About and Main features

Goblin 2D+ Engine is a powerful yet easy to learn library that makes graphics programming on 3D hardware a breeze. Coupled optionally with it's own sound system, Goblin becomes the perfect cost effective solution for producing high quality games, applications, screen savers, simulations or whatever you can throw at it. For this reason the "GAME ENGINE" has been thrown out as it's much more capable than JUST a game engine.

If you would rather be coding games and applications from day 1 and NOT mucking around with other options like building your own or adding onto an abandoned engine then Goblin is for you.

Currently the bindings are only for MS Visual C/C++ but in the near future there will be a few offerings so other compilers and languages can be supported. (Borland, MinGW)

Goblin is being actively developed so your input and suggestions are always taken seriously and questions are usually answered within a short timeframe.

Goblins includes MANY test applications which test most of Goblins functionality, for this reason Goblin is stable.

Main Features

  • Enables you to start building your applications now rather than mucking around with low level engine code.
  • Built on Direct X D3D 8.1 for hardware acceleration and maximum compatibility (If the destination system has DX 8.1 or better then Goblin applications should run without any problems)
  • Goblin is VERY cost effective. For the features and the price of programmers you will is near impossible to beat Goblins feature per dollar value.
  • Free sound APIincluded, as from version 3.0 Goblin has it's own powerful and efficient sound and music system. This removes the need for buying 3rd party sound libraries although they can be optionally used if desired. This alone will save any shareware or commercial developers 100's or 1,000's of dollars!
  • Being built on D3D gives hardware tinting, alpha blending, scaling, rotating, filtering and other features Direct Draw couldn't deliver with hardware precision, quality and speed.
  • Built for use by all skill levels from learner to those already familiar with Windows API and Direct X programming.
  • Requires no prior knowledge of Direct X or Windows API programming. Just a basic knowledge of C/C++ should see you coding in minutes from easy to follow sample programs.
  • Highly optimized 2D sprite system batches sprites and other objects for maximum throughput along the 3D pipeline.
  • Create windowed or fullscreen applications and even have the ability to alternate between the 2 at runtime if desired.
  • Powerful yet simple to use and flexible 2D sprite animation.
  • Bitmap fonts with multi language support. (free font packs available for use)
  • Collision spheres for fast, accurate collision detection between scaled and rotated sprites and/or animations.
  • Collision pixels for fast, pixel perfect collision detection between non-scaled and non-rotated sprites and/or animations.
  • AVI rendering with full sound support (decompressed frames onto texture or onto a bitmap in memory).
  • Rendering of geometric shapes including lines, circles, sectors and rectangles.
  • Powerful Z buffer and stencil buffer support.
  • Ability to integrate 3D models (.X and .MD2) formats.
  • Camera controls which allow the rendered scene to be viewed from any angle.
  • Texture functions to load and manipulate textures. (Uncompressed A8R8G8B8 and A4R4G4B4 textures may be locked for direct manipulation)
  • Highly optimized particle system that allows each emitter to have from 10 to 1500 particles.
  • Ability to change resolution on-the-fly in either windowed or fullscreen mode.
  • Full support with Sprite Slicer for importing fonts, sprites, animations and collision spheres. Load Sprite Slicer projects with 1 line of code.
  • Loading of resources from ZIP files that may be compressed and password protected.
  • Ability to query the desktop video mode and all possible video modes before attempting to set a specific video mode.
  • Full support for mouse, keyboard and game devices input as Goblin uses Direct Input 8.1 internally.
  • Easy to expand. Goblin applications are C/C++ so basically any C/C++ library could be used with Goblin. This may include but not limited to external physics, GUI and scripting libraries.
  • Support for easily creating and rendering some lit 3D primitives (cube, sphere, capsule, plane and torus)
  • All versions now have option to statically link with Goblin for smaller, single executable.

Disclaimer : This software is provided "as is", without warranty of ANY KIND, either expressed or implied, including but not limited to the implied warranties of merchantability and/or fitness for a particular purpose. Kiweed Software shall NOT be held liable for ANY damage to you, your computer, or to anyone or anything else, that may result from its use, or misuse. Basically, you use it at YOUR OWN RISK.