Cave Engine 0.9.6 Released! (C++, OpenGL Game Engine Devlog)
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● Version 0.9.6 (note: consider joining the discord as well):
https://unidaystudio.itch.io/cave-eng...
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Cave Engine 0.9.6 is out and it's a big deal!
Guilherme here, the developer, and I'm glad to make this release note with so much love! The community that is been emerging around this engine is truly breathtaking and I couldn't thank you more. So let's jump to the dev log!
First of all, it's worth notice that the game engine now has an official name: CAVE! The Cave Engine!
And the major highlight for this devlog is:
Interface and Usability!
the engine looks completely different now! It's almost unfair with the previous version. The colors are all new, rethinked to be more pleasant to the eyes, as well as the spacing between the elements and their composition. A new font family and color was chosen and the editor looks cleaner and more professional now.
But the visuals are not the only thing new here: The Editor finally have 3D view gizmos such as for the camera and lights and a bunch of usability improvements was made. The viewport camera movements are so smooth now that you'll want to spend the entire day just moving around the map.
Another cool improvement is that now there is a footer in the editor that will show you the last message that appeared in the console. Very useful for debugging and other things. Also, when you save the project, you no longer have to cry because of the annoying window popup notification: the editor will notify you that the project was saved using this new footer. Cheers!
Less disk space, more performance!
Did I already mentioned that the engine is more lightweight and faster? Because it is! The final packed engine (editor included) went from ~24MB to almost ~8MB thanks to the removed of a lot of unused code from third party libraries. The final exported game now uses waaay less disk space as well. Talking about performance, the renderer is at least two times faster! I'll talk about this one later.
Python and Scripting
The engines's python module is now called "cave". Previously it was just "engine". When you double click a script in the asset browser, it will bring the Text Editor to front with the script loaded on it. Now there is a native Player Component with basic W,A,S,D movements by default (so you don't have to do it every time). I also made it easier to create new python components directy from the entity properties tab.
Tooling Support
YES, YES, YES! This is one of my personal favorite new feature: Now you can write your own tools using python. And yes, I am also talking about a tool with its own Tab docked in the editor, with a proper interface with buttons, sliders and whatever you want to. Here is a screenshot showing that in action. The code in the left generated the tab highlighted in red:
Expect more in the Tooling support later!
Asset Browser
This one is exciting: the asset browser is completely new! The assets thumbnails got redesigned, the right click and drag and drop is more useful and feature rich and now there is a tree hierarchy in the left exposing all your folders. The last one was requested a lot. Here is a before and after:
Physics:
Physics received some attention too! There is two major things related to it:
Character Physics Component
Finally a proper character physics. Use that to create, well, characters!
Physics Constraint Component
Always wanted to create chains, bridges and physical stuff that is connected to other parts? Well, now you can. The Physics Constraint Component will provide you what you need to make hinge, sphere or slider constraints. Keep in mind that this component, in order to work, needs a Rigid Body Component and the entity also needs to be parented to another rigid body entity. It's a lot of fun to play with this one!
Asset importer
Already mentioned that in the past but now it's way better!
Renderer:
The renderer got simplified and it's now more than two times faster! There is not a lot of exciting news when it comes to the renderer front end (the part you see and will use), but the backends (the part the engine see) got entirely redone! So expect more on that later!
Export Game, Settings tab, Project Manager, they all received a bunch of updates and new UIs as well.
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► Uniday Studio
By: Guilherme Teres Nunes