Automata Engine 1.0 Print
Written by alloplastic   
Monday, 10 May 2010 23:27

After dwelling for a time on stability and code organization, we have a basic engine in place that can now be used as a platform to develop automata/voxel-based games.  Performance should be fairly acceptible on most dual-core machines. 

 

The current demo is deliberately processor-intensive in order to get meaningful measurements on different systems.  Any game created for the XBox will require a somewhat smaller canvas.

 

There is no game to speak of in the demo.  In fact, the "tumor" is pretty much invincible except in two special cases.  However, it's possible to put the whole simulation into a perpetual cycle of growth and decline, which is somewhat cool. 

 

Features of the "Game of Death" engine include: 

 

* multilayer 3D canvas, composed of pseudo-voxels

* voxel-based sprites, composited via ink effects

* 3D sprite-based lighting

* cellular automata rule engine

* multiple rendering paths for optimization

* multithreading

* audio engine, configurable via externally defined "rules."

* time-sliced stats module -- allows sound to be tied to the number of voxels, for instance

game levels and level transitions

* movers, colliders, streakers (objects that add cells into the environment)

* two camera impementations: simple and "follow"

* XBox, Windows, and soon Windows Mobile 7

 

Last Updated on Tuesday, 11 May 2010 21:33