lispysnake / Serpent
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Serpent Game Framework
The Serpent Game Framework is a brand new game framework from Lispy Snake, Ltd leveraging the latest technologies such as D, OpenGL and Vulkan, to make indie game development easier than ever.
Support It
This framework is being developed by Lispy Snake for our first games. While we would love to develop it full time, basic economics says we must reinvest any contract-work revenue to support development in any remaining time.
To accelerate development (and time-to-market) for our framework and first game, consider buying a Lifetime License from us ($20!) to have lifetime access to our games. If you just want to send a tip to help with Serpent development (and our other efforts) then please click one of the links below!
Modifications
Please note any modifications must be hygienic - compiling with neither
warning nor error. Additionally you must have run scripts/update_format.sh to
ensure consistent code-styling before sending in changes.
Design Considerations
Provide the best possible functionality required for simpler 2D games at minimal technical debt, both for us, the framework developers, and you, the library consumer.
Our previous engine implementation was an all-inclusive engine written in C with a WIP rendering pipeline. Long story short, way too much debt for us and for new users.
D Language
Whilst some may argue the merits of D, we've found it perfectly suited to our game development requirements. Consider the built-in concurrency support when dealing with batches of SOA entities.
Additionally, we wanted to avoid a few pitfalls (despite being C lovers)
- String issues (
\0, mutability, UTF..) - Forced to reinvent all the wheels (to avoid linking to beastly opinionated refcount libraries)
- Time to market. It hurts.
Cross-platform support
We need to support, at minimum:
- Windows (Vulkan/OpenGL)
- Linux (Vulkan/OpenGL) & X11/Wayland
- Android.
Utilities
The framework simply wraps a bunch of libraries together, and provides utilities to manage the game loop and do stuff. Thus, we'll provide utilities for lifecycle management and actually loading/drawing stuff.
2D Focus
We want to disguise the pipeline under a 2D front. This framework is currently designed for 2D games, that benefit from an accelerated 3D pipeline. To that end, we'll make it possible to make awesome 2D games with UIs, sound, tiling, etc. But you can still get slick bloom shaders..
Reuse Where Possible
Where it is feasible we will reuse other projects to save us from significant technical debt, such as rendering pipelines, etc.
Below is the current list of projects we know we WILL reuse. This may be subject to modification.
bgfx
We will reuse bgfx to power the underlying rendering pipeline in order to abstract support for various platforms and rendering APIs.
Currently we're focused on Vulkan and OpenGL, with Metal and DirectX on the cards in the future.
SDL
We'll use SDL for our basic windowing, OS integration and input handling. This allows consumers to leverage the advanced controller support found within SDL (some would say a USP).
Chipmunk2D
After investigating several options, we're probably going to use Chipmunk2D for 2D physics, and find another 3D option should the need arise. We looked into Newton Dynamics and it is too problematic for integration.
OpenAL
Need decent sound, right?
Invent Where Unavoidable
Some areas we're going to be forced to do a small bit of reinvention. This will involve basic UI support in the framework, primarily because the main available libraries are explicitly locked to OpenGL. We very much need to support OpenGL and Vulkan.