Hi everyone,

I’m super excited to be able to announce that the Dash game engine[1] is finally stable and ready for public use! I’m currently the Lead Engine Programmer at Circular Studios[2] (the group behind Dash). We had 14 people working on the team, 6 engine programmers and 8 game developers creating Spectral Robot Task Force, a turn-based strategy game built with Dash.

Dash is an OpenGL engine written in the D language that runs on both Windows and Linux. We use a deferred-rendering model in the current pipeline, and a component model for game development and logic. Other major features at the moment include networking, skeletal-animation support, content and configuration loading via YAML, and UI support through Awesomium[3] (though we are in the process of moving over to using CEF[4] itself).

Our vision for Dash is to have the programmer-facing model of XNA/Monogame combined with the designer-friendliness of Unity in a fully free and open source engine. We also hope that Dash can help to prove the power and maturity of D as a language, as well as push D to continue improving.

We’re open to any feedback you may have, or better yet, we’d love to see pull requests for improvements.

[1] https://github.com/Circular-Studios/Dash
[2] http://circularstudios.com/
[3] http://awesomium.com/
[4] https://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/

On Mon, 19 May 2014 19:50:35 +0000, Colden Cullen wrote:

> Hi everyone,
> 
> I’m super excited to be able to announce that the Dash game engine[1] is
> finally stable and ready for public use! I’m currently the Lead Engine
> Programmer at Circular Studios[2] (the group behind Dash). We had 14
> people working on the team, 6 engine programmers and 8 game developers
> creating Spectral Robot Task Force, a turn-based strategy game built
> with Dash.
> 
> Dash is an OpenGL engine written in the D language that runs on both Windows and Linux. We use a deferred-rendering model in the current pipeline, and a component model for game development and logic. Other major features at the moment include networking, skeletal-animation support, content and configuration loading via YAML, and UI support through Awesomium[3] (though we are in the process of moving over to using CEF[4] itself).
> 
> Our vision for Dash is to have the programmer-facing model of XNA/Monogame combined with the designer-friendliness of Unity in a fully free and open source engine. We also hope that Dash can help to prove the power and maturity of D as a language, as well as push D to continue improving.
> 
> We’re open to any feedback you may have, or better yet, we’d love to see pull requests for improvements.
> 
> [1] https://github.com/Circular-Studios/Dash [2]
> http://circularstudios.com/
> [3] http://awesomium.com/
> [4] https://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/

Very exciting!  Thank for the very liberal license; this is a great
contribution to the community.
I know you guys are probably crunching on the million things that stand
between alpha and release, but when you have time, a series of blog posts
or articles would be awesome.  Topics such as your usage of mixins and
your experience with the GC would be great and speak to the advantages of
using D.

BTW, The "Setting up Your Environment page" link on the main repo page (the README) is broken.

Justin

On 5/19/2014 12:50 PM, Colden Cullen wrote:
> I’m super excited to be able to announce that the Dash game engine[1] is finally
> stable and ready for public use!

http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/25yw89/dash_an_opensource_game_engine_coded_in_d/

I recommend posting your message text on Reddit, as that will generate more interest than just a link.

On Monday, 19 May 2014 at 20:45:51 UTC, Justin Whear wrote:
> Very exciting!  Thank for the very liberal license; this is a great
> contribution to the community.
> I know you guys are probably crunching on the million things that stand
> between alpha and release, but when you have time, a series of blog posts
> or articles would be awesome.  Topics such as your usage of mixins and
> your experience with the GC would be great and speak to the advantages of
> using D.
>
> BTW, The "Setting up Your Environment page" link on the main repo page
> (the README) is broken.
>
> Justin

Thanks! We're super excited. We wanted to make sure that anyone could do anything with it, hence the license. We're also all huge open source geeks, with no business people to tell us no :)

We are super busy, but we've also been trying to blog as much as we can. Myself[1] and one of my teammates[2] have been blogging a little (although I should warn you, there is some cruft from a class we took requiring posts for other stuff). We do really want to get some more stuff on paper, though. If you've got any ideas for stuff you want to read, suggestions are absolutely welcome!

Also, thanks for the heads up, I just fixed the link.

[1] http://blog.coldencullen.com/
[2] http://blog.danieljost.com/

On Monday, 19 May 2014 at 20:52:04 UTC, Walter Bright wrote:
> On 5/19/2014 12:50 PM, Colden Cullen wrote:
>> I’m super excited to be able to announce that the Dash game engine[1] is finally
>> stable and ready for public use!
>
> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/25yw89/dash_an_opensource_game_engine_coded_in_d/
>
> I recommend posting your message text on Reddit, as that will generate more interest than just a link.

