Adventures with GamePlay3D (Part I)

Motivation

Since my son asked me to develop a simple 3D game for him, and I've always wanted to do something like that, I started playing around with 3D game engines.

I've chosen GamePlay3D http://gameplay3d.org, because

  • it's Open Source (this is my main reason for not using Unity)
  • it's Cross-Platform (Linux, Windows, Mac OS X, iOS, Android - I'm especially interested in Mac OS X and iOS)
  • unlike some other Open Source engines, it seems to be actively developed
  • it contains a 3D engine, support for mouse/keyboard/gamepad/touchscreen, and sound support

Getting started

Getting started with GamePlay3D is easy - just download it, open the XCode workspace, compile the samples and play around with them.

Creating a new project

Playing around with the samples is nice, but creating your own project is much more interesting. To create a new project:
  • open a Terminal
  • cd
  • ./newproject.sh
and enter the required information in the wizard. This will create a new XCode project (btw, this will also create a new Visual Studio project) - open the project, compile & run it, and you'll see a cube rotating in space. Woot!

240 Words

2013-10-05T02:28:00.001-07:00