What is this?

An opinionated c++11 game engine. Evolved from the internal game engine used by Ironclad Games (Sins of a Solar Empire, Sins of a Dark Age)

Used by

• https://github.com/jseward/solar_tools
• https://github.com/jseward/peon
• secret project(s)

Features

• consistent archiving system that supports reading/writing to binary/json/packets/etc.
• platform abstraction of everything (ex. file io, mouse input, keyboard input)
• directory change watching. all data files support being reloaded on the fly.
• flexible setting system for user settings
• text localization.
• scalable fonts.
• rendering meshes with shaders.
• window ui layer with support for common controls: buttons, text entry, etc.

Internals

• no global variables and no singletons.
• uses c++11.
• uses stl containers mostly, but provides some custom containers useful for games.
  • fixed_vector (std::vector with a fixed size)
  • linked_list (custom list class where memory allocation is controlled much easier)
• minimal dependencies (see below)

Platforms supported

• Direct3D9
• Win32
• more to come

Coding Style

• picked to conform to std library and c++ in general
  • all types and variables lowercase with underscores
  • macros and enum values all uppercase with underscores
  • template parameters are mixed case
  • open brackets start on same line

Dependencies

• https://github.com/cppformat/cppformat
• https://github.com/miloyip/rapidjson
• directx9 sdk
• bm_font

How to use?

Easiest to look at peon and solar_tools for examples. Add the appropriate _buildbuild_x files to your project that will build solar into your app.

String Formatting

• use https://github.com/cppformat/cppformat internally
• python format syntax https://docs.python.org/2/library/string.html#formatstrings

Tips and Tricks

• containers/container_helpers.h has lots of helpful one line functions for doing common container ops.
• convert a container (ex. std::vector) into a comma seperated std::string using build_container_string() found in strings/string_build.h

Preprocessor macros

SOLAR__JSON_ARCHIVE_READER_NO_ALERT_UNUSED_VALUES
disables alerts that json values read from the file are being unused by the code. this is potentially expensive due to all the string tracking.

SOLAR__NO_FILE_CHANGE_WATCHER
disables file watching, should be #defined on release builds as file watching is mainly for dev convienence