Crystal Space (open source)

[Tami]

[url=\"http://www.crystalspace3d.org/main/Main_Page\"][b]Crystal Space[/b][/url] is a free cross-platform software development kit for realtime 3D graphics, in particular games.

Feature List

* Generic
o Highly platform independent with good platform abstraction. Officially supports Linux, OSX and Windows using a wide range of compilers.
o Modularized using a lightweight component framework, SCF, based upon the COM model.
o Self contained so that many modules requires no or few external dependencies.
o Written in standard C++ using very few non*standard extensions. Source available under LGPL license.

* Comprehensive and competent
o Contains modules for 2d and 3d graphics, sound, collision detection and dynamics via ODE and bullet as well as support modules for filesystem abstraction, xml loading etc.
o Graphics subsystem:
+ Generic renderer abstraction with main implementation being OpenGL based.
+ Supports hardware accelerated rendering on all supported platforms and cards from all well known vendors.
+ OpenGL renderer uses acceleration techniques such as vertex buffers in AGP or VRAM and asyncronious uploads.
+ Shader centric design with shaders defined in xml markup and shader programs implemented using Cg, assembly language or fixed function operations.
+ Complicated shaders can be constructed using a meta syntax as composed by simpler modules that gets combined on load.
+ Library of common shaders such as normal mapping, parallax (virtual displacement) mapping and hardware skinning.
+ Contains a software renderer with scaled down features for platforms without OpenGL and/or debugging.
o Mesh objects:
+ Plugin based mesh object system
+ Generic triangle based mesh with support for frame and bone based animation.
+ Terrain mesh with fast block based LOD system.
+ Configurable and extensible particle system mesh.
+ General system for static LOD on all types of meshes.
+ Bone based animation mesh using the cal3d library.
o Collision detection and dynamics:
+ Provides bindings for ODE and bullet dynamics systems.
+ Automatic setup of collision detection meshes and syncronization of position and orientation of meshes.
+ Simplified collision detection when you don't need the full dynamics simulation
o Sound system:
+ 2D and 3D sound rendering via DirectSound, Alsa, OSS and CoreAudio.
+ Provides both one*time playing of effects and streaming playing in the background for music.
o Other:
+ Filesystem abstraction layer, VFS, that handles both physical files on disk and files within ZIP files, giving virtual layout independent from platform and physical layout.
+ Abstracted configuration layer with support for settings in configuration file, system dependent storage such as the registry and command line.

* Compatible
o Custom model and scene file format with exporters for Blender and 3d studio max and model importers for common file formats such as 3ds and md2.
o Supports all common texture file formats including dds, jpg, png as well as some more exotic ones such as mng (animated texture format).
o Sound loaders for wav and ogg formats.
o All subsystems easily extendable for new file formats.

[url=\"http://www.crystalspace3d.org/main/CEL\"][b]CEL[/b][/url] (or Crystal Entity Layer) is a set of plugins and applications built on top of the Crystal Space SDK. CEL provides a set of commonly used abstractions to specifically help with writing games. CEL introduces the notion of an 'entity' which can be any kind of (visual or non-visual) object in a game. CEL also comes with a lot of useful plugins for 3rd/first person camera handling, physics, movement system, quest system, and so on.

Written in C++, CEL can also be interacted with via Python or Xml. Using CELstart it is also not neccessary to use C++. This means that since the base code is C++, CEL is fast while being extremely easy to use from within Python and/or Xml.

[url=\"http://www.crystalspace3d.org/main/CELstart\"][b]CELstart[/b][/url] is an environment for making games using scripting alone (CEL's XML script or Python). Games are distributed in self-contained packages (so-called celzips) and can be played by the user by simply opening them - whether the user is on Windows, Linux or MacOS/X.

While CELstart is included with CEL you can download standalone binaries, so you need neither Crystal Space or CEL (which are included in the binary). You don't even need a C++ compiler to make games for CELstart.

One popular way to make CELstart applications is with Blender through the blender2crystal script. It is possible to make full CELstart games from within Blender.