Welcome everyone, let me introduce you to Zen (=
Zen is a feature-rich, cross-platform, open-source, entertainment platform, providing developers with full-featured developer tools for creating game and applications, and giving those creations a home on a distribution network to be downloaded or sold.
Zen loves the opensource community and strives to be a big player in this community, we hope developers will come and join in on creating Zen (=.
So enough with the introductions, and let me explain a bit more about Zen, Zen is currently at its beginning stages of development, we at Dark Edge Studios are working tirelessly to get more done on it, but 100% see the need to make this project open-source, with a community of developers standing behind Zen it will be up and running in no time,
Zen was designed based off of many open-source project like BGFX, SFML, GLFW, Urho3D, Godot, Unreal Engine, Chromium, Gecko and many more, our current structure is designed as follows:
-
Source
- Browser
- Engine
- Runtime
So many people right now are probably wondering why Zen has a Browser, well to put it simply our project is based a lot upon web technologies, we see the potential in using web based technologies for games and plan to harness that potential for Zen, but don't worry this doesn't mean Zen will only be able to use Web technologies like ECMAscript, and other scripting languages to work, we are working on implementing multiple languages into our browser such as chai script, lua script, etc.
We are also working on an extension system to allow native code such as c / c++, c# in place of scripting languages, though this would require the client to download the extension it will still be minimalistic in terms of how much needs to be downloaded, so you may be wondering how would you make a large game download minimalistic.Well put simply we your assets e.g. ( textures, music, etc. ) aren't downloaded / streamed until they are needed for the game, unless the client selects offline mode, which will download all assets, this will allow clients to choose which games they wish to take with them offline rather than wasting space on games they barely play,
So you may be thinking well that's nice and all but what about the bandwidth usage, not everyone has unlimited internet access, so once again the client will need to select a maximum download limit, if Zen detects its too low to download / stream the assets needed, Zen will just opt to download the assets instead of streaming, this way we don't waste the client's internet access on just one game.
The Engine is of course our Game engine, this is our fully featured games engine that will have the safe capabilities as most other large open-source games engines such as Unreal Engine, Godot, Urho3D, etc, This Engine along with the Browser both build upon the Zen Runtime Which we will talk about now (=
the Zen Runtime, This is the Backbone of Zen, the Base of the entire project, The Runtime is just that a Runtime, it gives you access to Utilities, Windowing capabilities for multiple operating systems, Networking capabilities, Graphics components along with a multiple backend renderer based off of BGFX, supporting all Rendering backends BGFX supports, and more.
So what about the Distribution Network and Developer Tools?
Clients will access their games in the Zen Browser, This is just like Steam in the sense you must open your browser and select which game you wish to play, however the Zen browser is also where developers access developer tools and their WYSIWYG game engine / editor, The Zen Browser is a one stop shop for everything game and applications related, and if the feature you want isn't there yet make an extension or request a feature we are always happy to expand for new features that will benefit the Zen community, also don't worry the same distribution network used to distribute games and apps, will have built in support to automatically download and install new extensions, much like chrome extensions.
Interested in joining contact us!!!!
If you are interested in joining Dark Edge Studios or just want to help on Zen let us now the more the merrier, we are always looking for capable developers, artist, and musicians to help in on developing Zen, thanks for your interest.
please contact either our email or PM us on Gamedev.net:
- Email - contact@darkedgesoftwares.com
Check us out on Github and our WebSite (=
- Github - https://github.com/DarkEdgeStudios/Zen
- Website - http://darkedgesoftwares.com/
That's it for now thanks for you time, for additional licensing information for Zen, the Zen EULA is posted in as an attachment, please refer to it for legal information about the use of Zen, or contact us for further inquires.
