Genesis - open source library to make cross-platform game dev easy.

Mad Fish · 2010-09-19 18:26:40

I was dissatisfied with SDL, GLFW, GLUT, SFML and other similar libraries (common problems include broken Alt+Tab, no raw input, bloated, lots of legacy stuff, etc.), so I've started my own.

[Link to project's website]

It is mostly complete for Windows and Linux platforms.
Now I'm looking for interested people to help me with some tough aspects (see "How to contribute" section), and also to test it on different hardware/software configurations.
I have troubles with Unicode text input on X11. And I need someone who can help me with Mac OS X port (I have access to Mac hardware only at work, so it is hard for me to do it).
If you're interested and can/want to help, please contact me (see "Contact" section).

Rulatir · 2010-09-19 20:29:26

Ever heard about Genesis3D, later resurrected as Jet3D? Both are now probably technologically obsolete, but still you may want to check if the name Genesis is really free to take.

Mad Fish · 2010-09-19 20:44:05

I've tried to find some good free name, but I've failed after so many attempts. After that, I decided to just take the name I like, and make my project worth it.

Svenstaro · 2010-09-19 22:00:11

This looks somewhat interesting. I'm going to check it out.

EDIT: I checked it out. It doesn't exactly do much right now. Why not just fix stuff in SFML that you think is broken right now?

Last edited by Svenstaro (2010-09-19 22:02:13)

Mad Fish · 2010-09-19 22:14:44

Svenstaro wrote:

This looks somewhat interesting. I'm going to check it out.
EDIT: I checked it out. It doesn't exactly do much right now. Why not just fix stuff in SFML that you think is broken right now?

What exactly do you think is missing? Game developer needs window, context creation, and event handling. Everything else is already cross-platform (OpenGL, OpenAL). I'm following the principle "do one thing but do it well".

Svenstaro · 2010-09-19 22:30:35

But I do like a nice, common, non-hideous framework like SFML for audio and rendering. We probably have different philosophies here, though. What I'd like is a generic entity framework with serialization and all that fancy stuff. If you'd do that I'd love you.

Mad Fish · 2010-09-19 22:45:29

Svenstaro wrote:

But I do like a nice, common, non-hideous framework like SFML for audio and rendering. We probably have different philosophies here, though. What I'd like is a generic entity framework with serialization and all that fancy stuff. If you'd do that I'd love you.

Yeah, probably a different philosophy, since I think that SFML is bloated with features that I'll never going to use, because they are not full-featured enough to use in real-world game. I think all that additional features should belong to another project (and I'm actually going to do some of this things, BUT as separate projects, and with goal to make them production-quality).

Svenstaro · 2010-09-20 01:02:59

So basically you want to do Genesis-Audio, Genesis-Context, Genesis-Input, Genesis-Rendering, etc? Isn't that pretty much what SFML and SDL do right now? Both, SDL and SFML are rather loosely connected to their subcomponents. Of course, rendering requires a context so the components need to know of each other. I don't think you'd be able to solve that, either.

I do not mean to demotivate you at all, I'm just curious where exactly you are going with this. I'm a fellow game developer and I like game libraries. Your mission statement was "do not reinvent the wheel" but aren't you doing that, pretty much? Why not create lose components that do not exist yet? A generic level framework, an entity framework, a serialization framework, an animation framework, etc. There are no lose open-source components for those, as far as I am informed. To me, those would be quite valuable as I see myself rewriting those for every game I make. If implemented properly, they could be quite generic and lose.

As a game developer, I'd like to be able to prototype game ideas with as little technical overhead as possible. Having a nice framework that fits together is especially nice for this. A full blown engine is even nicer as you can just start cracking on the game itself and not worry about the technical side of things.

Just my 2 cents.

Mad Fish · 2010-09-20 12:49:22

I just wanted a simple library to encapsulate platform-specific things for my game. SDL and SFML are frameworks. I will not ever use other parts of SDL, SFML except of that, because they are not production quality.
But, well, basic things that I REALLY need aren't there. SDL has broken Alt+Tab, SFML doesn't have raw input, etc. I can't go with this philosophy. I really need it to do that one thing, but do it really well.
I don't want to roll out yet-another-framework-no-one-will-ever-use-for-real-project.

Also, I don't want to get a dependency on framework to do that one single thing. Really. That is inconvenient. I don't want it to implement things like files, sockets, thread sync primitives, since I will use another, production-quality library to do just that (for example, POCO).

And SDL is LGPL which prevents static linkage.

Well, to summarize, I wanted a library that "does one thing but does it well" (UNIX philosophy, you know), but I've failed to find one. That's why I'm doing my own to fill that gap.

If you like frameworks, that is probably not the library you will use.

Arch Linux

#1 2010-09-19 18:26:40

Genesis - open source library to make cross-platform game dev easy.

#2 2010-09-19 20:29:26

Re: Genesis - open source library to make cross-platform game dev easy.

#3 2010-09-19 20:44:05

Re: Genesis - open source library to make cross-platform game dev easy.

#4 2010-09-19 22:00:11

Re: Genesis - open source library to make cross-platform game dev easy.

#5 2010-09-19 22:14:44

Re: Genesis - open source library to make cross-platform game dev easy.

#6 2010-09-19 22:30:35

Re: Genesis - open source library to make cross-platform game dev easy.

#7 2010-09-19 22:45:29

Re: Genesis - open source library to make cross-platform game dev easy.

#8 2010-09-20 01:02:59

Re: Genesis - open source library to make cross-platform game dev easy.

#9 2010-09-20 12:49:22

Re: Genesis - open source library to make cross-platform game dev easy.

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