Difference between revisions of "Castle Game Engine"

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Revision as of 08:24, 1 May 2012

Features

Castle Game Engine (previously "Kambi VRML game engine") allows you to render 3D models in various formats. In particular, support for VRML / X3D format is very versatile. You can define animations, interactions, scripting, shaders and many more in VRML/X3D, so you get a quite capable 3D game engine in the end.

Rendering is done through OpenGL. We can use OpenGL context initialized in any way, including Lazarus TOpenGLControl component, our own TGLWindow class (which allows you to create windows with OpenGL context, menu bars and dialog boxes, completely without the LCL), or any other library capable of creating GL context (glut, SDL).

The engine homepage is http://castle-engine.sourceforge.net/. In particular, this page lists all the engine features.

The engine is open-source (the core engine may be used under GNU LGPL, with "static linking exception" like FPC RTL), developed in a nice object-oriented way, only for FPC/Lazarus. The engine is not dependent on LCL, Lazarus components are just comfortable "extras".

Screenshot (VRML/X3D browser in Lazarus)

kambi vrml browser.jpg

Lazarus components

Major components that you can drop on a form:

  1. TCastleControl: descendant of the standard TOpenGLControl that makes it easy to add our engine 2D controls and 3D objects. Has a scene manager instance (as TCastleControl.SceneManager) that collects information about your whole 3D world.
  2. TCastleScene: loaded 3D model (that may contain animation etc.).

You just drop TCastleControl on the form, and call

Scene.Load(FileName);
Scene.Spatial := [ssRendering, ssDynamicCollisions]; // if you want collisions
Scene.ProcessEvents := true; // if you want animations and interaction

Control.SceneManager.MainScene := Scene;
Control.SceneManager.Items.Add(Scene);

and you're done. Animations work, rendering in OpenGL works, navigation and key/mouse sensors work, etc. For more advanced uses, you can add 2D controls to Control.Controls list, and more 3D objects to Control.SceneManager.Items.

To install Lazarus components, download the engine sources, and look in the "packages/" directory. You probably want to install packages castle_base.lpk and castle_components.lpk.

For more examples, see the "examples" subdirectory in engine sources. For an example VRML/X3D browser (and viewer for other 3D models) done with Lazarus, see the castle_game_engine/examples/lazarus/model_3d_viewer/ directory. Full API reference and more high-level documentation about VRML/X3D handling are available.

Enjoy! Author: Michalis Kamburelis