03-05-2019, 07:54 AM
Hi dude!
That’s an interesting question, I’m glad you asked it. My first motivation wasn’t to create an engine at all, I just wanted to program some raster effects, to play a bit with them. I had just learned about raster effects in classic systems, I was amazed about that trick and the possibilities it had, I finally understood how many cool effects worked. So I started looking for a free engine, assuming that somebody else had created one with raster effects support. But such engine didn’t exist. There’s the Retro Engine, a closed-source, commercial engine developed by Christian Whitehead (https://christianwhitehead.com/?page_id=23) used to create all the official Sonic remakes and the recent Sonic Mania. But that’s not available for public usage.
I have big background in graphics programming, so I started creating my own “tool” to experiment with raster effects, that was the seed of Tilengine. I really hadn’t planned to release to the public, but as I was adding features and streamlining the API, I realized that it was a perfectly valid and unique product that could be used to power actual retro-style graphics. It proved to be a superb tool for learning: web hosting, web development, community publishing and management, open source licensing, cross-platform development, programming languages, cross-language bindings, documentation systems… With it I learned a lot of new things, many of them that I could use in my daily job.
Why I haven’t created a game with it? Easy: I’m not a game designer, artist, I don’t have any skills or experience designing a game. I’m a software engineer with a passion for graphics. But of course I’d really love to be part of a team creating a game with Tilengine. My role would be lead programmer, or at very least technical consultant providing very close support for Tilengine. But designing and leading development of a game is totally out of my reach.
Until now I haven’t received any serious offer to be part of such project. Nearly all requests have been of people requesting “x” feature because they have a great idea, but that missing “x” feature is a major blocker. As soon as I implemented and released that “x” feature, they vanished and their great idea was abandoned. Such “x” feature are: support for different editions of Linux, OS X, C# language, expanding the input scheme, releasing the source code… Now when someone complains about something that’s missing but that “would be great”, I only implement it if I think that adding it would make Tilengine a better product and that doesn’t conflict with my vision of what Tilengine should be. If not, I ask for a work-in progress of their game, which usually doesn’t yet exist. People doesn’t have problem asking for things when they’re free and they don’t have to put any effort on their side.
That said, some nice people have contributed to Tilengine besides myself: providing new language bindings, cleaning some code, giving useful ideas and suggestions, testing… that’s still a very small community, but I really appreciate every contribution I got!
How about your projects?
That’s an interesting question, I’m glad you asked it. My first motivation wasn’t to create an engine at all, I just wanted to program some raster effects, to play a bit with them. I had just learned about raster effects in classic systems, I was amazed about that trick and the possibilities it had, I finally understood how many cool effects worked. So I started looking for a free engine, assuming that somebody else had created one with raster effects support. But such engine didn’t exist. There’s the Retro Engine, a closed-source, commercial engine developed by Christian Whitehead (https://christianwhitehead.com/?page_id=23) used to create all the official Sonic remakes and the recent Sonic Mania. But that’s not available for public usage.
I have big background in graphics programming, so I started creating my own “tool” to experiment with raster effects, that was the seed of Tilengine. I really hadn’t planned to release to the public, but as I was adding features and streamlining the API, I realized that it was a perfectly valid and unique product that could be used to power actual retro-style graphics. It proved to be a superb tool for learning: web hosting, web development, community publishing and management, open source licensing, cross-platform development, programming languages, cross-language bindings, documentation systems… With it I learned a lot of new things, many of them that I could use in my daily job.
Why I haven’t created a game with it? Easy: I’m not a game designer, artist, I don’t have any skills or experience designing a game. I’m a software engineer with a passion for graphics. But of course I’d really love to be part of a team creating a game with Tilengine. My role would be lead programmer, or at very least technical consultant providing very close support for Tilengine. But designing and leading development of a game is totally out of my reach.
Until now I haven’t received any serious offer to be part of such project. Nearly all requests have been of people requesting “x” feature because they have a great idea, but that missing “x” feature is a major blocker. As soon as I implemented and released that “x” feature, they vanished and their great idea was abandoned. Such “x” feature are: support for different editions of Linux, OS X, C# language, expanding the input scheme, releasing the source code… Now when someone complains about something that’s missing but that “would be great”, I only implement it if I think that adding it would make Tilengine a better product and that doesn’t conflict with my vision of what Tilengine should be. If not, I ask for a work-in progress of their game, which usually doesn’t yet exist. People doesn’t have problem asking for things when they’re free and they don’t have to put any effort on their side.
That said, some nice people have contributed to Tilengine besides myself: providing new language bindings, cleaning some code, giving useful ideas and suggestions, testing… that’s still a very small community, but I really appreciate every contribution I got!
How about your projects?