TirNanoG Open Source RPG engine
Posted: 18 Oct 2021, 17:11
Hi,
For some time now, I've been working on a Free and Open Source game engine for my little boy. As such, it supposed to be usable without any programming skills. (Long story short, my ten years old boy one day come to me and said: "Dad, I'm bored with the games I have, I want to create my own!". He doesn't know how to program (yet), and he doesn't speak English (yet). So I've tried to find a proper engine for him, but these restrictions turned out to be very limiting, that's why I started this project. At first I wanted to use Flare RPG, but sadly it turned out to be extremely difficult to mod, lot more difficult than what my boy can cope with.)
Note this isn't finished yet, and expect bugs too (hopefully not too much). But this pre-beta version shows how it's going to be, and what I have in mind. I want it to be somewhat similar to RPG Maker, an easy to use windowed application but with a lot more features, and of course I want it to be Open Source (licensed under GPLv3) and working on Linux too. I've made lot of bad design decisions during this first iteration (most notably this version is very CPU bound, much more than it should be imho), so I've decided to refactor. Therefore this is the perfect time to ask other's opinion, nothing is set in stone so far.
The concept is, you can create game files with the editor, which then can be played using a separate player. End users are supposed to install the player once, and then they can just download the game files and play with as many games as they like (a bit like ScummVM, but here each game is a single file). Please keep in mind, there's only the editor available for now, I won't start the player part until I've finalized the editor. You should be able to use it with whatever assets you like, however I've designed it with primarily OpenGameArt's LPC assets and Flare RPG's fantasycore assets in mind (mostly because those are good looking and FOSS). Another VERY important design goal was to make the games translateable: anyone must be able to create and add a translation file so people don't have to rely on the game creator's mercy for internationalization.
Please take a look at it and let me know what you think (pre-built binaries are available for Windows and Linux). These are portable executables, no installation required, just extract under "C:\Program Files (x86)" (Win) or "/usr" (Linux). They create a directory "TirNanoG" in the user's home folder for the game projects, and touch no other files (so it is easy to completely remove from your computer).
If you prefer, you can compile it from source, everything is statically linked, no dependencies whatsoever. All you'll need is mingw+msys2 (on Win) and make+gcc (on Linux). In the src directory, run make, that will do the trick.
Here's the repo with the source and documentation:
https://codeberg.org/tirnanog/editor
And here are some screenshots to grab your interest:
The Sprite Importer
The Cutscene Editor
The Map Editor
Let me know what you think, or if you have an idea how to make it better! Please remember the editor is about 99% finished.
Cheers,
bzt
EDIT: fixed image links, because screenshots moved to the new webpage.
For some time now, I've been working on a Free and Open Source game engine for my little boy. As such, it supposed to be usable without any programming skills. (Long story short, my ten years old boy one day come to me and said: "Dad, I'm bored with the games I have, I want to create my own!". He doesn't know how to program (yet), and he doesn't speak English (yet). So I've tried to find a proper engine for him, but these restrictions turned out to be very limiting, that's why I started this project. At first I wanted to use Flare RPG, but sadly it turned out to be extremely difficult to mod, lot more difficult than what my boy can cope with.)
Note this isn't finished yet, and expect bugs too (hopefully not too much). But this pre-beta version shows how it's going to be, and what I have in mind. I want it to be somewhat similar to RPG Maker, an easy to use windowed application but with a lot more features, and of course I want it to be Open Source (licensed under GPLv3) and working on Linux too. I've made lot of bad design decisions during this first iteration (most notably this version is very CPU bound, much more than it should be imho), so I've decided to refactor. Therefore this is the perfect time to ask other's opinion, nothing is set in stone so far.
The concept is, you can create game files with the editor, which then can be played using a separate player. End users are supposed to install the player once, and then they can just download the game files and play with as many games as they like (a bit like ScummVM, but here each game is a single file). Please keep in mind, there's only the editor available for now, I won't start the player part until I've finalized the editor. You should be able to use it with whatever assets you like, however I've designed it with primarily OpenGameArt's LPC assets and Flare RPG's fantasycore assets in mind (mostly because those are good looking and FOSS). Another VERY important design goal was to make the games translateable: anyone must be able to create and add a translation file so people don't have to rely on the game creator's mercy for internationalization.
Please take a look at it and let me know what you think (pre-built binaries are available for Windows and Linux). These are portable executables, no installation required, just extract under "C:\Program Files (x86)" (Win) or "/usr" (Linux). They create a directory "TirNanoG" in the user's home folder for the game projects, and touch no other files (so it is easy to completely remove from your computer).
If you prefer, you can compile it from source, everything is statically linked, no dependencies whatsoever. All you'll need is mingw+msys2 (on Win) and make+gcc (on Linux). In the src directory, run make, that will do the trick.
Here's the repo with the source and documentation:
https://codeberg.org/tirnanog/editor
And here are some screenshots to grab your interest:
The Sprite Importer
The Cutscene Editor
The Map Editor
Let me know what you think, or if you have an idea how to make it better! Please remember the editor is about 99% finished.
Cheers,
bzt
EDIT: fixed image links, because screenshots moved to the new webpage.