Ethanon Engine

[Mehrdad]

Ethanon is a free 2D game engine focused on the recent video cards for hardware acceleration and shader effects. EE is best suitable for 2D games with a top-down view, but it can also be used to develop other styles, such as side scrollers and shoot'em up games. The main goal of this engine is to provide high-quality lighting, shadow and particle effects with an easy to use visual interface and a simple and direct scripting system.

EE is entirely based on 2D sprites. It uses pixel shaders to perform the normal map based lighting and supports any kind of map construction (e.g.: isometric, orthogonal or hexagonal) because it's based on arbitrarily positioned entities instead of fixed tiles.

To control the game flow and handle its events, Ethanon Engine uses AngelScript for scripts, which brings a familiar C++ syntax to the code. The integration with the scripting language is pretty simple and easy to understand. Many features are included in the scripting system, such as full entity manipulation, save and load games with one instruction, video playback support, and more.

main page:
http://www.asantee.net/ethanon/

shots:
http://sourceforge.net/project/screenshots.php?group_id=303720

[Calin Leafshade]

This looks very interesting.

I especially like the look of the scripting language and the advanced graphical stuff allowed.

[Wonkyth]

Indeed, it does look interesting!

Although, Mehrdad, I'm not trying to shout it or anything, but often people whine about you using text off of a site  in verbatim...

[Mehrdad]

Although, Mehrdad, I'm not trying to shout it or anything, but often people whine about you using text off of a site  in verbatim...

That was my opinion a good news for 2D engine users.so i do copy-paste for see preview feature all.
AGS is 2D engine.so best place for show other 2D engines (for other genre) is here.doesnt it?

[Wonkyth]

Yeah, thanks for sharing, as otherwise I probably wouldn't have heard of this, but you did technically breach copyright, in a minor way. 

[Mehrdad]

Yeah, thanks for sharing, as otherwise I probably wouldn't have heard of this, but you did technically breach copyright, in a minor way. 

mmmm..sorry.I dont know really this is breach copyright.if you want and if that serious problem i can edit first post.

[Anarcho]

That's really cool.  Baldur's Gate and those type of games really were awesome, and in a lot of ways the 3d versions (Oblivion, Dragon Age) just don't compare.  I hope people make some awesome new games with this.

[Shane 'ProgZmax' Stevens]

Looks like you could whip up a fancy action game in this with some solid artwork and a decent scripter.  I'm not sure I'd use it for, say, an rpg since you'd have to create all the specific functionality (class tables, UI, inventory management, shops, etc), and would be essentially making your own rpg engine.  If it catches on there will no doubt be scripts available that include a lot of shortcuts to make rpgs/platformers (like Game Maker has, for instance).  The one thing I've noticed is that the most successful engines directly support at least one game mode internally rather than serving as a blank base (AGS/Wintermute: Adventure games, Game Maker:Platformers, RPGMaker:Obvious) because most people coming aboard know very little scripting or lack the patience for it and would rather focus on world building and seeing results.  

Basically, Ethanon almost feels like an experiment in engine lighting rather than a cohesive game design package as of right now.
 

[deadsuperhero]

Been keeping track of it through FreeGamer. Looks promising due to it being under a Free Software license, and there's talk of a Linux port. Linux game developers really could use some simpler tools like this.