ORX: Portable Game Engine
Email iarwain [at] orx-project.org to contact the author; or, better, check orx's homepage for the most up-to-date contact information. You can also come chat with us if you have any questions or comments.
This engine is licensed under the very permissive zlib license, see the LICENSE file for details.
Orx is a 2D-oriented, data-driven, portable game engine focused primarily on ease of use and powerful features. See below for a list of supported platforms.
This is a release candidate for orx v1.14. If you find any bugs, please report them on the forum, in the "Bug report - Feature request" board, or via orx's issue page/tracker.
Some notable features of the engine are:
See orx's wiki for detailed information, including:
See the doc/html directory for the doxygen documentation of orx's API. The documentation for the latest release version is available here at orx's homepage.
The engine compiles and is tested for:
Those are not revision versions but link/run versions. Orx library can be compiled as a static or a dynamic library. In addition to these modes, orx can be compiled as an embedded version or not.
Orx's core is basically platform-independent. All the platform/OS-dependent features are implemented via plugins. These plugins can be loaded at runtime (hotplug) or they can be embedded at linktime.
If you use the non-embedded versions, you'll have to specify which plugins to use. This is more flexible but also requires additional files (the plugins themselves). The embedded version will store everything in orx's library, meaning you won't be able to choose which plugin to use at runtime, but will also be more compact. This will also make orx run considerably faster.
From the download page you'll find precompiled binaries for Windows (x86), Linux (x86/x86-64), MacOS X (ppc/x86/x86-64), iOS and Android, using the dynamic embedded versions only. If you want to use the non-embedded versions (to use with your own plugins), you'll need to compile orx yourself from the source. Everything compiles out-of-the-box for the hardware platforms cited above.
The embedded versions currently use:
All the 11 basic and advanced official tutorials are shipped with the dev packages, including precompiled release binaries.
Some tools (precompiled binaries only) are also shipped with the dev packages:
orxCrypt
: command line tool to encrypt/decrypt/merge multiple config filesorxFontGen
: command line tool (based on FreeType2) to generate custom bitmap fonts (.png texture & .ini config file) from TrueType fontsYou can download all the packages from SourceForge or GitHub. Here is a list with a small description for each package.
orx-doc-1.14.zip
: orx's API doxygen documentationorx-src-1.14.zip
: orx's source code, ready for compile after running the setup scriptorx-dev-linux32-1.14.tar.bz2
: dynamic embedded binaries for Linux (x86), release/profile/debug + tools.orx-dev-linux64-1.14.tar.bz2
: dynamic embedded binaries for Linux (x86-64), release/profile/debug + tools.orx-dev-mac-1.14.zip
: dynamic embedded binaries for MacOS X (x86/x86-64), release/profile/debug + tools.orx-dev-mingw-32-1.14.zip
: dynamic embedded binaries for Windows (mingw/x86), release/profile/debug + tools.orx-dev-mingw-64-1.14.zip
: dynamic embedded binaries for Windows (mingw/x86-64), release/profile/debug + tools.orx-dev-vs2017-32-1.14.zip
: dynamic embedded binaries for Windows (Visual Studio 2017, x86), release/profile/debug + tools.orx-dev-vs2017-64-1.14.zip
: dynamic embedded binaries for Windows (Visual Studio 2017, x86-64), release/profile/debug + tools.orx-dev-vs2019-32-1.14.zip
: dynamic embedded binaries for Windows (Visual Studio 2019, x86), release/profile/debug + tools.orx-dev-vs2019-64-1.14.zip
: dynamic embedded binaries for Windows (Visual Studio 2019, x86-64), release/profile/debug + tools.orx-dev-vs2022-32-1.14.zip
: dynamic embedded binaries for Windows (Visual Studio 2022, x86), release/profile/debug + tools.orx-dev-vs2022-64-1.14.zip
: dynamic embedded binaries for Windows (Visual Studio 2022, x86-64), release/profile/debug + tools.orx-full-ios-1.14.zip
: static embedded binaries for iOS, release/profile/debug, simulator/device + doc + source + XCode project file.orx-dev-android-1.14.zip
: static embedded binaries for Android, release/profile/debug (device).orx-tutorial-linux32-1.14.tar.bz2
: tutorials for Linux (x86)orx-tutorial-linux64-1.14.tar.bz2
: tutorials for Linux (x86-64)orx-tutorial-mac-1.14.zip
: tutorials for MacOS X (x86/x86-64)orx-tutorial-mingw-32-1.14.zip
: tutorials for Windows (mingw/x86)orx-tutorial-mingw-64-1.14.zip
: tutorials for Windows (mingw/x86-64)orx-tutorial-vs2017-32-1.14.zip
: tutorials for Windows (Visual Studio 2017, x86)orx-tutorial-vs2017-64-1.14.zip
: tutorials for Windows (Visual Studio 2017, x86-64)orx-tutorial-vs2019-32-1.14.zip
: tutorials for Windows (Visual Studio 2019, x86)orx-tutorial-vs2019-64-1.14.zip
: tutorials for Windows (Visual Studio 2019, x86-64)orx-tutorial-vs2022-32-1.14.zip
: tutorials for Windows (Visual Studio 2022, x86)orx-tutorial-vs2022-64-1.14.zip
: tutorials for Windows (Visual Studio 2022, x86-64)All the *-dev-*
packages above include:
All the *-tutorial-*
packages above include:
If you just downloaded the src
package or cloned orx with mercurial or git, you will need to run the setup.bat / setup.sh script
that's located at its root before being able to compile the engine.
