Ogre Forums

any one know of any 2d engines? with just rendering? (and free)

I use Haaf's Game Engine, it's extremely fast and easy to use. It's open source, uses directx for rendering, and has a cool particle system editor.

One which looks good but I haven't actually tried yet is Simple and Fast Multimedia Library. It's an opengl based open source 2d engine with audio, networking, cross platform (windows, linux, mac) and a bunch of other stuff.

HGE has been around longer, but SMFL is more actively developed.

The community seems to be a major factor for an indy game developer (if that is the case for you).

I've grown up using the honorable Allegro game library. It goes back to the old DOS days but managed to keep up with the times.

Just like with ogre it takes time to get into the "movement" but as far as I am concerned Allegro is very stable and a good canidate for 2D game development.

http://alleg.sourceforge.net/
http://www.allegro.cc/forums/

Haven't really used allegro since dos-days (other then a quick hack to someone else's code to make it compile with it), but it used to be a pretty decent engine. Though I recall there were a few odd spelling errors in the API ("PALLETE"?), wonder if they've gotten rid of them?

Ogre can do pretty decent 2d stuff, but it's certainly not as easy as these tools.

I was a long time Allegro user myself, and as I recall, the pallete/palette difference was one of those UK/US things. In fact I think they used macros so that you could type it either way and have it work out alright.

Edit:

I'm not sure but I think the main guy, Shawn Hargreaves, went on to work on the XNA platform.

Indeed, Shawn handed over the project to the community and in worked out ok for the project.

Here is another. Something I parked in my bookmarks a while ago, I never tried it but some people across various boards spoke highly of it and the feature list looks good:

http://www.indielib.com/

http://www.indielib.com/

Bonus points for using the Space Cute graphics from Lost Garden in the trailer video.

What I really want is a 2d engine with full pixel shader support. There's a lot of fun stuff you can do with shaders in a sprite game, like having animated normal maps for your sprites so you can have real time lighting, or lots of fun special effects.
But so far the only shader capable 2d engines I've found use them purely for post processing effects, not for general sprites.

i know this one:

http://www.asantee.net/gamespace/#tutoriais, its quite new, and the site is portuguese.. but you can see the pixel shader support on the videos..

btw, its open source

Well, it's not C++, but when you say '2d engine', I'm reminded of Game Maker. I started out making games wih it. I learnt so much stuff there, math, object-orientation, lighting etc. Man... Thinking about this brings some memories.

I started with the SDL library. Its very easy to use and cross platform.
I learned how to use C++ by using it.

I like the Löve Engine : -> http://love2d.org/

Very nice Engine for prototyping.

Kojack wrote:I use Haaf's Game Engine, it's extremely fast and easy to use. It's open source, uses directx for rendering, and has a cool particle system editor.

One which looks good but I haven't actually tried yet is Simple and Fast Multimedia Library. It's an opengl based open source 2d engine with audio, networking, cross platform (windows, linux, mac) and a bunch of other stuff.

HGE has been around longer, but SMFL is more actively developed.

SFML isn't a game engine, but a low level multimedia library

SiENcE wrote:I like the Löve Engine : -> http://love2d.org/

Very nice Engine for prototyping.

Hah, nice!

SFML isn't a game engine, but a low level multimedia library

Nobody said it was a game engine.

I like the Löve Engine

If you only like the Löve Engine and don't love it, does that mean it failed?

are you sure?

One which looks good but I haven't actually tried yet is Simple and Fast Multimedia Library. It's an opengl based open source 2d engine with audio, networking, cross platform (windows, linux, mac) and a bunch of other stuff.

2D engine doesn't mean 2d game engine.
The original question was: "any one know of any 2d engines? with just rendering?"
I used the term 2d engine to mean exactly what it sounds like, an engine which does 2d (to distinguish it from a 3d engine like Ogre). No mention of "games engine" was made, and I even gave the full name as "Simple and Fast MULTIMEDIA LIBRARY".


Although it doesn't fit the original requirement (rendering only), another 2d engine is Angel.
http://code.google.com/p/angel-engine
It was created by Electronic Arts and released as open source. It's got sound, particles, ai, pathfinding, rigid body physics and python.

@Kojack: ok. quick update. i love it

@RedEyeCoder: we made a small music game prototype Lalalove with the love engine. just to show you what is possilbe.