The Drag[en]gine is an free software project with a highly modular structure based on the GLEM System. Its design is similar to an operating system. The entire functionality is provided by Modules comparable to device drivers. The engine itself acts like a system kernel managing modules, resources and abstracting the underlying system. Due to the loose coupling of the modules with the system and other modules it is very easy to exchange or improve them without interfering with the rest of the engine. As a result the modularity extends from the developer to the end user who can now choose the optimal module combination for his personal computer even down to per game setups ( and even while running a game ) if required. Developers do not have to worry anymore about low level concerns keeping them concentrated on their game. In contrary to other engines (including high-end commercial ones) the Drag[en]gine provides true 0-Day portability of games with no extra costs and no troubles neither for the developer nor the end user.
Legal Information
The Drag[en]gine Game Engine is dual licensed under L-GPL (for commercial projects and proprietary use like on consoles) and GPL (for free game project). This affects only game engine modules, launchers and IGDE editors. Game projects do not link against the game engine and thus are not affected by the license.
In short: By using Drag[en]gine you do not have to worry about licensing at all.
Advantages of the Drag[en]gine
... for the Game Designer:
- Use your Scripting Language of choice.
- Hardware is fully abstracted. You only have to know how your chosen Scripting Language works
- Updating the engine and modules is handled by the respective teams. You only have to worry about updating your game
- No need to write specific content for specific systems. The users choice of modules takes care of this for you
... for the Module Coder:
- Play around with individual parts of the engine without disturbing any other part. Test easy and fast new algorithms or features
- Various debugging features help to debug fast and easy modules even during run-time
- Loose coupling and high encapsulation yields in a more stable game engine
- Platform specific code is only handled in modules increasing portability
... for the Customer:
- Choose the optimal combination of modules for your system. The Drag[en]gine adapts to match your system not the other way 'round!
- Open standards and free file formats ensure unrestricted and easy modding using free software applications
- Various Launchers allow you to use the Drag[en]gine for more than just gaming
- The Crash Recovery System prevents a game from crashing to desktop. While CRS is running change parameters or entire modules and continue your game from where it went out for lunch.
For more information check out the Drag[en]gine Wiki.
Features
Due to the modular nature a fixed list of engine features as other engines provide is not possible since it all depends on the customer's choices. To avoid cluttering the summary find the features list in this article:
Articles
Drag[en]gine Game Engine 1.22 Release
This release contains more bug fixes, stability improvements and some new features to make it easier to develop games.
But first things first. Upon various requests the license of the Drag[eng]gine game engine has been adjusted to the MIT license. The previous L-GPL license did not affect the developer due to the way the game engine is designed but people feel more safe if the license is MIT. The license change is in effect as of now although the 1.22 will still contain the previous license file to make the change easier.
- Drag[en]gine: Added variable unsigned integer and variable string support to decBaseFileReader and decBaseFileWriter.
- Drag[en]gine: Hardening against thread dead-lock.
- Drag[en]gine: Added new facial expressions supported by Meta facial expression extension (VR).
- DragonScript: Updated igde template to provide VSCode project.
- DragonScript: Added support to ECBehaviorCamera to load camera parameters from *.decamera file using property "pathParameters".
- OpenGL: Hardened against thread data race and GPU driver bugs to better survive stallings.
- WebP: Added support to mark images as grayscale although webp can not handle grayscale. This allows to use webp for grayscale images without consuming 3 times the memory. requires an EXIF metadata tag "UserComment" with value "dewebp:grayscale.
- World Editor: Fixed and improved camera handling when viewing the world using an object camera to line up shots better.
- Conversation Editor: Added paste conversation snippet command also to regular actions not just topic, if/else and wait actions.
- Blender Scripts: Added homogenize tools.
- Blender Scripts: Added export merge helper operator. this allows to organize exports in non-destructive way. before exporting use the operator to merge all objects in the same collection into the export object. especially supports merging shape keys combined with subdivision or decimate operators.
- Blender Scripts: Added support to package for extension repository (Blender 4.2+ feature).
See the full changelog here: Changelog Release 1.22.
To help distribute your games find here also the updated distribution files for Steam and Microsoft App Store.
