CyberCyde's RipStream Engine

[jakzodiac]

Hello everyone, long time no see. It's been a while since I posted here but I have some fun and interesting news.

Currently I am the CEO of a relatively new indie company CyberCyde Labs. We have several projects we have been working on ranging from our online studio, server hosting, our OpenSim world CC Grid, and Stronghold 7. The project I am here to speak with you about today is based on that last game, Stronghold 7. Stronghold 7 was originally a text based mmo based on an old engine. However, after much discussion, we decided to work on our own engine, and use it to build Stronghold 7.

RipStream Engine was the outcome of Stronghold 7. For quite some time, I've been playing with the idea of building a xna like engine framework for Silverlight. Today I would like to unofficially announce that the engine is well underway, and moving into its alpha release. RipStream is going to be released under the GNU, license with some limitations.

However, as we get nearer to releasing its official alpha version, I would like to pull in some iterative testers to play with the engine, and even come up with some projects that we can showcase for its alpha release. Of course, we offer free hosting for anyone interested in this. What we really want is everyones, input right now. We need to know how to make RipStream the greatest it can be. If your interested, please contact me at david.bell@cybercyde.com


Key Features:

Full 2D & 3D Support (3D uses Balder)
an extensive object library including spriteFonts, sprites, particles, and spriteGrid for 2D maps (map editor to be done soon)
several collision options
extensive notes as well as prebuilt functions to use as examples.

[hallsofvallhalla]

sounds awesome. Do you have any screens of it so far? or examples?

[jakzodiac]

Not a very good example at all, but heres a very simple pong game.

http://www.silverarcade.com/games/Artemis/1up-pong/beta

Pong originally takes about several hours to setup.

We made the engine to the point it takes about 15 minutes and about 60 lines of code. Tutorial and source code will be released with alpha.

[Jackolantern]

I will definitely agree that traditional Silverlight game programming is a very slow affair lol! I am surprised Microsoft didn't see the usage of Flash and take a cue to add more game-related functionality out of the box.

How would this engine fit into some of the other Silverlight, game-related projects out there, such as SilverSprite? This sounds quite different from something like your project, but may kind of occupy some of the same space.

Can't wait to see more about it. I was interested in SL game development for some time since it offers a much more complete, traditional programming environment than ActionScript 3, but all of the plumbing work required when doing it from scratch was a huge turn off.

[jakzodiac]

The difference is SilverSprite is old news. It's great for people who want to develop games quickly and don't really care about efficiency. Silversprite is a graphics library though. It allows the users to take an XNA game and with minimal effort get it working in Silverlight. However, its very resource inefficient.

RipStream on the other hand is built specifically for SilverLight and allows for 100% use of key features found in Silverlight. SilverSprite, if you havent looked at it, simply runs an xna game inside a Canvas. Yes the game will work, but no, you will not be able to really access any of Silverlights amazing features.

RipStream uses some amazing features found in the SilverLight framework. Most importantly is the use of Graphics Acceleration. Another key feature is the fact that when RipStream compiles it locks all of the resources in any external file. Why? you may ask. Well because when Silverlight compiles if the game .xap file is more than 1mb it will really move slow in loading. Adding real music to it can be a headache, 3D models being just as bad.

Another key feature is the use of databases, to be added later. I'd love to see someone make a xna game in Silverlight and add multiplayer support and still maintain a decent frame rate.

SilverSprite is for people learning XNA, who want to publish games to the internet with minimal effort. RipStream is a full XNA like framework with multiple engine like functions. Next week we are even adding a map editor.

[Jackolantern]

Very nice! Just to be clear, I wasn't attacking your project or anything. I was only mildly aware of Silversprite and just wanted to know how it matched-up, and it seems like it matches-up quite well! Silversprite always sounded kind of mind-boggling, and I always figured there was some inefficient hocus-pocus going on under the covers.

[jakzodiac]

Yeah, overall SilverSprite simply uses the canvas element of a SilverLight app and displays a custom game element inside. This is horribly inefficient as it does two primary things. One keeps the game and silverlight app two different things. Silverlight controls would be alienated from the game, and believe me, you don't want that. The second thing it does is destroy your ability to use balder. Balder is an amazing library for SilverLight that allows you to make 3D applications.

Our engine is built for SilverLight. It utilizes custom controls for ease of development, and fully supports 2D as well as 3D while maintaining a steady framerate of 35. It utilizes graphics acceleration, and proper object disposal. Our goal is to make a top of the line game engine under the GNU. SilverLight is an amazing language, and RipStream will be the next cutting edge engine for it.

[Jackolantern]

Well, I definitely can't wait to see some screens from your project and to get a chance to use it! I much prefer .NET to ActionScript, but game engines and libraries have been few and far between in Silverlight so far!

[jakzodiac]

Were looking at an official release date of the Alpha version in about 3 weeks. The biggest difference from now and then will be the GUI. Right now the engines core library is pretty decent. Much still to do there, but we certainly want the development to be based upon public opinion. So we want to get it out there as soon as we can. The GUI we are currently looking at is based on the look and feel of GameMaker.Were hoping to have the gridMap class done by then so we can have a fully functional 2D map editor come the Alpha release.

If any of you have ideas of something you want to see by the time the alpha release comes out, please let me know. Now is the time. Be realistic though, as this is still in its alpha.

[Jackolantern]

So this is going to be a GUI-based engine that will operate like GameMaker or more like a library/framework that will be augmented by the editor? Basically, will a user of your engine be coding in .NET, or will they be working exclusively in a GUI-based editor similar to GameMaker?