VOLATILE DOVE ENGINE

A minimal, open-source, C++ 2D (and a bit of 3D) video game library for Windows (Vista/7/8/10), Linux, and the Windows Store. Supports OpenGL and DirectX. Supports both X86 and X64 architectures, and also ARM (for Windows Store) (Note: this latter has not been tested for a while).

The code is available on GitHub with a ZLib license (mostly ZLib actually, see LICENSE.txt), So you can use it freely for any purpose, even commercial. Using it for Good, not Evil, would be appreciated, though. Use the source, Luke!

To build a new application, the simpler way is to use one of the example programs provided with the sources, but if you want to build a new Visual Studio (or other) project from scratch, see How to compile below. Note that the code is provided as sources i.e. without a library link, to make it easier to integrate and more customizable for your needs.

TUTORIALS

  A Hello World tutorial

FEATURES

The engine supports (non exhaustive list):

• PNG (32 bits RGBA) file support
• 2D scene features
  • Sprites with scaling, rotation, bounding boxes,...
  • Bitmap fonts and text rendering
• Input management
  • Keyboard
  • Mouse
  • XBox 360 joystick
  • Touchscreen (semantic zoom on the Windows Store)
• Utility tools and functions
  • File read/write wrappers
  • Logging utilities
  • String management utilities
  • Multidimensional buffers
  • Memory pool
  • Data compression/uncompression utility (except for Windows Store)
• 3D scene
  • Camera
  • Cube
  • Sphere
  • Fast rendering of arbitrary polygons (with arbitrary colors, texture coordinates, and normals) using Vertex Buffer
  • Shaders (GLSL and HLSL) included
• Minimal network functions
• Minimal (experimental) pathfinding functions
• Minimal Steamworks SDK integration (basic integration + achievements)

HOW TO CREATE AND MAINTAIN A NEW PROJECT (THE EASY WAY)

• The script generate_project.pl is described here.
• The file setup.ini is described here.

HOW TO ADD STEAMWORKS INTEGRATION (THE EASY WAY)

Add the path of your Steam SDK (e.g. "c:\Steam SDK - FooBar") as a value for steam_sdk_path= in setup.ini.
Run again generate_project.pl on your project.
Create a file named steam_appid.txt in the working directory (WorkDir/), with as text content your AppId number.

HOW TO CREATE A NEW PROJECT FROM SCRATCH (THE MASOCHIST WAY)

  Follow the link...

When compiling, you have to add one of the following preprocessors define, to define the target environment:

• USES_WINDOWS8_METRO: Windows 8 and later as a Windows Store application (DirectX)
  Dependancies: Direct2D11, Direct3D11, DXGI, DirectAudio, DirectInput, WinSock
  • Note: this can be used in conjunction with USES_WINDOWS8_METRO_WITH_XAML: this is then kind of similar to USES_WINDOWS8_METRO but this is an attempt as draw the scene from the Windows.UI.Xaml.Controls.Page element of another project using C#/XAML. At date 2016-04-29, this is highly experimental and tricky to integrate.


• USES_WINDOWS8_DESKTOP: Windows 8 and later as a desktop application (DirectX)
  Dependancies: Direct2D11, Direct3D11, DXGI, DirectAudio, DirectInput, WinSock, LibXML2, libiconv, zlib


• USES_WINDOWS_OPENGL: Windows Vista and later as a desktop application (OpenGL)
  Dependancies: OpenGL, glu, glut, libpng, libpthread, OpenAL, alut, libVorbis, libOgg, DirectInput, WinSock, LibXML2, libiconv, zlib
  • Note: this can be used in conjunction with USES_SDL_INSTEAD_OF_GLUT. The dependancy library glut is then replaced by libSDL2. At date 2016-04-29, this is highly experimental and does not support anything 3D.


• USES_LINUX: Linux (OpenGL)
  Dependancies: OpenGL, glu, libpng, libpthread, OpenAL, alut, libVorbis, libOgg, LibXML2, libiconv, zlib


• USES_JS_EMSCRIPTEN: Web (javascript port of C++ code), with Emscripten. Highly experimental / in development. Development platform may be Windows or Linux, Windows being probably preferred.

HOW TO ADD STEAMWORKS INTEGRATION (THE MASOCHIST WAY)

On Windows:

• Add USES_STEAM_INTEGRATION and _CRT_SECURE_NO_WARNINGS in the defines of your project.
• Add [...]\sdk\public in the additional include directories (C/C++ -> General, in Visual Studio).
• Add [...]\sdk\redistributable_bin and [...]\sdk\public\steam\lib\win32 in the additional library directories (Linker -> General, in Visual Studio) (win32 has to be replaced by your target: linux32,linux64,osx32,win64,...).
• Create a file named steam_appid.txt in the working directory (WorkDir/), with as text content your AppId number.
• Copy steam_api.dll and sdkencryptedappticket.dll into the working directory (WorkDir/).

[...] to be replaced by the path to the Steam SDK.

On Linux:

• Add STEAMSDK_PATH as a makefile parameter in App_Linux/compile.sh with the value as the path of your Steam SDK.
• Copy libsteam_api.so and libsdkencryptedappticket.so into the working directory (WorkDir/).
• Add a script in WorkDir/ named app.sh

  		export LD_LIBRARY_PATH=.:$LD_LIBRARY_PATH
  		(test -f App_Linux_32bits && ./App_Linux_32bits) || (test -f App_Linux_64bits && ./App_Linux_64bits)
  		

[...] to be replaced by the path to the Steam SDK.