Visual Studio Code DragonScript Extension 2.0.0 Release
Here the fun begins. The old 1.0.0 version featured only syntax highlighting. The new and improved 2.0.0 contains full language server support with:
- Provide Diagnostics
- Show Code Completion Proposals
- Show Hovers
- Help With Function and Method Signatures
- Show Definitions of a Symbol
- Find All References to a Symbol
- Highlight All Occurrences of a Symbol in a Document
- Show all Symbol Definitions Within a Document
- Show all Symbol Definitions in Folder
- Possible Actions on Errors or Warnings
- Rename Symbols
With this release Visual Studio Code has become now the official standard IDE for developing Drag[en]gine based games on Linux, Windows and other platforms. New game projects created using the IGDE contain now a ready made Visual Studio Code workspace file. All you need is installing the DragonScript extension from the Marketplace and get going.
![Drag[en]gine 1.21 Released](https://media.moddb.com/cache/images/articles/1/324/323093/crop_120x90/dragengine-release-1-21.png)
Drag[en]gine 1.21 Released
NewsNew release without various fixes and improvements for game develping.
![Drag[en]gine 1.20 and DEMoCap 1.1 Released](https://media.moddb.com/cache/images/articles/1/322/321088/crop_120x90/democap-1.1.png)
Drag[en]gine 1.20 and DEMoCap 1.1 Released
NewsNew releases left and right with language, gamepad and project management improvements.
![Drag[en]gine 1.19 Released](https://media.moddb.com/cache/images/articles/1/321/320537/crop_120x90/banner_medium.png)
Drag[en]gine 1.19 Released
News 1 commentNew releases incoming with various improvements and fixes.
Games
Epsylon
AdventureEpsylon - The Guardians of Xendron takes the player on a journey to a futuristic world investigating a very special Science-Fiction setup. With a team...
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Mod SDK & Community
Built a game for Drag[en]gine and want to support mods? Try mod.io, a cross-platform mod SDK created by ModDB which makes it easy to get a mod community up and running in-game. Currently seeking games to integrate and promote
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Hey bro. It has been a very long time since I posted to ya. Hope your good buddy. I just wanted to let ya know I added your engine link to my new Game Design Social Network.
Aknighthawks.space
If you want to come to the site and Register you could add a space for your engine. And maybe get more people to know about it. Anyway hope to hear from ya bud. Have a good one! :)
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Hey, I'd like to ask, I remember a feature that randomizes textures so that vast open space doesn't look artificial. Really useful for oceans or deserts and something that plagues many AAA games.
What was the name of said feature again?
This can be done using the "variation.u" and "variation.v" texture properties: Developer.dragondreams.ch .
If enabled you can use layered textures (3D textures) for individual texture properties (like color). Right now *.png3d is supported or using constructed textures: Developer.dragondreams.ch .
*.png3d is by the way just a *.tar file with "zX.png" files inside where X is the layer/depth (0,1,...).
I have been looking forward to seeing this engine working and downloadable but after all these years I do not see this happening. On a number of occasions you have stated you only have to clean up a few things and finalize before release, that was nearly 2 years ago.
Don't worry. The release is slated for within 2-3 weeks from now. What's left currently is brushing up the example project so people get a grasp of what can be done as well as brushing up the documentation (Wiki side). Then the public GIT repo will be set up with an initial cast of builds (linux and windows for the time being).
Thanks for the great news looking forward!
Hello. Can someone point me, where can I download Drag[en]gine? I can not find it on theyr website, can't find on their Wiki, nor could I find it here. No prebuilt engine, no modules, no sources, nothing. How can I try it?
It's not available to the public yet. There are a few things I need to clean up and finalize first before I open up the repository. I prefer a solid first release than endless patchwork.
wow, this engine looks really promising. Sadly I use a mac and can't run it, Is there any plans for a mac version? It wouldn't be to hard to port it if it runs on Linux.
The engine is POSIX based. Only thing that has to be ported is the launcher as the rest would work out of the box. Only problem: I've no access to a mac. If anybody donates a mac strong enough to run advanced graphics it could be done. Otherwise I'm afraid not for the near future.
Darn, the problem is that macs are fairly pricy, It would be hard to find a person willing to donate a up to date mac.
Also just wondering, what is the launcher written in?
They are written in C++. This is though not mandatory. Every language able to link to a C++ library can be used to write a launcher.