Online Porfolio - Kyall Henricksen - Dex Engine

Latest Dex Ramblings

Dex2.0 - The third revision of dex

I have begun work on my third iteration of my Dex engine. The original design goal of Dex was to wrap OpenGL and other APIs in device interfaces to create an clean/easy/cross-platform base for engine development. And after nearly three years I am finally getting around to this task.

But those three years weren't necessarily wasted. In those three years I learned how to build a lot of components in game engine from resource managers to skeletal animation systems.

And so once the base device interface has been completed and implemented across at minimum Windows & Linux using DirectX/OpenGL/OpenAL I'll be grabbing the source code from previous engines and porting them to Dex2.0 which should, within less than a few months, give me an easy to use, well designed, cross platform game engine to call my own.

After that it's going to be all about taking it next gen. Lighting & Material effects are the main priorities after the device interfacing and old source porting. Which should result very quickly in a game engine capable of rendering assets with high visual quality.

But that being said. Just watch this space for updates on how I deal with wrapping the devices or creating/porting engine components.

Arivadaci, Kyall

About

Dex is the engine that started out as a small and simple C/OpenGL/OpenAL engine. I made a couple of small games with that simple C engine and returned to the development of it more than 18 months after the creation of the first iteration with the intent to take it into C++, and build a solid engine for 2D Graphics and 3D Graphics with Animated Models. The second iteration of DexPP was the engine Team Equidna used in the 48 Hour Game Making Competition in Brisbane in 2009 where with the talents of Alex our audio engineer and programmer we were able to walk away from the competition as recipients of the best audio award.

For the third iteration of Dex which I am using a number of my developed engines as a code base for I intend to create a device based structure much like that used by X-Engine.

  • http://xengine.sourceforge.net/

    • This was the original idea behind the development of the first iteration of Dex, to create a programming interface for Games that was as easy to use as XNA by using simplified DirectX styled device interfaces. Sadly at the original and subsequent iterations of Dex I was yet to have the library of source code needed to comfortably go about this task without losing precious time I would need to create good implementations of standard game requirements. With the level that DexPP reached in terms of graphics, audio, animation and resourced memory management I felt that with the next iteration of Dex the original intention would become possible.

    And so the development of the third implementation of Dex, named Dex2.0, has become my main home project. I'll be sure to keep the news about the engine's progress up to date here on the net. Most likely in my ramblings section. But just for good measure I'll include my ramblings at the bottom of this page.

    For anyone interested in developing their own engine, or getting into engine programming, here's some handy websites/references that have served me well over the years.

    Copyright © Kyall Henricksen 2010 : Team Equidna