1. What is TDME2?

ThreeDeeMiniEngine2 is a lightweight, multiplatform 3D engine including tools
- Read about the philosophy if interested
- See screenshots, if you want to quickly know where we are and where we will go :)
TDME2 is open source
- please check the license
- you find the source code at https://github.com/andreasdr/tdme2
- you find binary alpha builds at http://drewke.net/tdme2
- here you find developer documentation including collaboration graphs and private API as well as public API for current alpha build
  - RapidJSON is included, but not yet integrated into documentation, please see http://rapidjson.org/

2. Features

Application
- initialization
  - loads and initializes renderer backend plugin
  - creates main window and OpenGL/Vulkan context using GLFW3
- handles HID
- supports
  - setting window position and dimension
  - setting full screen or windowed, borderless windowed mode
  - setting application icon
  - setting mouse position and mouse cursor
  - executing other applications or background applications
  - swapping double buffered buffers (to screen) manually if required
  - checking if application is active (port-mingw, port-msc only for now)
  - setting and getting data from clipboard
- provides
  - a crash handler for port-msc and port-mingw which also saves backtrace to crash.log
  - application life cycle
Math
- Math class with common math functions
- Vector2, Vector3, Vector4, Matrix3x3, Matrix4x4 and Quaternion class
  - those have a ordinary API + operators, the latter is still a bit WIP
3D engine
- model reader
  - DAE
    - node names/ids must not have whitespace characters
    - requires baked matrices
    - requires triangulated meshes for now
  - FBX via FBX SDK
  - GLTF via tinygltf
  - TDME Model file format
    - this is a much more efficient model file format for TDME
    - can also be written
- objects/entity types
  - 3d model based objects with
    - animations
      - supports model object base animation and animation overlays
      - supports animation blending
    - skinning via
      - CPU on GL2, GL3+/CORE, GLES2
      - GPU via compute shaders with GL4.3+/CORE, Vulkan, GL3+/CORE via OpenCL for MacOSX
      - which also supports several instances of the same object to reduce compute and render calls
    - both animations and skinning have some sort of configurable LOD functionality
    - texture transformations/animations
      - via texture matrices
  - objects with support for LOD
  - imposter objects with support for LOD
  - render group objects for foliage and such including LOD support
  - particle systems which
    - are object based
    - or point based, including sprite sheet animation support
    - or for fog purposes
    - and support
      - basic/point emitter
      - sphere emitter
      - bounding box emitter
      - circle on plane emitter
      - ...
    - there is also support for particle system groups
  - lines based objects
  - entity hierarchy objects
  - environment mapping objects
    - which can be used as reflection sources of other objects
- object/entity transformations
  - scaling
  - rotations
  - translation
- color effects on objects/entities
  - color addition
  - color multiplication
- lighting
  - supports specular lighting
    - supports phong lighting
    - supports phong shading on GL2, GL3+/CORE, Vulkan
    - supports gouraud shading on GLES2
    - supports diffuse mapping on GLES2, GL2, GL3+/CORE, Vulkan
    - supports specular shininess mapping on GL3+/CORE, Vulkan
    - supports normal mapping on GL3+/CORE, Vulkan
    - supports reflection mapping from cube maps on GLES2, GL2, GL3+/CORE, Vulkan
  - supports PBR lighting with IBL
  - supports deferred shading and forward shading on GL3+/CORE, Vulkan
- custum shaders that currently include
  - specular lighting
  - specular lighting + foliage
  - specular lighting + tree
  - specular lighting + terrain
  - specular lighting + water
  - sky(no lighting + fragment depth at maximum)
  - PBR lighting
  - PBR lighting + foliage
  - PBR lighting + tree
- shadow mapping
- early z rejection
- post processing
  - depth blur
  - desaturation
  - light scattering
  - SSAO
  - vignette
- object picking
- camera control
  - set up look from, look at, up vector can be computed
  - frustum culling via oct tree
- supports offscreen instances
  - rendering can be captured as screenshot
  - rendering can be used (in other engine instances) as diffuse texture
- supports down/up scaled rendering of main engine
- screenshot ability
- multiple renderer backends, which are loaded at runtime
  - GLES2, GL2, GL3+/CORE and Vulkan
Physics via ReactPhysics3D 0.7.0
- have sphere, capsule, obb, convex mesh, concave terrain mesh, height map bounding volumes
- have multiple bounding volumes per body
- have static, dynamic rigid bodies and collision bodies
- uses discrete collision detection
- rigid body simulator
- ray tracing
- for RP3D internals and additional features see ReactPhysics3D website
Path finding/flow maps
- uses A*
- is paired with physics world to determine if a "cell" is walkable
- optional custom walkable test
- path finding utility supports generating flow maps
3D audio
- decoder
  - ogg vorbis decoder
- audio entities
