Isetta Engine

The Isetta Engine is a C++ game engine developed over 3 months for the twin-stick shooter genre. Please visit our website https://isetta.io for a full documentation of our journey in making this engine.

Engine Architecture and Progress

Getting Started

Environment

• A 64-bit Windows operating system (How to check?)
• Visual Studio 2017
  • Install VC++ 2017 and Windows 10 SDK (10.0.17134.0). With Visual Studio Installer, select "Desktop development with C++" and the correct Windows 10 SDK version.
  • You may need to restart your computer
• CMake 3.10.2 or later
  • Make sure you add it to your PATH (either check the box during the installation process of follow this)

To clone the engine:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/Isetta-Team/Isetta-Engine.git

Compiling

Before you build you must pull and build the submodules:

• Pull all submodules by using git submodule update --init --recursive
• Build the submodules
  • [ ] GLFW & Horde3D. Either:
    • Run the Dependency.bat batch script in the repo (requires CMake in path), if it failed, see below
    • Build manually:
      • [ ] GLFW:
        1. Open a CMake Window
        2. Set the source path to REPO/Isetta/External/GLFW
        3. Set the binary path to REPO/Isetta/External/GLFW/Build
        4. Click "configure" (select Visual Studio 15 2017 Win64 compiler), "generate" and then "open" the project
        5. Build under both Debug and Release configurations
      • [ ] Horde3D (should be built AFTER GLFW):
        1. Open a CMake Window
        2. Set the source path to REPO/Isetta/External/Horde3D
        3. Set the binary path to REPO/Isetta/External/Horde3D/Build
        4. Configure (select Visual Studio 15 2017 Win64 compiler)
        5. Set the GLFW_INCLUDE_DIR to REPO/Isetta/External/GLFW/include
        6. Set the GLFW_LIBRARY_PATH to REPO/Isetta/External/GLFW/Build/src/Release/glfw3.lib
        7. Uncheck HORDE_BUILD_EXAMPLES
        8. Generate and open the project
        9. Build under both Debug and Release configurations
  • [ ] ImGui
    1. Open the Isetta.sln
    2. In the solution explorer expand the folders: Solution 'Isetta' > External > imgui
    3. Right-click lib_glfw_opengl3, select Build
  • [ ] Yojimbo
    1. Go to the yojimbo folder and run .\premake5.exe solution
    2. Build the yojimbo project (only that project, not the entire solution!) for both the Release and Debug configurations

Using the Engine

You can start playing with our first demo game! You'll need a controller for it.

1. Set build configuration to Debug DLL
2. Set "IsettaTestBed" as start up project
3. Build "IsettaEngine"
4. Set start_level in config.cfg or user.cfg to "Level1"
   • Refer below for configuration settings
5. Build and run and start playing! There will also be a bunch of values for you to tweak

Build Configurations

There are currently 3 configuration options with this solution of the engine:

• Debug: Debug settings and level is built/run in-engine (not using engine dll)
• Debug DLL: Debug settings and level uses engine DLL (separate project from engine source)
• Release: Release settings (optimized code) and level is built/run in-engine (not using engine dll)

There are different levels available in the projects of the solution; ones in IsettaEngine have most recent/testing features, ones in IsettaTestbed are functional tech demos and games. To run any level built within the engine, use Debug or Release and set startup project as IsettaEngine (right-click the IsettaEngine project and select "Set as Startup Project"). To run any level within IsettaTestbed, the configuration must be Debug DLL (to build the engine into a DLL), the startup project should then be IsettaTestbed.

Debug DLL will build the .dll for you to use and export. To use your version of the engine in another solution/project, build with Debug DLL and use those .dll and .lib built files in your project (follow Isetta-Game instructions for more information). You will also need to export your changed header files, external library headers, resources, etc. Use the ExportHeaders.bat batch script, located in the top level of the repo, which will export all of the necessary files to a folder labeled includes. You can alter the batch script as needed to include more/less of the engine.

Configuration

The configuration settings of the engine are placed with config.cfg within the IsettaEngine folder. For personal configuration settings, create a user.cfg in the same folder as config.cfg If you want any personal options when using the engine (such as selecting a level for your computer to run) without changing the config.cfg you will need a user.cfg. You will need a user.cfg for each project (ie. IsettaEngine, IsettaTest, and IsettaTestbed), this fill needs to be placed at the root directory of the project (not the .sln).

Predefined Components

In our engine, we have lots of predefined components that you can use out of the box!

• AI - No Documentation Yet:

• Audio - Documentation:

• Collisions - Documentation:

• General Components - Documentation:

• Graphics - Documentation:

• Networking - Documentation:

Selectable Levels

In your user.cfg add the lines:

# Level Settings
start_level = LEVEL_NAME

LEVEL_NAME can then be replaced with any of these options:

• When running IsettaEngine: Level Folder

• When running IsettaTestBed: Level Folder

Dependencies/Plugins

• imgui
• yojimbo
• brofiler
• GLFW
• Horde3D
• FMOD
• SID (String ID)

Stepping Time

Assuming you have checked out master, you are looking at our latest work. If you would like to view the engine from the start you can use the tags feature to see the code week to week. If you are interested in a specific feature, there are branches for each of the major systems of development for you to checkout (the majority of development happened on those branches, we slipped up sometimes and made changes on staging).

Mission Statement

Game engine development is a very wide field in the industry, but also a very inaccessible one. Budding engineers are advised to just jump into development to learn, and it's for this reason that the Isetta Engine project came to be.

Our team is building a game engine specialized for the twin-stick shooter genre. Every step of the way we will be documenting our process through a dedicated blog. Readers can hear from us personally and get an in-depth look at our journey to create the engine. In addition, we will supplement our content through regular interviews with industry professionals who have built their own engines before.

Between our own hands-on process and sage advice from veteran engineers, we hope to give newcomers a clearer representation of the engine-building process.

This project will span from August to December of 2018 and all of our progress and code will be accessible via the git repo.