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Ethanon is a free 2D game engine focused on the recent video cards for hardware acceleration and shader effects. EE is best suitable for 2D games with a top-down view, but it can also be used to develop other styles, such as side scrollers and shoot'em up games. The main goal of this engine is to provide high-quality lighting, shadow and particle effects with an easy to use visual interface and a simple and direct scripting system.

EE is entirely based on 2D sprites. It uses pixel shaders to perform the normal map based lighting and supports any kind of map construction (e.g.: isometric, orthogonal or hexagonal) because it's based on arbitrarily positioned entities instead of fixed tiles.

To control the game flow and handle its events, Ethanon Engine uses AngelScript for scripts, which brings a familiar C++ syntax to the code. The integration with the scripting language is pretty simple and easy to understand. Many features are included in the scripting system, such as full entity manipulation, save and load games with one instruction, video playback support, and more.

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F.A.Q.

Q: Are there games made with Ethanon Engine?

A: As the game engine is quite new (its first release came out on February the 16th of 2010), there aren't many games made with it yet. You can check our game gallery to see some of the games that already use EE. If you have made anything that uses Ethanon Engine, please, let me know.

Q: Is it powerful enough for a large RPG or even a RTS game?

A: It probably is. Although its power hasn't been extensively explored yet, the scripting system probably offers all necessary features. Also, the spatial hashing culling system should support large scenes without problems.

Q: Is it cross-platform?

A: It is intended to be cross platform. The core engine source-code doesn't include a single platform specific line of code. However, its multimedia library, GameSpaceLib doesn't have any working OpenGL implementation yet. The OpenGL port is under development and its source-code is being constantly updated in the project's SVN repository.

Q: Do I have to know any programming language to make games with it?

A: Yes. Ethanon Engine was not designed for non-programmers. The developer must have good understanding on game logic as well.

Q: What programming language does it use?

A: It uses AngelScript, which is quite similar do C/C++.

Q: How does the lighting system work? Is it truly 2D?

A: It is based on three dimensional normal maps, so we could say that it is partially 3D. Some would call it 2.5D, but we don't like this term at all since it might be ambiguous. It uses pixel/fragment shaders to compute light strength and attenuation over surfaces that are based on actual 2D sprites.

Q: How can I make my own normal maps?

A: You can either use tools that convert bump maps (also known as height maps) to normal maps (many image editors such as Gimp or Photoshop have plug-ins for that), or you can make your models in a 3D object editor such as Blender or 3DS Max and use plug-ins to render their world-space normals.
A few links:
Creating normal maps for 2D characters
How not to make normal maps from photos or images
Creating and using normal maps
GIMP normal map plug-in
xNormal normalmapping tool
Normalmapping in 3ds max video tutorial

Q: What language should I learn and how much should I know to make my own games?

A: C/C++ programming skills are pretty much recommended. How much you should know depends on how complex you want your game to be. Game logic understanding is essential. If you have no idea what a game loop is, or how animation works, you should google it and understand it before using Ethanon Engine.

Q: Am I allowed to sell my games? Is it free?

A: Yes you are. Yes it is free.

Q: What EXE file should I distribute with my game?

A: You should distribute your game with the machine.exe file and your main.as (source-code) or the game.bin file (byte code file, in case you don't want to share your source-code). After your game is finished, you can rename the machine.exe to whatever_the_name_of_your_game_is.exe.

Q: Can I protect my game's source code?

A: Yes. Just distribute your game with the game.bin instead of the main.as file. The game.bin file will be automatically generated every time you run the machine.exe and it finds the main.as source-code.

Q: Can I make on-line games with it?

A: Yes, but for now only if you know any C/C++ network library and write your own Ethanon Engine plug-in that binds the network functions and objects to AngelScript. Check the documentation to learn how to do that.
There are plans for native network functions bindings and objects, but the priority right now is the cross-platform version.

Q: Is Ethanon Engine commercial?

A: It is free software, but it doesn't mean that it is not commercial. Your game studio may request features and get personal or group training. Contact me for more info:

Q: I like it. How can I help?

A: Here are some suggestions:
-Text/video tutorials: feel free to make tutorials covering any aspect of EE and I'll be happy to add (or link, if you prefer) it to the official website.
-Opinions and feedback: you may always keep me up-to-date about your impressions about the engine (the editor and the scripting language), showing where there's room for improvement.
-Submit your game or demo: have you done anything with the engine? Share it! Send me a link to your projects site, your videos or screen shots.