Drag[en]gine Game Engine

• Website: https://dragondreams.ch/?page_id=152
• Documentation (GitHub Pages): https://lordofdragons.github.io/dragengine
• Development Wiki: https://developer.dragondreams.ch/wiki/doku.php
• IndieDB Engine Profile: https://www.indiedb.com/engines/dragengine
• GameDev Engine Profile: https://www.gamedev.net/manage/projects/356/
• Source Code Repository: https://github.com/LordOfDragons/dragengine

Example projects can be found on Development Wiki or in this repository: - Example Projects Repository: https://github.com/LordOfDragons/deexamples

Game developer information

The Drag[en]gine is based on a non-blackbox principle. In particular this means for developing games using the Drag[en]gine you do not need to compile the game engine nor do you have to link against it. If you just want to develop games using Drag[en]gine installing the pre-compiled release files is all you need.

The source code repository is interesting only for people interested in the inner workings and those wanting to create engine modules or editor modules.

License Information

The Drag[en]gine Game Engine is licensed under MIT for clarity. Optionally the L-GPL can be used. 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. They can use any license they see fit.

In a nutshell this means: If you create a game, no matter if commercial or not , you do not have to worry about licensing at all.

GIT Branches

The master branch is the current development branch with the most recent work. It is potentially unstable and should be only used by developers working on bleeding edge software build against the upcoming release.

The stable branch is the stable branch pointing to the latest release. This branch is for public use by distribution builders and developers working on software to work with the latest stable release.

All other branches are internal feature development and platform support branches not intended for public use. If you want to work on these branches please get in contact with the development team first.

Building Linux

To customize build either copy "custom.py.dist" to "custom.py" and edit or add the parameters in custom.py.dist as command line arguments. For example:

scons with_debug=yes with_system_openal=no

To see the list of supported build targets run

scons -h

To compile and install run

scons

By default the build tries to find as many dependency libraries as possiible in the host system. Not found libraries are compiled from in-tree sourced under "extern". You can force building certain libraries either in-tree or from system by setting the respective withsystem* parameter to 'yes' (to force using the library from host system and fail if not found) or 'no' (to force compile from in-tree version) or 'auto' (use from system if found otherwise fall back to in-tree version).

The default installation prefix is "/usr". To change the installation prefix use "custom.py" or use

scons prefix=/usr/local

To build distribution archives run

scons archive

The archives will be located under "archive/build"

To build installers run

scons installer

The installers will be located under "installer/build"

In general all compiling takes place inside "build" directories underneath the respective SConscript files. To make a full clean you can delete all directories named "build" safely

Every target can be cleared by appending "-c" to the command line. For example to clear build files run

scons -c

To clear only archive files run

scons -c archive

Clearing only removes files not directories. This is the way SCons behaves.

When running SCons as user it is recommended to use "prefix" parameter to define the installation directory otherwise installing files fails with permission denied errors. It is not recommended to run SCons as root unless you intent to install files directly into the system.

Package maintainers requiring sandboxing to build packages can use the SCons sandbox support to place installed files in a different location than the "prefix" parameter defines like this:

scons --install-sandbox=path/to/sandbox

See the debian branch for an example of how this is used.

Build Dependencies

• Git Lfs
• SCons 2.5.1+
• Python 3.5+
• GCC 8+
• CMake (for in-tree building of external software)
• libtool (for in-tree building of external software)
• gperf (for in-tree building of external software)

Building Windows

Install MinGW 64-Bit cross-compiler for your system or use a docker image with it.

To build use the same commands as under the "Building Linux" section but append "tools=mingw64" to the command line like this:

scons tools=mingw64 archive

Always use a build target otherwise scons tries to install into your linux system using windows path names.

The "build_windows.sh" script is a little helper.

To build the windows installers you need a docker image supporting the InnoSetup compiler. You can build the docker image yourself using the "windowsSetupCompiler.dockerfile" docker file:

docker build --file=windowsSetupCompiler.dockerfile --tag=compile-windows-installer .

To build the installer first build the archives using

scons tools=mingw64 archive

Then change into the "installer/windows" directory and run

./create_installer.sh

The installer is now located inside "installer/windows/build"

It should be possible to build the sources also on a windows machine using Windows MinGW-64. VisualStudio compile is not supported officially.

Run in "Local Directory Mode"

The Drag[en]gine Game Engine, Launchers and the IGDE can be run in the "Local Directory Mode".

The Live Launcher is an example of a launcher using this mode to run games from any directory without installing.

It is possible to run also the IGDE and all launchers in this mode using a source-able file setting up the required Environment Variables with appropriate values. You have to first prepare a directory with the game engine files. For this download the linux binary distribution file and unpack it into a directory of your choice. Then copy the preparelocaldir_mode.source file into the directory. Change into the directory then source this file like this:

source prepare_local_dir_mode.source

or like this (for consoles not supporting the 'source' builtin command):

. prepare_local_dir_mode.source

The terminal is now ready to run delauncher-gui, delauncher-console and deigde binaries from the local directory. All user configuration is also store under the user directory. You can also change the source-able file to choose different directory if needed.