This script will download all the needed dependencies and generate all the project files for your platform.
The script will then hook itself to mercurial/git and you shouldn't have to run it manually after subsequent pulls.
The easiest way to learn how to compile your project using orx for a given platform is to check orx's wiki.
The generated project files will contain 6 different configurations to build orx: Debug
, Profile
& Release
in both regular and Core
flavors. Here's what they do:
Debug
: These configurations will build orx in debug mode. They are the only configurations that will output warning and error messages resulting from incorrect data, code and behaviors. These configurations are also much slower than the other ones but is recommended during development to catch any mistake. Note: the internal profiler is also available with these configurations.
Profile
: These configurations will build orx in optimized mode but will keep the internal profiler, slightly slowing down the execution but allowing the user to get high level profiling information which can be very useful during development.
Release
: These configurations will build orx in optimized mode, without the internal profiler. These are the configurations one should be using when shipping their project. Note: on Windows, the OS terminal will also be hidden with this configuration.
Core
: Those configurations will only build orx's core as a static library. With these configurations, no plugins will be compiled/embedded. In non-Core
configurations, all the plugins are built and embedded inside orx's library, and should be the configurations used by most users. The Core
configurations are typically used to build orx's tools that do not require any plugin (orxCrypt
& orxFontGen
).
Here's a quick list of the available compile preprocessor flags:
__orxDEBUG__
: used to compile and link against the debug versions of orx library
(liborxd.a / orxd.lib / liborxd.dylib), if not specified it refers to
the release versions (liborx.a / orx.lib / liborx.dylib).
NB: If you want to link against the debug versions of orx library, you need
to specify it to your compiler!
__orxPROFILER__
: used to enable the profiling push/pop macros for release builds
It's automatically enabled for debug builds and it has been enabled to
build liborxp.a / orxp.lib / orxp.dll / liborxp.dylib / liborxp.so
NB: You can define it in your projects even when using regular release builds,
but you won't be able to see orx's internal profiling markers!
__orxSTATIC__
: used to compile and link against the static versions of orx library.
NB: If you want to link against the static versions of orx library, you need
to specify it to your compiler!
__orxEMBEDDED__
: used to compile the embedded versions of orx library.
NB: this flag is ONLY needed when compiling orx library, not when linking
against it.
There are other preprocessor flags used when compiling the orx library, but those should be easy enough to decipher. markdo However, you might want to specify them manually for cross-compiling or use them so that your code will behave differently depending on the architecture for which you're compiling. Here's a quick list of these flags:
Flag | Description |
---|---|
__orxARM__ |
orx is being compiled for an ARM architecture |
__orxPPC__ |
orx is being compiled for a PowerPC architecture |
__orxPPC64__ |
orx is being compiled for a PowerPC 64 architecture |
__orxX86__ |
orx is being compiled for a x86 architecture |
__orxX86_64__ |
orx is being compiled for a x86-64 architecture |
__orxLITTLE_ENDIAN__ |
orx is being compiled for a little endian architecture |
__orxBIG_ENDIAN__ |
orx is being compiled for a big endian architecture |
__orxGCC__ |
orx is being compiled with gcc |
__orxMSVC__ |
orx is being compiled with visual studio C/C++ |
__orxLLVM__ |
orx is being compiled with llvm/clang |
__orxWINDOWS__ |
orx is being compiled for Windows |
__orxMAC__ |
orx is being compiled for MacOS X |
__orxLINUX__ |
orx is being compiled for Linux |
__orxIOS__ |
orx is being compiled for iOS |
__orxANDROID__ |
orx is being compiled for Android |
__orxCPP__ |
orx is being compiled with a C++ compiler |
__orxOBJC__ |
orx is being compiled with an Objective-C compiler |
__orxPLUGIN__ |
a plugin for orx is being compiled |
__orxEXTERN__ |
code using orx's library is being compiled |
If you have any questions, comments, ideas or reviews, feel free to either post them on orx's forum, come chat with us or send them directly by email to iarwain [at] orx-project.org
Enjoy!