amiga-news.de - New game engine: Sevgi Engine

26.May.2025

New game engine: Sevgi Engine
Sevgi Engine is a new open source video game engine which provides the required tools and generates the boilerplate code to create high performing Amiga games using only the C programming language (video). It is built around the ScrollingTricks archive by Georg Steger and has the following features:

All display algorithms aim to perform at a locked 50fps on a single buffered native Amiga chipset display. It implements an optimized version of the algorithm Scroller_XYUnlimited2_64 from ScrollingTricks. Benefits highly from Fast Ram where available.
System friendly: aims to work on all ROM versions (2.0+) providing a clean quit back to OS without needing WHDLoad.
AGA Support: supports all features provided by the AGA chipset.
No limitations: designed to support all the well known visual tricks known by the popular Amiga video game titles while not limiting more experimental effects to be implemented.
Easy development A native editor program is provided to generate code, manage game assets, edit color palettes etc. called Sevgi Editor. Other elements like game logic, animation and events require programming knowledge in C. The programming and compiling can be made natively (on the Amiga OS - using native compilers) or cross platfrom (on Windows or Linux PCs - using cross development tools). Sevgi Editor can import game maps made in Tiled.
Templates: generates ready to compile and run game code from template genres which aims to ease bootstrapping. The templates include test assets.
ptplayer: implements the great ptplayer by Frank Wille for music and audio effects.
No third party dependencies: the game executable will not require any libraries
Documentation: the engine code is very well commented and documented in detail in Amigaguide format.

An ECS or AGA Amiga, Kickstart 2.0+ and MUI 3.8 (for Sevgi Editor) are required. We asked the author İbrahim Alper Sönmez how this project came about:

Amiga-News (AN): We have been reporting on two game construction kits for some time now: RedPill and die Scorpion Engine. Did you know about the other game engines?

Alper Sönmez (AS): Yes I did know about RedPill and Scropion Engine. I never tried them though. I follow both of them from websites like yours, their facebook pages and youtube channels and I really appreciate what they’ve achieved so far.

AN: Did you miss anything?

AS: The first thing I miss in the engines mentioned is the unavailability of a clean quit back to OS. I try to use AmigaOS to the fullest, so I download the new games on the AmigaOS using IBrowse, unpack them and copy them to some proper drawer. But when I run them and not be able to quit back to OS, I get pretty annoyed. Another feature I miss in the games made on those other engines is the engine not being able to fade in/out the copper gradients (the color gradients used as background sky). I spent particular time on these two while developing Sevgi_Engine.

AN: What was the reason for developing your game engine?

AS: It was mostly educational and experimental. I've always been curious about how Amiga games were made. I’ve read so many different implementation ideas from various developers on forums and always had thought experiments inside my head for a while about what would be the best combination of these ideas to have the best performing game engine for the Amiga. I was familiar with Amos (which is very convenient, yet quite limiting on many aspects) and experimented with some ideas on that initially. One day I’ve decided to write something from scratch in C implementing all my ideas without encountering the limitations caused by the infrastructure of Amos. The most essential one among those ideas was one of the screen scroll routines demonstrated in Scrolling Tricks by Georg Steger which was also written in C. So I’ve downloaded his source code from Aminet and started implementing my version of the routine. When I saw it perform amazingly well I decided that there would be something of great value if I could turn this into a fully fledged game engine. And so the Sevgi_Engine project started.

AN: Is it even possible to compare your engine with the other two?

AS: It is hard to make an easy comparison because of the differences in the target groups. But I can say that Sevgi_Engine is more a "boilerplate C code generator" than a "game construction kit". But of course it has an editor to help with the management of game assets and engine features. But for a comparison on the games to be created with them, I can tell that Sevgi_Engine can outperform them both on being system friendly. Another important difference is that it is open source. It is amazing that some developers have already started contributing on GitHub.

AN: What is the target group? Everyone? Or rather developers/programmers?

AS: Sevgi_Engine requires great knowledge of Amiga hardware programming and C language. So the target group is C developers invested in programming Amiga hardware and AmigaOS friendly code.

AN: Is it more/better suited to a certain type of game?

AS: It is more suited to make high performing games that work on native Amiga display, like namely Turrican, Lionheart, Fire and Ice, Superfrog, Alien Breed etc. with an important caveat: Sevgi_Engine aims to perform as well as these games but on a single buffered display. Which means there will be more chip memory available for sound and graphics assets. (dr)

[News message: 26. May. 2025, 22:53] [Comments: 1 - 27. May. 2025, 10:20]
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