I’ve been developing an unnamed engine (used to be for Advance Wars and is internally called AdvanceWarsEngine but is now for FE) and this is a little overview of what it can do right now.
It is written in C#, using the MonoGame/nkast fork, using a custom FS (talked about later), and can be natively compiled for windows, mac, linux, mobile, and browser (runs 60 fps on a chromebook).
NOTE: The engine is far from usable. I am not much of a real game dev, I come from the Frostbite game engine modding scene and the vast majority of the work in this engine is backend. With the amount of backend work done though, this engine could probably recreate FE7 with a few months of work. It will be private until any beta usage. If anyone would like to have a hand at work on this engine, please DM me!!
Flex
The name of a custom scripting language for this engine. (not entirely sure what category its under, since its a language compiled to custom instructions that is executed with a custom executor)
It is heavily inspired by FE3DS scripts and thane98’s Exalt. The lexer, parser, and a bit of the compiler is taken from Exalt, adapted to C#, and optimized to take out fluff and made for this engine.
Here’s an early example of the scripting
Custom FS
Here’s right where probably 40% of the work done so far has been allocated. I come from the Frostbite modding scene (see FrostyToolSuite) and these formats are heavily inspired from their formats. Here’s an example of the compiled gamedata:
The formats are designed with good encryption, and the engine allows for the user to input special keys for the files. (decision done because stealing is a big problem in this community, and most stealers aren’t smart enough to figure out how to mod this engine)
Custom Generic Data Format
Here’s about 30% of the work dedicated to this engine. This format is inspired by EA’s Frostbite game engine once again, but only in concept.
There are types and then the DbObjects (database objects)
Here’s a screenshot of the Type Blueprint Editor
Here’s a screenshot of the DbObject Editor
Very similar to FB, these types are compiled to a dotnet DLL sdk and can be directly used and read in the engine using the sdk and engine pipeline. The automatic reading methods are designed to be extremely fast and adapt to the read type.
There is a lot more that I could talk about, but this is what I’m most proud of in not too big post.
