Introduction to NeoAxis
From NeoAxisWiki
NOTE: INCOMPLETE ARTICLE
Contents |
Brief Introduction to Game Development
Please before we begin, bear in mind that game development is a very, very complex task and maybe one of the hardest tasks in the programming world and more for indie game developers like small teams of just a couple of people and harder for just lonely individuals which probably is the majority of all indie game developers.
Although making them can be just as fun as playing them, it is not an easy task at all
If you are new to all these, it may be of interest to you to know that block buster titles like current XBOX 360 and PS3 titles were made by hundreds of extremely experienced programmers, musicians, writers, directors, graphical artists and translators with budgets of 50 or 60 million dollars and even with that amount of workforce and resources they take years to develop a top hit title. not all the budget is used in personnel salaries much of it is used on all kinds of advertising, press, the process of manufacturing all the copies in its boxes and the distribution of them to stores all over the globe
So be realistic and think about projects that you could possibly do with your current resources and experience, dont expect to make a world of warcraft or halo 3 remake that will sell millions of copies if you are just yourself which acts as all the multiple roles required by game development and all self funded by part time jobs.
So be creative and think about projects you can do in a decent amount of time , also take in mind that even a very simple project may take up to 1 year or more if you are only person and depending on the time invested on it, very complex projects simply cant be done just in spare time, get a team ,delegate tasks, ask for help, gather with friends with the same ideas and so or you will be stuck in a project for the rest of your life
What is NeoAxis?
NeoAxis engine is a fully featured game engine and toolkit based on the popular and powerful native OGRE3D 3d engine but that takes advantage of the power and convenience of C# and the .NET Framework 2 which makes it much much more easier and productive than other C++ solutions
Full of professional features like integrated physics engines implementation,gui system, 3D sound,outstanding graphics and effects,robust resource and map editors with scripting and very productive content pipeline with exporters for many 3d apps available
The most important features of the engine are its flexibility, its robust tools and its easy to use content pipeline. You can make any kind of game or any kind of product that requires outstanding 3d graphics in a record time
NeoAxis is targeted to indie game developers for its impressive simplicity and ease of use that enables indies to achieve superior results in less time
What do i need to know before using NeoAxis
- Know how to program in C# and some basic understanding of OOP, experience on C++ and or java works too if you have the will to learn C#, although theoretically NeoAxis would work with any .NET language it is only currently developed and supported in C#.
- Know some basic concepts of 3D graphics
- To be able to see the difference between a 3d api, 3d engine and a game engine if not this link may be of help http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_engine
- Understand the level of complexity of the task to do
- Alot of dedication and patience
If you dont meet some of the requirements stated above, you can find some help in the FAQ section
what do i need to start using NeoAxis
- A computer running Windows 2000 SP4, Windows XP SP2 or Windows Vista
- A recent MS DirectX 9.0c Runtime installed, using the most recent DirectX 9.0c runtime is recommended
- MS .NET Framework 2.0
- Recent drivers for your current video card already installed
- NeoAxis Engine SDK installed
- Visual Studio 2005 with SP1 or Visual C# 2005 Express Edition with SP1 and VS2005 update for vista installed if running windows vista
- Visual Studio 2008 or Visual C# 2008 Express Edition
Note: Make sure to update your Windows with the latest available updates as VS2005 and VS2008 may not run on non sp2 windows xp's as well as non sp4 windows 2000 installations
Starting with NeoAxis
The demo
After you've installed everything that's needed you can start experimenting with NeoAxis.
NeoAxis SDK comes with a demo and its source code for you to learn and explore the features of NeoAxis , the main purpose of it, its that it could be used as a code base for your projects or re use code that's in there to help you have a solid starting point or a fast place where to test and experiment with its features.
The compiled binary of the demo is found here:
\NeoAxis Engine Non-Commercial SDK 0.54\Game\Bin
And the source code of it its in:
\NeoAxis Engine Non-Commercial SDK 0.54\Game\Src
To open it you can double click on the .sln file in there which is the visual studio solution which includes all the 3 projects that comes as a demonstration with the SDK
Game Project
This assembly(Game.exe) is responsible for the following tasks:
- Initialization of the engine
- Creation of the main window of the application
- Management of different game states, game process and diferent game windows.
- Creation of the Gui in the game screen
- Management of cameras. First-Person, Third-Person and free cameras.
GameEntities Project
The assembly(GameEntities.dll) represents a set of classes of game logic for a your game which consists of Game entity classes.
This assembly is used by the Resource Editor and the Map Editor to expand their functionality without directly changing the source code of the editors. This has proven to be very convenient for developers. Allowing programmers to add new entity classes and with properly exposed properties which can be modified via the editors this way allowing artists and designers to adjust the parameters as needed without any source code change
WindowsAppExample Project
This assembly(WindowsAppExample.exe) is an example of how you can embed NeoAxis engine into a winforms applications allowing developers to make applications that need standard windows interfaces but that require 3d graphics like game specific editors,visualization applications or something like that
Game Content
To do
Engine Assemblies
To do
The Editors
To do
