Wintermute Engine
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Wintermute Engine (WME) is a set of
software tool A programming tool or software development tool is a computer program that software developers use to create, debug, maintain, or otherwise support other programs and applications. The term usually refers to relatively simple programs, that can b ...
s and a
runtime interpreter In computer science, an interpreter is a computer program that directly executes instructions written in a programming or scripting language, without requiring them previously to have been compiled into a machine language program. An interpreter ...
(
game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term "software engine" used in the software i ...
) primarily designed for creating and running graphical adventure games.


History

Wintermute Engine (WME) was designed and programmed by Czech programmer Jan Nedoma, who goes by the nickname Mnemonic on the WME forums. The name "Wintermute" is a reference to
William Gibson William Ford Gibson (born March 17, 1948) is an American-Canadian speculative fiction writer and essayist widely credited with pioneering the science fiction subgenre known as ''cyberpunk''. Beginning his writing career in the late 1970s, his ...
's novel ''
Neuromancer ''Neuromancer'' is a 1984 science fiction novel by American-Canadian writer William Gibson. Considered one of the earliest and best-known works in the cyberpunk genre, it is the only novel to win the Nebula Award, the Philip K. Dick Award, and ...
''. The first
public beta A software release life cycle is the sum of the stages of development and maturity for a piece of computer software ranging from its initial development to its eventual release, and including updated versions of the released version to help impro ...
version was released on January 12, 2003. The engine was developed with several updates released every year, though irregularly due to the small development team. Since 2013 the Winter Mute Lite Engine is hosted on
Bitbucket Bitbucket is a Git (software), Git-based source code repository (version control), repository shared web hosting service, hosting service owned by Atlassian. Bitbucket offers both commercial plans and free accounts with an unlimited number of p ...
and released under a
MIT License The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, high license comp ...
. Development continues on the repository, latest additions adding Android support.


