Ethanon Engine

Just discovered it , it's a 2.5d game engine/editor , 2.5d in this case means that it uses 2d dynamic (and static) per-pixel lightning, and dynamic shadows. (using pixel and vertex shaders, normal maps etc.) It does what was been discussed in this topic :

http://www.scirra.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5457 and much more. There's a remaked chrono trigger scene made in the engine that looks awesome . Definitely worth a look

ops forgot link sorry : http://www.asantee.net/ethanon/

Is it new?

Because the Forum is kinda dead...

It was released today

Interesting. Do you think it has any particular advantages over Construct?

Also, it says it's open source but I can't find the code - looks like it was all deleted in revision 31. Odd...

Hum.. i used it a bit and by what i could see the only real advantage is the lights/shadow system , they're real-time in game end in editor too... Other than that comparing the scripting systems of Construct and Ethanon(it uses angel script) , Ethanon's scripting seems more powerfull since it's more integrated with the core engine (Gamespace lib/C++),almost like a wrapper, than python in Construct.

source code: (i think):

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ethanon/files/src_ethanonengine051beta.zip/download

I'm pretty sure this is doable in Construct, but editing wouldn't be as easy and events to keep everything in synch (with moving objects and all) would be hell.

Also, there would be VRAM issues, since I imagine any game using this technique would have to stream textures in-game (doubt they you can fit a whole level's textures in VRAM at once).

I had not seen this technique before, only imagined it and it looks much much better than I had imagined. With all this data you could even do SSAO, as it relies on normals and depth and that's all in there already. Moving objects near others would look awesome.

Edit: lots of people doing it, apparently

I'm pretty sure this is doable in Construct, but editing wouldn't be as easy and events to keep everything in synch (with moving objects and all) would be hell.

Also, there would be VRAM issues, since I imagine any game using this technique would have to stream textures in-game (doubt they you can fit a whole level's textures in VRAM at once).

Yeah, it is doable for lights and stuff. David made an example in the Discussion thread.

As for actual depth sorting on a pixel level using normal or heightmaps, that would require a change in the Construct renderer I believe. Dave and Ash said they were thinking about doing this for C2 iirc.

Interesting. Do you think it has any particular advantages over Construct?

I liked the particle system because you could edit in realtime. That's really annoying in construct to edit such things as particles or plasma, because you need to start the layout every time to see the changes.

The UI is too confusing for me and the whole scripiting stuff too...

yeah , real time edit on particles system would be great. I agree about the scripting too, though i am a programmer , i like to program and etc. but in this case the block-of-code scripting system in construct is far better and smooth to program... maybe when python take more or total control in the engine i will use it too...

As for actual depth sorting on a pixel level using normal or heightmaps, that would require a change in the Construct renderer I believe. Dave and Ash said they were thinking about doing this for C2 iirc.

Sweet. Yeah the main problem with the current renderer is that you cannot reference more than one texture from an object (foreground tex sampler) and there's the background that can be used as a second texture (background text sampler) but that doesn't always make sense. Also, the render target is always the framebuffer.

So if one could customise the shading pipeline and have objects that hold more than one texture per frame, one could do this kind of stuff (and more!)

Not an easy thing to accomplish, though.

Still, I'm excited about the posibilities seen on those videos.

hI

This engine is interesting. I have tried it, but I don't have the shadows, and the engine is not pretty ccol than the layers editor of Construct.

I think it could be really great to have this system of shadows and multi-textures in an object in Construct.

A multi-textures/image for a sprite is good to others things like customisation for a character (to equip himself with sword, clothes..), or other interestings things ("static" shadows).

Perhap's a shadow systeme could be "faked" by a filter like dropshadow but in isometric view, with an option like moving the top of the shadow, and give to the SizeY of transformation (/3 for example), we could fake a shadow system.

Not the same, but another shadow system .

The source of this engine seems to be here :

http://ethanon.svn.sourceforge.net/

or an old link here :

http://sourceforge.net/projects/ethanon ... p/download

Edit :

One of my test :

<img src="http://blendman.free.fr/ark/construct/ethanon_Scene.jpg">

If you want to test the Sprite , and if you do the same in construct, you can post .cap :

<img src="http://blendman.free.fr/ark/construct/barrel.png">

<img src="http://blendman.free.fr/ark/construct/barrelN2.png">

I saw this forever ago... In fact I'm pretty sure someone linked it in a thread in Open Topic ages ago, but I'm too lazy/tired/careless to find it.

Looks pretty neat, but also looks very convoluted to use. Interesting that it finally came out though, I thought it was a dead project.

~Sol