New game engine project

Well it's been a long time since I have blogged to be honest. I guess blogging isn't exactly my thing, but I'll continue. In the time since I have last blogged, I got a Droid X, I got a '97 Dodge Intrepid and I started a 3D platform game engine project for my Computer Programming class. Stay tuned for details on that game engine, and I'll also reveal my future plans for it

This post specifically is about that project. The class is going over Python, and considering my previous programming experience (years of casual reading book and articles, and once in a while playing with sample programs) Python was extremely easy for me to pick up. Something I've wanted to do for a long time is program a 3D game engine. After all who wouldn't want to do that? Well on second thought, I guess the people interested in making their own games would rather use an engine which has already been made, and matured.

Anyways, the 3D platform game engine has yet to be named as you may have noted. Right now I am building it in Python using the python-ogre library, which is simply a Python wrapper for OGRE3D.

My plans for the game engine this semester simply involve getting something that works. In my mind that entails getting the following things up and running: terrain, movement, animation and collision first, then states and a menu, and level importing. Basically, by the end of the semester I'd like to be able to import a level and all associated objects and create a 3D scene with a player (shown in third person), a couple of enemies, static entities and a couple of other dynamic entities. I would like to be able to do some very simple scripting (and with Python, this will be easy!) for the enemies, and possibly triggered events.

After the semester is over, the number of options I have to do with the project could be represented by a HUGE tree. I think the best thing to do would be to port it to C++, set up a project on source forge, make a website and then possibly advertise it a little bit to recruit a couple of other developers to help me. Obviously this is going to be an open-source project and I will primarily be developing from Ubuntu Linux. I'll have more details on future plans as things progress; I wouldn't want to build up too many dreams and then lose focus in the project. This really is a big thing for me and I hope later to make it a big thing for the world! After all, it seems that Linux and the open-source community lacks a little in the gaming market.