Features

The
game engine A game engine is a software framework primarily designed for the development of video games and generally includes relevant libraries and support programs. The "engine" terminology is similar to the term "software engine" used in the software i ...
provides most of the features necessary for creating classic 2D graphical adventure games. Although originally built as a 2D
graphics engine Rendering or image synthesis is the process of generating a physically-based rendering, photorealistic or Non-photorealistic rendering, non-photorealistic image from a 2D model, 2D or 3D model by means of a computer program. The resulting im ...
, with a built-in script interpreter for implementing game logic, the Wintermute Engine provides support for the combination of real-time 3D characters and 2D backgrounds, a combination sometimes known as "
2.5D 2.5D (two-and-a-half dimensional) perspective refers to gameplay or movement in a video game or virtual reality environment that is restricted to a two-dimensional (2D) plane with little to no access to a third dimension in a space that otherwis ...
", that has become the de facto standard for modern adventure games (for example
Syberia ''Syberia'' is a franchise of graphic adventure games created by Belgian comic artist and video game developer BenoƮt Sokal. Set within an alternate universe designed by Sokal and introduced in the 1999 video game ''Amerzone'', the series is ...
,
Still Life A still life (plural: still lifes) is a work of art depicting mostly wikt:inanimate, inanimate subject matter, typically commonplace objects which are either natural (food, flowers, dead animals, plants, rocks, shells, etc.) or artificiality, m ...
), and survival horror games. *Resolution and Color Depth - Unlike many similar systems the engine supports virtually any resolution: from 320x200 retro-style to high-res 1024x768 modern looking ones or higher. Both 16bit and 32bit color depths are supported. Colour depth can be also configured by the player at run time - the engine handles the conversion automatically. *Rendering subsystem - WME can use hardware
3D acceleration A graphics processing unit (GPU) is a specialized electronic circuit designed to manipulate and alter memory to accelerate the creation of images in a frame buffer intended for output to a display device. GPUs are used in embedded systems, mobi ...
(from any modern graphics card) to provide fast 2D graphics in high resolutions. It also includes graphical effects such as transparency,
alpha blending In computer graphics, alpha compositing or alpha blending is the process of combining one image with a background to create the appearance of partial or full transparency. It is often useful to render picture elements (pixels) in separate pas ...
and
antialiasing Anti-aliasing may refer to any of a number of techniques to combat the problems of aliasing in a sampled signal such as a digital image or digital audio recording. Specific topics in anti-aliasing include: * Anti-aliasing filter, a filter used be ...
(on old computers, WME is able to run in a "compatibility mode", which doesn't require a 3D accelerator, but disables the advanced graphics effects). *File Formats - In addition to supporting common file formats WME also supports alpha channels for PNG and TGA. However it does not support the
MP3 MP3 (formally MPEG-1 Audio Layer III or MPEG-2 Audio Layer III) is a coding format for digital audio developed largely by the Fraunhofer Society in Germany, with support from other digital scientists in the United States and elsewhere. Origin ...
format (due to licensing issues) but uses the
Ogg Vorbis Vorbis is a free and open-source software project headed by the Xiph.Org Foundation. The project produces an audio coding format and software reference encoder/decoder (codec) for lossy audio compression. Vorbis is most commonly used in conjun ...
format instead, arguably providing better compression and sound quality. Furthermore, the engine is able to play videos in
Ogg Theora Theora is a free lossy video compression format. It is developed by the Xiph.Org Foundation and distributed without licensing fees alongside their other free and open media projects, including the Vorbis audio format and the Ogg container. ...
and AVI format, including automatic subtitles display (in the SUB format). *Scripting - WME provides a flexible object-oriented
scripting language A scripting language or script language is a programming language that is used to manipulate, customize, and automate the facilities of an existing system. Scripting languages are usually interpreted at runtime rather than compiled. A scripting ...
that supports a set of methods and attributes to allow you an easy access to the internal engine workings. You can also create your own custom objects and override and customize built-in methods. It uses a C-like syntax, similar to C++, C#, Java or PHP. *Parallax scrolling - Multi-layered
parallax scrolling Parallax scrolling is a technique in computer graphics where background images move past the camera more slowly than foreground images, creating an illusion of depth in a 2D scene of distance. The technique grew out of the multiplane camera tec ...
for the scenes is natively supported by the engine and scene tool. Unlike most other comparable software no additional scripting is required to implement it. *Packages - A game can be compiled into one or more packages which contain all the game resources in a compressed form. This enables, for example, a developer to distribute a separate speech pack, or to release individual game episodes as packages. Packages can have various priorities, to release a
patch Patch or Patches may refer to: Arts, entertainment and media * Patch Johnson, a fictional character from ''Days of Our Lives'' * Patch (''My Little Pony''), a toy * "Patches" (Dickey Lee song), 1962 * "Patches" (Chairmen of the Board song) ...
for a game for example. *3D characters - WME can render 3D characters in real time. While originally supporting only the
MilkShape 3D MilkShape 3D (MS3D) is a shareware low-polygon 3D modeling program created by Mete Ciragan. It is used mainly for compiling models for ''Half-Life'', '' Blockland'', ''The Sims 2'', '' The Sims 3'', '' Rock Raiders'', and other sandbox video games ...
format, it now supports the more universal
DirectX Microsoft DirectX is a collection of application programming interfaces (APIs) for handling tasks related to multimedia, especially game programming and video, on Microsoft platforms. Originally, the names of these APIs all began with "Direct", ...
format " .X". *GUIs - It is possible, using standard controls, to build a complex user interface for a game, such as load/save windows, settings windows, an inventory window, etc. All the controls are fully "skinnable". *Localization - A game can be translated into other languages, and isn't limited to text. Localization packages containing localized string table, fonts, graphics, or sounds are possible. *Accessibility Support - WME provides several options to improve
accessibility Accessibility is the design of products, devices, services, vehicles, or environments so as to be usable by people with disabilities. The concept of accessible design and practice of accessible development ensures both "direct access" (i. ...
for vision-impaired players: ** Written text can be sent to a text-to-speech synthesizer ** Active areas on screen can be highlighted using keyboard shortcuts, making them easier to find for people with visual disabilities. ** The player can pause the game at any time to be able to read text or examine the scene. There is also an active community that, while small, is growing in size and is willing to help newcomers with coding or recommendations. Community-created
free Free may refer to: Concept * Freedom, having the ability to do something, without having to obey anyone/anything * Freethought, a position that beliefs should be formed only on the basis of logic, reason, and empiricism * Emancipate, to procur ...
book of tutorials went online in summer 2008.