  - streams
  - sounds
GUI system
- borrows some ideas from Nifty-GUI regarding XML and layouting
- borrows some ideas from AngularJS like
  - all nodes are in the GUI node tree and can be made visible or unvisible depending on conditions
- adds some improvements like
  - support auto keyword with nodes width and height attributes
  - layouting on demand in combination with conditions
- supported primitive nodes from which compounds are built of
  - element
  - gradient
  - image(plus framebuffer and texture image nodes)
  - input
  - layer
  - layout
  - panel
  - scrollbars
  - space
  - table
  - text + multiline/styled text
- supports custom templates and compound elements defined by templates and its controllers
  - compound elements
    - button
    - checkbox
    - dropdown
    - image button
    - input
    - knob
    - menu
    - progress bar
    - radio button
    - scrollarea
    - selectbox including tree view
    - selector horizontal
    - slider horizontal
    - slider vertical
    - tabs
  - supports custom templates in general
  - supports overriding used template of a compound element while using its controller
  - so TDME2 GUI is fully customizable in terms of appearance by modifying or adding XML template definitions
- includes a simple script language
  - to react on events with like on-mouse-click, ... and on-change for elements
  - to manipulate conditions of elements, values of element controller and node properties
- supports position and color based effects in combination with conditions that can also be defined via XML
MiniScript
- very small implementation of a scripting language without byte code, VM or what ever
- runs on every CPU, OS, ... due to its simplicity, so its highly portable just like TDME2 is
- can be easily extended by writing state machine machine states and script methods in C++
- only works with the following data type primitives: boolean, integer, float, string, vector3 and transformations
- when calling script methods/returning from methods it does not use references or pointers but only value by copy
- supports operators by operator to method mapping by a preprocessor run
- supports loops and conditions
- sort of event based
- how to use:
  - each script is attached to a game entity so it for now does not need something like OOP
  - communication between script instances is possible by sending signals with arguments
  - complex logic should still be implemented by a game developer in C++ by extending MiniScript
  - game designers can use MiniScript + those methods to implement high level game logic
- MiniScript methods/states know about them self, so a whole documentation for MiniScript usage can be generated later
- can be transpiled to C++
Networking module, which consists of
- UDP server
  - n:m threading model with non blocked IO via kernel event mechanismns(epoll, kqueue or select)
  - supports safe messages with acknowledgment and automatic resending
  - supports fast messages
  - can be used in a heavy multithreaded environment (the networking module is thread safe)
  - IPV6 ready
- UDP client
  - has single thread with a simple threadsafe API
  - supports all features required by UDP server
  - IPV6 ready
- Simple HTTP client
  - uses a blocking TCP socket, thus it has a simple blocking API
  - Ready for REST providing all methods, setting content type and body
  - be able to set GET and POST parameters via unordered map
  - supports basic authentification
  - IPV6 ready
- HTTP download client
  - supports basic authentification
  - uses a separate thread to download to file
  - IPV6 ready
Operating system abstraction layer
- file system
  - standard file system
  - zlib based compressed archive file system and a tool to generate it from ./resources and ./shader folder
- multi threading
  - atomic operations
  - barrier
  - condition
  - consumer/producer queue
  - mutex
  - read write lock
  - spin lock
  - thread

3. Tools

Editor
- This is our content editor, please see README-Editor.md
Installer
- TDME2 itself and TDME2 applications can be installed with TDME2 installer, which supports
  - offline installations
  - installation using HTTP download from a repository which is easy to set up
  - updating/repairing/uninstalling
- TDME2 tools contains the installer creation application, whereas
  - installer definitions are set up using property files
  - create-installer is able to group files into components
Other tools
- archive tool to generate a single compressed file file system from ./resources and ./shader folders
- converttotm tool to generate TDME2 model files
- createinstaller tool to generate installer application and archives
- generatelicenses tool to generate complete engine or project licenses from ./ext folders
- importtmodel tool to generate TDME2 tmodel prototype files using model and bounding volumes models
- makefilegenerator tool to generate Makefiles for TDME2 based projects
- miniscripttranspiler tool to transpile MiniScript code to C++ code
- optimizemodel tool to generate texture atlases and bake down model mesh nodes into a few one to reduce GL/VK (render/compute) calls
- sortincludes tool to sort "include" and "using" source code statements
- others ...

