THIS PROJECT IS DEPRECATED.

It has been superceded by RAMEN

Bubble is in turn being superceded by AllegroForthKit

Both are far easier to understand, cleaner, and more portable. I have discarded the Idioms feature and the semi-classical OO.

Functionality is regressed but will be gradually added back.

Lantern Engine

A 2D game engine in Forth built on Bubble.

Lantern is designed to be simple to use and modular. With its modular design, it should be easy to swap out implementations and add enhancements and any needed capabilities or platform support.

Lantern is powered by the Allegro 5 library, leveraging hardware graphics acceleration, allowing you to animate thousands of sprites.

Demos

There is a YouTube playlist where I've posted videos of examples of the engine in action, here.

Features

• Currently runs on SwiftForth / Windows 7 and up
• Designed for 2D games
• Integrated interactive REPL (part of Bubble)
• Idiom-based object system (like OOP but simpler)
• Multitasking, enabling more complex game objects scripts with less effort
• Automatic static asset loading - no need to declare assets in source
• Basic sound support with samples and background music streaming (powered by FMOD or Allegro)
• Fast depth sorting
• Partial TMX (Tiled) file support (tilemaps, external tilesets, objects, and rectangles)
• Tilemap support with collision detection

Planned for 1.0

• Full TMX (Tiled) file support
• Intersection tests powered by tinyc2
• Easy-to-use dialog and cutscene systems

Shelved features (probably in 2018 or 2019)

• Fast ABAB / "Early Phase" collision detection
• Spriter support
• Mappable joystick support
• Physics
• Shader support
• GUI system for tool-building based on new "Workspaces" paradigm
• Object parenting / multiple object list management
• Adaptive display resolution