NOTE: This project has not been worked on for some time and is in the process of a complete rewrite.

The Zider game engine will be a 2D/3D hybrid game engine focusing on 2D side scrolling, and top down game play styles.

To get a good sense of what this engine aims to achieve I strongly suggest you watch the animated flash series by Randy Solem called Rise Of The Mushroom Kingdom. You can find the links in the videos section.

Below lists the current status of the various features that are either currently working or on the drawing table. For the most recent source updates see the codeplex site where the most up to date zider code base is kept.

Working features

1. Load/Save Maps in xml format
2. Edit map blocks with left and right mouse buttons
3. Can pan the map to expose other parts just by moving mouse near edges of screen or use WSAD keys on keyboard
4. Supports fullscreen and windowed modes
5. Basic, easy to use skinable GUI system with anchoring support like in windows forms
6. Texture selection, and block selection so user can choose specific blocks to use for drawing with
7. Ability to toggle grid on and off
8. Draws red bounding rectangle displaying the map boundaries
9. User can press the "Home" key on the keyboard to reset the camera to it's default position
10. Default settings can be changed via the app user config file
11. Powerfull and easily extensible in game console system provided by the xGameConsoleXNA library
12. Basic scripting system

Features on the drawing table and issues to be fixed

1. Need to modify gui rendering system to position text properly. Right now text is drawn at top left of controls
2. Need to modify components so that there is only one globally accessable spritebatch component. The reason is to make it easier to recover from a device lost.reset event.
3. Moving the window to a second monitor (on a multi monitor setup) other then the primary monitor causes a crash. This should be fixed.
4. Layering. Currently Zider only supports one map layer.
5. Moving platforms (elevators, falling platforms)
6. Particle system using the Mercury Particle Engine
7. Characters, Actors, Items etc
8. Move over all sprite based drawing to full 3D geometry primitives.
9. Animation systems
10. Implement Farseer Physics Engine for physics, or develop custom phisics implementation. I may have come up with a superfast way of doing 2D Collision detection/response but it is still in the works.
11. Purchase a XNA creators club subscription and get code working on 360.
12. Keep all data files in xml format for easy of use and easy editing. Notepad!
13. Figure out a better way to store relationship meta data for blocks. You can only draw single blocks right now but I am trying to come up with a way to draw blocks similarly to how the Warcraft 2 level editor draws tiles.

Downloads

• ZiderR1.zip (383.18 kb)
  Zider Release 1 (Prototype phase)
• ZiderR2.zip (4.71 mb)
  Zider game engine still in it's alpha stages.

Videos

• Rise of the mushroom kingdom part 1 of 4
  A cool animated series that demonstrates what techneques the Zider game engine will be capable of. 
• Rise of the mushroom kingdom part 2 of 4
  A cool animated series that demonstrates what techneques the Zider game engine will be capable of. 
• Rise of the mushroom kingdom part 3 of 4
  A cool animated series that demonstrates what techneques the Zider game engine will be capable of.
• Rise of the mushroom kingdom part 4 of 4
  A cool animated series that demonstrates what techneques the Zider game engine will be capable of.

Picture Galleries

• Release 1 Images
  Some screenshots from the first zider release.

This work by Dean Lunz is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License. Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at http://contact.createdbyx.com/.