd version looks good. And how quick you integrated that in speaks well of how flexible the framework is :O