Free engines?

[Korgoth]

Hmmm, not sure if this is the right spot to post this but, hey its about the best place I could think of for it.

Does anyone know of any free 2d side scroller engines that are worth a shyte? I'd like to mod my own little side scroller shooter game ala' contra, I want to do all the art assets and such, I know jack about coding however. Which is why i'm looking for an already made free engine.

My attempts on google have turned up fruitless. I thought maybe you guys could assist. Thanks.

 

[CptStern]

here check this out ...almost free 3d engine plus loads of other stuff (mostly free)

garagegames

 

[Korgoth]

Yeah i've seen that. I have ut04 and all the mod tools for that, heck i even know how to map pretty much for it. But I wanted something 2d and a little more, "easy" for lack of a better term.

On a side note, does anyone know how the hell they pulled off the animation in paper mario 2? I thought they were just alpha mapped characters on a flat plane, hmmm I dunno how they did that. Super fun game though.

 

[CptStern]

how about this one?

 

[Brian Damage]

www.blitzbasic.com

Not necessarily free, but it's basically an engine with a C-like programming language to access its features. Comes in a couple of different varieties... see if you can find the original Blitz Basic to download, as that's completely 2D. I got my copy free.

 

[The Dark Elf]

Hmmm, not sure if this is the right spot to post this but, hey its about the best place I could think of for it.

Does anyone know of any free 2d side scroller engines that are worth a shyte? I'd like to mod my own little side scroller shooter game ala' contra, I want to do all the art assets and such, I know jack about coding however. Which is why i'm looking for an already made free engine.

My attempts on google have turned up fruitless. I thought maybe you guys could assist. Thanks.

There was a very old game, for the PC, funnily enough I mentioned it to Hotsoup only yesterday, the name escapes me but it was a 2D game that was basically one big editor, you could just pause and edit the game of start from scratch, there was very little in the way of actual coding involved.

I think its also abandonware, and unlike the other suggestions its geared for 2D not 3D, those might be good engines and coding language but thats all they are, lots of code before you can actually use them for anything, if you know nothing about coding, they wont be any help to you atall.

The name begun with an A, asylum, agony, something like that. I can't check underdogs cause they just had a big upgrade thats screwing their bandwidth for a few days. I remember it was a dark game, pretty good visuals, sci-fi, lots of blowing things up.

Failing that, do a codename gordon and use flash or shockwave, thats a popular choice these days for platform games, if you don't mind a bit of hard work, but its easier than the other kinds of programming languages or core engines.

 

[Korgoth]

true true, thanks guys, only problem with flash games tde, i don't have flash

 

[The Dark Elf]

true true, thanks guys, only problem with flash games tde, i don't have flash

Well you can pick up flash pretty cheap I think these days, can use older versions just as easily for that kind of thing.

As for the game I don't remember the name of, probably your best bet, underdogs do have it im sure, just simply could not navigate that site when I tried, wouldn't even let me enter anything, like it had crashed the browser from being so slow or something weird like that.

Was an early PC game though, began with A, might be able to find it on googlegroups, was fun to play too.

 

[The Dark Elf]

Found it

http://www.the-underdogs.org/game.php?id=18

Called Abuse!

 

[CptStern]

hey Abuse! one of my first games, back in my mac-only days ..I feel like singing "memories"

 

[qckbeam]

hey Abuse! one of my first games, back in my mac-only days ..I feel like singing "memories"

Please...please don't.

 

[The Dark Elf]

Was the first "proper" PC game I think I had too, well a demo of it any rate. Tempted to download the full thing and try it out, might be fun making a game from it

ooh Sourceworld: 2D hehehe

Joins in singing "memories" and brings in ol Bill Shatner for the chorus.

 

[Bad^Hat]

Hmm... would Source be capable of making 2D games? Actually I saw a 2D (actually 3D, but only 2 dimensional movement) platformer being made on the HL engine, looked pretty cool.

 

[MultiVaC]

That's a cool game... the only thing I don't like are the controls. Does anyone know if there's a way to change them?

 

[Cole]

Technically bad im not sure, though it's not like you couldn't trick them into thinking its 2d.
Personally I would say www.gamemaker.nl as cptsern did, ive used it for years off and on. It fully supports Dx8, though is an interperter so it's very slow.
It has 2 ways to make the game, a drop and drag interferance and then the other one which is pure code.
'
For 3d i would say, crystal space(google it). Crystal Space is being used by a pure free MMORPG (www.planeshift.it).

Both are free though with gamemaker you do need a donation to unlock special features. But the special feature allow multiplayer, particle affects, dll's. OO make a Multiplayer sidescroller game!

 

[The Dark Elf]

Hmm... would Source be capable of making 2D games? Actually I saw a 2D (actually 3D, but only 2 dimensional movement) platformer being made on the HL engine, looked pretty cool.

Oh yeah, definately possible with Source, could work really well too.