flipCode - Arcade 2D Preview (Part II) [an error occurred while processing this directive]
A Break From 3D - The Arcade 2D GDK (Part II)


The interview continues with more about the engine including the final goals, when it will be released, and the audience for this product. Take a look...

What are your final goals for the engine?

The final goal for A2D is to have a solid 2D game operating system for the Windows platforms, which uses the latest technologies available for 2D gaming and keeps up with the new technologies also. One of the goals is also to give 2D gaming a serious boost in the next millennium. We want more 2D games out there, we want people to talk about 2D gaming as they talk about 3D gaming. 2D is NOT dead. That's what we're going to prove. We'll also license the GDK to developers who want to create commercial projects with it. For the future I see A2D becomming something more like DirectX, which every gamer needs to install on his PC to be able to play certain 2D games out there. This will become more of a reality when the number of 2D games built on top of A2D grows. For Windows 2000 there aren't many games you can play, certainly not many 2D games, and with A2D that will change, because typcically an A2D game will run on both Windows NT and Windows 9x systems. I can already say that everything we have so far on A2D works flawless on Windows 2000, even the test game we have.


How long has Arcade 2D been under development and when will it be released?

  A2D has been in development since July 1998. So it's in development for over a year now, and it will take up to another year to have everything complete. But we do want to release an alpha version possibly by the end of the year, or beginning next year so that developers can start looking at it to see what it will be capable of. If we cannot release the full game development kit, then at least we'll release a technology demo, possibly a small one level game featuring some of the features of A2D. It's been in development for a long time now and there's still a lot to be done, but that's just understandable if you look at what we want to create. Lots of time has been spent on the design of the engine alone. We want the engine to handle all the low level stuff, so that the developer using A2D can concentrate only on gameplay. Developers would not have to worry about pixel formats, displaying images, playing sounds, file management etc. etc. which would give them more time to design the game and focus on gameplay, which would garantee a better product in the end, that would be more fun to play.



The web site for Arcade 2D says that it will be easy for beginners to jump in and take control, but is that at the expense of advanced features for experienced developers?

Not at all. Beginners will have access to all the features of the engine, everything will also be explained in details in the documentation. What you'd generally need to know is C/C++ ofcourse, MFC and a little Windows programming and basic knowledge of Object Oriented Programming is a must. There will also be various samples available which will show some of the features in A2D, and would show you how to start building your game. If you look at my explanation in question 2, then you'll see there's not much skillz required :) Ofcourse, someone with a weird imagination, over the top creativity and some more skillz would be able to make something with A2D which would be more jaw dropping. But beginners will be able to work with anything A2D has to offer, that's what A2D is about, bringing the latest 2D technology to people and making it so easy they won't be able to resist to make a game with it :)





There you have it ladies and gentlemen. Arcade2D aims to breathe life back into the 2D gaming world by offering easy tools for even beginners to start pumping out games with. For more information, check out Miraesoft's web site. Hopefully after this product is released we will have the opportunity to do a follow-up review to see how the 2D gaming world reacts to A2D.




[an error occurred while processing this directive]