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Coyote · Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 6:49 pm Post subject: 2D Game Engines / SDKs

There was a ton of support / comments in this post about making games yourself and choosing a good GENERAL PURPOSE 2D game engine. So.... I thought I'd start this thread with a list of 2D game engines & SDKs (as 2D is somewhat easier for beginners than 3D), and let people comment on them later in the thread.

Game Maker 7 - Windows - Popular (and CHEAP) game authoring toolset, used for making several commercial games.

Flex and ActionScript - Windows, Mac, Linux - for Flash development, sorta the defacto standard for web-based gaming. Also check out FlashDevelop - a free, open-source editor

PTK - Windows / Mac / Linux - This is an SDK that was popular among indies in the earlier part of this decade, and still sees a good deal of professional, commercial (indie) use.

Popcap Game Framework (SexyApp) - Windows - once part of Popcap's developer program (and used for several of their games), it is now open source.

Blitz Max - Windows, Mac, Linux - A very popular 2D authoring language / platform / system.

Construct - Windows - Free, open-source creator of DX9-based games.

Flat Red Ball - Windows / XBox 360 - 2D SDK using XNA and C#. Built by mainstream game development pros.

Torque Game Builder (Torque 2D) - Windows, Mac, Linux - Torque's powerful, hardware-accelerated 2D engine cousin. Significantly easier to develop for than TGE / TGEA (IMO)

Microsoft XNA Game Studio 3.0 - Windows, Zune, XBox 360 - Microsoft's cross-platform game studio for... uh, their platforms.

Torque X 2D - Windows, XBox 360 - Torque-based platform built on top of XNA. For more rapid development, and great justice!

SDL - Windows, Mac, Linux - Simple DirectMedia Layer - a very simple, straightforward graphics / sound library for games. Has bindings for about a zillion different languages. Including:

Pygame / PGReloaded (PyGame 2) - Windows, Linux, Mac - Python-based 2D game development API (based on SDL)

Silverlight - Windows with limited support for Linux, Mac, others via Mono / Moonlight, etc - Microsoft's answer to Flash.

Slick for Java - Windows, Mac, Linux - Java-based game development!

Allegro - DOS, Windows, Unix, Mac, etc... - a C-based game library.

Novashell - Windows, Linux, Mac - free high-level game maker (with source), currently in beta.

Cobra 2D and 3D Game Programming Language - Windows - New game programming *language*, designed specifically for RAD indie game development.

Haaf's Game Engine - Windows - apparently well-used hardware-accelerated game engine.

SFML (Simple & Fast Multimedia Library) - Windows, Linux, Mac - New, multi-language, multiplatform *library* with hardware acceleration, etc.
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Coyote · Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 7:02 pm Post subject:

You may notice I skipped some genre-specific engines (RPG Maker, AGS, etc) - those are great engines and worthy of discussion, but there are more than plenty of general purpose 2D game engines to talk about.

So --- comments / reviews / example games?
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cycletronic · Level 1 Wanderer Joined: 29 Jun 2009 Posts: 1

Not to be too technical, FlashDevelop is just an IDE, the actual engine is Adobe Flex. I actually just use the command line compiler and an ant script and a simple text editor for my dev environment. That's the only way I've ever got a game published... after using half a dozen engines and IDEs, the one game I published used plain old DirectX and the DOS (!) text editor.

Coyote · Posted: Mon Jun 29, 2009 9:30 pm Post subject:

I made some clarifications on that one It gets a little funky when you are talking about development platforms on top of engines on top of SDKs.... Smile

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Hajo · Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2009 12:59 am Post subject:

You've included SDL, which is basically just a 2D multimedia library. SDL is useful for making games, no doubt, having used it myself in at lesat three projects.

If you include SDL, you might also want to take a look at Allegro which is very similar and also quite popular library.
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Coyote · Posted: Tue Jun 30, 2009 7:05 am Post subject:

Added. Thank you.
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devon · Level 1 Wanderer Joined: 26 Jul 2009 Posts: 4

If you count game maker, you might as well include the "click" products:

Multimedia Fusion 2, Games Factory 2 and the now free and outdated original, Klik 'n Play.
They are even easier to develop games with than game maker, but usually more expensive.
http://www.clickteam.com/eng/

For python there is also these awesome libraries:
http://www.pyglet.org/
http://cocos2d.org/ (built on pyglet, adds a bunch of easy effects, and a higher level api)
and http://www.farbs.org/pycap.html (python popcap wrapper)

iphone:
http://code.google.com/p/cocos2d-iphone/ (nothing to do with pyglet or python, but is basically an obj-c version of the python cocos2d api for iphone)

don't forget the ruby and lua sdl wrappers (not as mature as pygame, but similar in scope):
http://rubygame.org/
http://love2d.org/ (gotta love their website)

speaking of ruby there's gosu:
http://www.libgosu.org/ (has a c++ flavor too that the ruby version wraps. It's similar to sfml.)

basic:
http://darkbasic.thegamecreators.com/ (does 2d as well as 3d)

other:
http://verge-rpg.com (uses its own scripting language I believe, isn't limited to rpgs but that was it's original focus)

[edit] oh and I almost forgot for c++:
http://www.indielib.com/
https://www.ohloh.net/p/indiezen

tristanjl · Level 1 Wanderer Joined: 05 Aug 2009 Posts: 1

http://www.arcticengine.com/

I'm currently working on this engine, which is predominantly C and runs on Iphone, windows and Linux. I'm planning on continuing to work on it and keep the same licence for it always.

ragnor · Posted: Thu Aug 20, 2009 3:32 pm Post subject:

SWEngine is a 2D Game API for Windows. This is a creation of a friend of mine. He is patiently working of this API for a long time and it shaped up well. API is coded in C but he is just about to complete a C++ wrapper for it. There is some games made in this API. You can find all in the API's website.
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unit · Level 5 Hunter Joined: 14 Mar 2010 Posts: 153

Donovan9830 · Level 3 Seeker Joined: 13 Mar 2010 Posts: 72

I stumbled on GM in the beginning, but looking back would probably have gone with something compatible with Mac, especially as I am taking a shot at the indie route. One of the first reactions on the basilisk games forum was not for mac... again!

Hi Ben Smile

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brigadon · Scenery Troll Joined: 11 Feb 2010 Posts: 4

I am actually checking into the feasability of the Glest Engine as a possible basis for a commercial isometric 2d tool. It's essentially designed for RTS, but as such it has a LOT of potential for other game types.

Technically it is 3d, but it's not a 'true' 3d engine (being substantially top-down ISO) and so it is only about as 3d as dungeon keeper 2.

But I am waiting for email back from the authors about licensing and so forth. It would be nice to just have to modify XML worksheets and artwork to create your own game Smile