Game design process

Wintermute Engine follows the
object-oriented Object-oriented programming (OOP) is a programming paradigm based on the concept of "objects", which can contain data and code. The data is in the form of fields (often known as attributes or ''properties''), and the code is in the form of pro ...
design philosophy. The game developers use the engine tools for building various game objects (actors, scenes, windows etc.) and assembling them together. Every game object is defined by its appearance (graphics, animations, captions, fonts) and by a script, which defines the underlying logic of a given game object and its responses to game events. All those game definitions are then interpreted by the engine runtime interpreter, which is otherwise completely independent on any actual game implementation.


License

Starting with version 1.7, Wintermute Engine is distributed as
donationware Donationware is a licensing model that supplies fully operational unrestricted software to the user and requests an optional donation be paid to the programmer or a third-party beneficiary (usually a non-profit). The amount of the donation may also ...
, meaning that it is completely free to use for both commercial and non-commercial purposes, but if the users find it useful, they are encouraged to make a donation to support its further development. Starting with version 1.8.9,
source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...
of the engine and some of the supporting tools has been released under the
LGPL The GNU Lesser General Public License (LGPL) is a free-software license published by the Free Software Foundation (FSF). The license allows developers and companies to use and integrate a software component released under the LGPL into their own ...
license. It currently is available under an
MIT License The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, high license comp ...
. The
source code In computing, source code, or simply code, is any collection of code, with or without comments, written using a human-readable programming language, usually as plain text. The source code of a program is specially designed to facilitate the wo ...
of the portable Wintermute Lite 2D engine has been released under an
MIT License The MIT License is a permissive free software license originating at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the late 1980s. As a permissive license, it puts only very limited restriction on reuse and has, therefore, high license comp ...
and is hosted on a
Bitbucket Bitbucket is a Git (software), Git-based source code repository (version control), repository shared web hosting service, hosting service owned by Atlassian. Bitbucket offers both commercial plans and free accounts with an unlimited number of p ...
repository.license.txt
on bitbucket.org
While the Wintermute Lite engine is free of charge also for commercial use, licensing of the included BASS sound library is required. It is also
Donationware Donationware is a licensing model that supplies fully operational unrestricted software to the user and requests an optional donation be paid to the programmer or a third-party beneficiary (usually a non-profit). The amount of the donation may also ...
, as the author asks for donations for continued development. Later the author released also Wintermute 1.x and Wintermute 2 to bitbucket under MIT.
ScummVM Script Creation Utility for Maniac Mansion Virtual Machine (ScummVM) is a set of game engine recreations. Originally designed to play LucasArts adventure games that use the SCUMM system, it also supports a variety of non-SCUMM games by companies ...
integrated the WME lite engine into their framework as part of GSoC 2012 and 2013 student works. Previous releases were free to use for non-commercial purposes, but required a separate paid commercial license. The flexible nature, and relative inexpense, of the licence for even large commercial projects has made the Wintermute Engine a popular tool among independent commercial game developers.


Games developed with Wintermute


References


External links

*
Wintermute Engine source code repository
on
bitbucket Bitbucket is a Git (software), Git-based source code repository (version control), repository shared web hosting service, hosting service owned by Atlassian. Bitbucket offers both commercial plans and free accounts with an unlimited number of p ...
{{Video game engines 2003 software Adventure game engines Free game engines Software using the MIT license Video game development software