I’ve tried a lot of game engines since I’ve started making games. And I’ve never been completely happy with them… so I have decided to develop and share my new Haxe/NME game engine.

Why another engine ?

For the past two years I have built game engines, first for AS3, then for Haxe just to learn how it works. I have made games with Flixel, Flashpunk (for the most known), but each time there is something I am not confortable with (how collisions are handled in Flixel for example). So as they say, if you want something done, it’s better to do it yourself: that’s why I decided to create my own game engine, in order to use a tool that’s best suited for me. Despite the specificities I wanted to add, I tried to keep it as simple and as generic as possible.

Basic concepts : the behaviors

Ever since I discovered this behaviors concept, it seems that I can’t do without it!

But what is this ? It’s a small concept, but it’s so simple that I don’t understand why no other game engines (that I am aware of) use it.

For example, you can have a default jump behavior, and if the player catches a power up, you can enable the jet pack behavior :

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class Player extends Entity
{
    private var _jumpBehavior : JumpBehavior;
    private var _jetpackBehavior : JetPackBehavior;

    public function new()
    {
        super(0, 0);
        
        _jumpBehavior = new JumpBehavior(this);
        addBehavior(_jumpBehavior);
        
        _jetpackBehavior = new JetPackBehavior(this);
        addBehavior(_jetpackBehavior, false);
    }

    public override function update()
    {
        super.update();
        if( powerup )
        {
            _jumpBehavior.disable();
            _jetpackBehavior.enable();
        }
    }
}

And all the player needs to do is in the update() function of the Behavior Class. So simple, and you can add it to any entity you like.

By default, there is two behaviors : Collisions and Movements. You can decide not to use them. But if you want collisions and movement, just activate them:

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solid = true;
movable = true;

Follow the work on github.