Good call, check it out here[1]. We also have an /r/gamedev post[2], where we've gotten some good D-related questions.

[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/25yw89/dash_an_opensource_game_engine_coded_in_d/chm21bv
[2] http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/25yub3/introducing_dash_an_opensource_game_engine_in_d/

On 5/19/2014 1:55 PM, Colden Cullen wrote:
> Good call, check it out here[1]. We also have an /r/gamedev post[2], where we've
> gotten some good D-related questions.
>
> [1]
> http://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/25yw89/dash_an_opensource_game_engine_coded_in_d/chm21bv
>
> [2]
> http://www.reddit.com/r/gamedev/comments/25yub3/introducing_dash_an_opensource_game_engine_in_d/


Wonderful!

On Monday, 19 May 2014 at 19:50:37 UTC, Colden Cullen wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I’m super excited to be able to announce that the Dash game engine[1] is finally stable and ready for public use! I’m currently the Lead Engine Programmer at Circular Studios[2] (the group behind Dash). We had 14 people working on the team, 6 engine programmers and 8 game developers creating Spectral Robot Task Force, a turn-based strategy game built with Dash.
>
> Dash is an OpenGL engine written in the D language that runs on both Windows and Linux. We use a deferred-rendering model in the current pipeline, and a component model for game development and logic. Other major features at the moment include networking, skeletal-animation support, content and configuration loading via YAML, and UI support through Awesomium[3] (though we are in the process of moving over to using CEF[4] itself).
>
> Our vision for Dash is to have the programmer-facing model of XNA/Monogame combined with the designer-friendliness of Unity in a fully free and open source engine. We also hope that Dash can help to prove the power and maturity of D as a language, as well as push D to continue improving.
>
> We’re open to any feedback you may have, or better yet, we’d love to see pull requests for improvements.
>
> [1] https://github.com/Circular-Studios/Dash
> [2] http://circularstudios.com/
> [3] http://awesomium.com/
> [4] https://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/

Looks awesome.

Don't have time now (finals) but will check it out later.
(I'm developing my own gamedev related... stuff so I'm unlikely to be
a user but looks like it might finally be something a new user can pick up right away and just start making a game in D)

For now all criticism I can give is that http://dash.circularstudios.com/v1.0/docs is completely useless with NoScript. At least put a warning for NoScript users.

On Monday, 19 May 2014 at 19:50:37 UTC, Colden Cullen wrote:
> Hi everyone,
>
> I’m super excited to be able to announce that the Dash game engine[1] is finally stable and ready for public use! I’m currently the Lead Engine Programmer at Circular Studios[2] (the group behind Dash). We had 14 people working on the team, 6 engine programmers and 8 game developers creating Spectral Robot Task Force, a turn-based strategy game built with Dash.
>
> Dash is an OpenGL engine written in the D language that runs on both Windows and Linux. We use a deferred-rendering model in the current pipeline, and a component model for game development and logic. Other major features at the moment include networking, skeletal-animation support, content and configuration loading via YAML, and UI support through Awesomium[3] (though we are in the process of moving over to using CEF[4] itself).
>
> Our vision for Dash is to have the programmer-facing model of XNA/Monogame combined with the designer-friendliness of Unity in a fully free and open source engine. We also hope that Dash can help to prove the power and maturity of D as a language, as well as push D to continue improving.
>
> We’re open to any feedback you may have, or better yet, we’d love to see pull requests for improvements.
>
> [1] https://github.com/Circular-Studios/Dash
> [2] http://circularstudios.com/
> [3] http://awesomium.com/
> [4] https://code.google.com/p/chromiumembedded/

This is all awesome. I'll have to check this out.

I hate to be the guy who says "you missed a spot," but you did name one module in your source tree "core." You might want to rename that to avoid issues with core modules.

On Monday, 19 May 2014 at 20:58:52 UTC, Kiith-Sa wrote:
> For now all criticism I can give is that http://dash.circularstudios.com/v1.0/docs is completely useless with NoScript. At least put a warning for NoScript users.


We'll be switching off of readme.io to homebrew docs[1] hosted on Github.

[1] https://github.com/Circular-Studios/Dash-Docs

On Monday, 19 May 2014 at 21:05:01 UTC, Daniel Jost wrote:
> On Monday, 19 May 2014 at 20:58:52 UTC, Kiith-Sa wrote:
>> For now all criticism I can give is that http://dash.circularstudios.com/v1.0/docs is completely useless with NoScript. At least put a warning for NoScript users.
>
>
> We'll be switching off of readme.io to homebrew docs[1] hosted on Github.
>
> [1] https://github.com/Circular-Studios/Dash-Docs

This is super super not ready yet though, unfortunately. It will be our focus (or mine, at least) for then next few weeks.