Basic Embedding

[Richard Kain]

There are still a few things that Tilengine does that Godot can't, like the color cycling, and raster effects. But I understand, it's not much that is missing...

Actually, I was able to cook up a custom shader combined with a command-line image converter that allows you to create color-palette style support for Godot. Moreover, it works for both 2D and 3D graphics in Godot. With a little extra scripting work, I could easily create a plug-in that would use a temporary graphics object to add timed color-cycling as well.

That's part of the reason why I'm not all that eager to embed Tilengine into Godot. Godot's 2D implementation is fairly robust, and is proper 2D, with very capable support for low-resolution pixel graphics. If you want to create a retro, low-res 2D pixel art game in Godot, you're basically good to go. More advanced engines like Unity and Unreal have 2D support that is really just an extension of their 3D support. These systems tend to run fairly well on modern hardware, but require a significant amount of crowbar forcing to get retro-styled graphics running on them. They're geared much more toward modern graphics.

Part of the reason why I'm so fond of Tilengine is that it is one of the only graphical rendering systems I know of that has decent support for the Raspberry Pi. (and other various micro-computers) Thanks to its retro approach, Tilengine can run on just about anything, and run well. I've also been able to compile it from source on pretty much any platform I've thrown it at. (excellent cross-platform support) There are almost no existing engines designed to be compatible with the Raspberry Pi. Tilengine is a breath of fresh air in that regard. Its legacy approach to game graphics structure is also a good exercise for beginner developers to better understand how games can be structured. And of course, its support for legacy raster effects is wonderful.