openc2e is a free and
open-source game engine for the Creatures
artificial life games.
The goal is to allow you to play games such as Creatures, Creatures 2, Creatures 3, Docking
Station and more, on many different platforms. It is being slowly developed by a team of Creatures hobbyists, and anyone
can modify it under the terms of the LGPL.
Happy New Year, and welcome to the revamped openc2e website! This space will be, essentially, a development diary. I plan to write about Creatures implementation details, C++ programming, highlight old Creatures reverse-engineering sites, and provide tools and tips for working with Creatures.
I’ve also archived all of the old content (what I could find from archive.org, at least) under the “Old website” link in the sidebar. Feel free to browse through to see what openc2e.org looked like 14 years ago!
Be sure to watch this space for further announcements!
A brand-new tool for playing MNG music files. This tool’s been built from scratch using openc2e’s music code and will work on modern Windows computers without any fudging about.
Additionally, it has a MNG compiler/decompiler built in for any agenteers who want to experiment with custom music.
Wow, it’s been a long time since the last openc2e release! Just over 10 years, to be exact.
Here’s what’s new:
Codebase was updated to build and run on modern computers. That means C++11, Qt5 instead of Qt4, SDL2 instead of SDL, Python instead of Perl, and STL and other community libraries instead of Boost. The OpenAL backend has been removed entirely, and the SDLAudioBackend was vastly improved
Windows native builds: You can simply open the openc2e source folder in Visual Studio with CMake support to get a build (you’ll still need Qt installed, for now)
On Windows, running openc2e will give you a GUI to find your Creatures installation (thanks Shreddan!)
The Creatures 1 and Creatures 2 font format was successfully reverse-engineered, and the original font is now used for those games
Non-English language support was added, and openc2e will use your system default language if possible
Fixed the “My creatures walk through floors and in mid-air” physics bug (now available only through Secret Adventure Mode)
Fixed compound agent parts being displayed on the wrong plane
Set up automatic tests and builds with GitHub Actions
Added a praybuilder command-line tool that supports both Pray and CAOS2Pray source
Added a spritedumper command-line tool that exports SPR, S16, C16, BLK, and PHOTO as PNGs
Added an mngdumper tool
Added a cobdumper tool for C1 and C2 COBs
Included the generated CAOS syntax file, commandinfo.json, in builds for use by other tools
And various other small cleanups, tools, and fixes
