Dim3

Last updated

Dimension 3
Dim3 Engine Logo For Software Info.png
Dim3 Engine Screenshot 1 For Software Infobox.png
Developer(s) Klink! Software
Stable release
v24 / July 2, 2014
Operating system Mac OS X ; Microsoft Windows ; iOS ; Linux (requires compilation) [1]
Type Game engine
License MIT [2]
Website Klink! Software

Dim3, also known as Dimension 3, is a free and open-source 3D game engine created by Brian Barnes. [3] It has been chosen as a staff pick for OS X development software by Apple. [4] and featured as one of their "hot game building tools." [5] dim3 has an entry in DevMaster's 3D engines database. [6]

Open-source software software licensed to ensure source code usage rights

Open-source software (OSS) is a type of computer software in which source code is released under a license in which the copyright holder grants users the rights to study, change, and distribute the software to anyone and for any purpose. Open-source software may be developed in a collaborative public manner. Open-source software is a prominent example of open collaboration.

3D computer graphics graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data

3D computer graphics, or three-dimensional computer graphics, are graphics that use a three-dimensional representation of geometric data that is stored in the computer for the purposes of performing calculations and rendering 2D images. The resulting images may be stored for viewing later or displayed in real time.

Game engine Software-development environment designed for building video games

A game engine is a software-development environment designed for people to build video games. Developers use game engines to construct games for consoles, mobile devices, and personal computers. The core functionality typically provided by a game engine includes a rendering engine ("renderer") for 2D or 3D graphics, a physics engine or collision detection, sound, scripting, animation, artificial intelligence, networking, streaming, memory management, threading, localization support, scene graph, and may include video support for cinematics. Implementers often economize on the process of game development by reusing/adapting, in large part, the same game engine to produce different games or to aid in porting games to multiple platforms.

Contents

dim3 uses OpenGL for rendering, JavaScript for scripting, XML for data and Simple DirectMedia Layer for resolution switching, input, and sound.

OpenGL application programming interface for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics

Open Graphics Library (OpenGL) is a cross-language, cross-platform application programming interface (API) for rendering 2D and 3D vector graphics. The API is typically used to interact with a graphics processing unit (GPU), to achieve hardware-accelerated rendering.

JavaScript, often abbreviated as JS, is a high-level, interpreted scripting language that conforms to the ECMAScript specification. JavaScript has curly-bracket syntax, dynamic typing, prototype-based object-orientation, and first-class functions.

XML Markup language developed by the W3C for encoding of data

Extensible Markup Language (XML) is a markup language that defines a set of rules for encoding documents in a format that is both human-readable and machine-readable. The World Wide Web Consortium's XML 1.0 Specification of 1998 and several other related specifications—all of them free open standards—define XML.

Components

dim3 includes four applications: Engine, Editor, Animator, and Setup.

The Engine is the deployment application that runs games created in dim3. The games (or "projects") are cross-platform and only require the proper engine to run on the proper platform. The engine runs on Mac OS X, Microsoft Windows, iOS, and can be compiled on Linux. All versions can play network games with each other.

Microsoft Windows is a group of several graphical operating system families, all of which are developed, marketed and sold by Microsoft. Each family caters to a certain sector of the computing industry. Active Microsoft Windows families include Windows NT and Windows IoT; these may encompass subfamilies, e.g. Windows Server or Windows Embedded Compact. Defunct Microsoft Windows families include Windows 9x, Windows Mobile and Windows Phone.

iOS Mobile operating system by Apple

iOS is a mobile operating system created and developed by Apple Inc. exclusively for its hardware. It is the operating system that presently powers many of the company's mobile devices, including the iPhone, and iPod Touch; it also powered the iPad prior to the introduction of iPadOS in 2019. It is the second most popular mobile operating system globally after Android.

Linux Family of free and open-source software operating systems based on the Linux kernel

Linux is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged in a Linux distribution.

The Editor is used to create levels by importing various 3D models into it. The Editor is capable of per-pixel lighting, bump and specular mapping, real-time lighting and/or baked lighting, particles and other special effects, skeletal animation, and customization through javascript.

The Animator is used to add loop animations and effects to models used with dim3. The Animator is used to add bones, setup poses for the bones, and to combine those poses into animations. The Animator uses a skeletal animation system. This makes character movement simplistic yet very realistic.

Skeletal animation

Skeletal animation is a technique in computer animation in which a character is represented in two parts: a surface representation used to draw the character and a hierarchical set of interconnected bones used to animate the mesh. While this technique is often used to animate humans or more generally for organic modeling, it only serves to make the animation process more intuitive, and the same technique can be used to control the deformation of any object—such as a door, a spoon, a building, or a galaxy. When the animated object is more general than, for example, a humanoid character, the set of bones may not be hierarchical or interconnected, but it just represents a higher level description of the motion of the part of mesh or skin it is influencing.

Setup is a utility that is used to change all other settings in the project, for example, the HUD, network, or particle settings.

A data folder, representing the game, contains all the maps, models, artwork, sounds, and scripts required to create a game in dim3. Each game is self-contained in up to 3 data folders, though only one is actually needed. All non-editor data is in standard formats: PNG, WAV, and mp3. A demonstration "game" is added to dim3, though it is not really a game in itself but shows most of the engine's capabilities.

Portable Network Graphics Family of lossless compression file formats for image files

Portable Network Graphics is a raster-graphics file-format that supports lossless data compression. PNG was developed as an improved, non-patented replacement for Graphics Interchange Format (GIF).

Waveform Audio File Format is an audio file format standard, developed by Microsoft and IBM, for storing an audio bitstream on PCs. It is an application of the Resource Interchange File Format (RIFF) bitstream format method for storing data in "chunks", and thus is also close to the 8SVX and the AIFF format used on Amiga and Macintosh computers, respectively. It is the main format used on Microsoft Windows systems for raw and typically uncompressed audio. The usual bitstream encoding is the linear pulse-code modulation (LPCM) format.

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References

  1. ↑ Klink! Software. "OS Downloads".
  2. ↑ "Google Code".
  3. ↑ Satterthwaite, Mark (2004-09-24). "Dim3: The making of a game engine". InsideMacGames . Retrieved 2007-11-06. [Brian] has endeavored to make Dim3 as versatile and flexible as possible while still remaining true to his other fundamental principle: it has to be free to use.
  4. ↑ Apple (2007-07-26). "dim3 Download". Archived from the original on 2007-10-11. Retrieved 2007-07-26.
  5. ↑ Cook, Brad (2007-07-26). "Game Building Tools". Inside Mac Games. Archived from the original on 2007-10-16. Retrieved 2007-11-08.
  6. ↑ DevMaster (2007-07-26). "dim3". DevMaster. Retrieved 2007-11-08.
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