4. What does it (maybe still) lack

physics
- some more RP3D integration
example games
documentation

5. What is WIP or planned

PBR: generate IBL cube maps from scene
Shader parameters, the system is implemented and working, now lets connect tools and shaders
Reflections via environment mapping(reflection intensity maps feature is missing for specular materials)
Optimizing models with specular lighting regarding render calls by reducing nodes and materials to a minumum
GUI effects via XML definitions
Port WarStorys "Game Foundation" to TDME2, which organizes game logics, enables communcation between them and enables to do network IO and such
MiniScript: more engine bindings
Add nmake support to makefile generator for TDME2 based projects
Editor: complete Undo/Redo and Copy/Cut/Paste/Delete
Editor: Code editing with code completion, also visual code and shader editing is planned!
Vulkan: Performance improvements
Some UI elements need some focus/disabled fixes
A release plan
A demonstration video

6. Technology

designed for simple multi threading, but
- 3D rendering engine uses multiple threads if using Vulkan renderer, or one thread only if using a GL renderer
- UDP client has its own thread
- UDP server can have multiple IO threads, multiple worker threads and always has its own server thread
- HTTP download client has its own thread
- physics or game mechanics can also run in a separate thread(s)
uses 3rd party libraries
- needs to be installed
  - OpenGL
  - OpenAL
  - glew
  - pthreads
  - GLFW3
  - Vulkan(optional)
- included in TDME2 repository
  - FBXSDK
  - libpng
  - ReactPhysics3D
  - RapidJSON
  - sha256
  - tinygltf
  - tinyxml
  - V-HACD
  - Vorbis/OGG
  - Vulkan
    - glslang
    - OGLCompilersDLL
    - simple_vulkan_synchronization
    - spirv
    - VulkanMemoryAllocator
  - zlib
targeted platforms and its current state
- Windows/MINGW(port completed)
- Windows/MSC(port completed)
- Linux(port completed)
- MacOSX(port completed)
- FreeBSD(port completed)
- NetBSD(port completed)
- OpenBSD(port completed)
- Haiku(port completed)
- Android(port pending)
- iOS(port pending)

7. Other information

7.1. Links

TDME2 Philosophy, see README-Philosophy.md
TDME2 Engine, see README.md
TDME2 Editor, see README-Editor.md
TDME2 How to build, see README-BuildingHowTo.md
TDME2 Screenshots, see README-Screenshots.md

7.2. External references

"ReactPhysics3D" physics library, http://www.reactphysics3d.com
the world wide web! thank you for sharing, see README-WebReferences.md

7.3. Other credits

Dominik Hepp
Mathias Lenz
Kolja Gumpert
Mathias Wenzel
Sergiu Crăiţoiu
Chantal Zabel
others

7.4. Special thanks go to

Kristin Meissner
Dominik Hepp

8. Collaboration

Interested in collaboration? Then drop me a line via mail or use the issues section on tdme2@github or on tdme2@codecks
- You can help with testing and reporting bugs
- I have easy to hard task regarding engine/tools development
- I have tasks regarding documentation
- I even might have system administrator tasks

9. Donation

I have to pay my bills and beer, so if you have any use for this open source project, like educational, productive or fun, ..., consider a donation here https://www.paypal.me/andreasdrewke or here https://github.com/sponsors/andreasdr

Cheap and reliable Node.js hosting starts at $3/month, and $1/month static HTML hosting

andreasdr / tdme2

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1. What is TDME2?

2. Features

3. Tools

4. What does it (maybe still) lack

5. What is WIP or planned

6. Technology

7. Other information

7.1. Links

7.2. External references

7.3. Other credits

7.4. Special thanks go to

8. Collaboration

9. Donation