 | AboutKernel Panic is a network engine for rendering 3D/2D graphics and playing sound. Try to imagine that using one client program you can browse many different game servers. It's like unified web-interface. With web browser you can enter any site: there's no need to download special program for each new site. The difference is content (3D/2D graphics, video and sound) and the way to render it (it's real-time). The project is aimed to implement all existing gaming genres and even add some more specific. Technically client side is a virtual machine that can render 3D/2D graphics and sound through bindings to well known technics. OGRE (Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine) is used as graphics rendering engine. See OGRE's homepage: http://www.ogre3d.org/. It also takes input from keyboard, mouse, joystick, etc. and sends to server (possibly after some processing). There are 2 ways to control the virtual machine: directly and through Lua-script environment. Lua is declared as one which can't mess up the system, which means, it's safe. So with carefull implementation of client program is also safe. Lua environment can also communicate to server in both directions. This trick can make network traffic almost like in specialized games like StarCraft, Quake3 or else (traffic may be just like in specified games + headers for chunk system). We simply define our own network protocol for each connection. Of course it can be dynamically modified during session. See concept for detailed description. Right now primary target is game engine. But it can also be utilized for education, science, social networking and lots of other things. First of all, it's open. Technologies of that level can't grow fast without openness. HTTP is very good example. Client program is licensed under GNU GPL and server engine is under GNU Lesser GPL. Second: it isn't bound to certain game model. And still physics and rest can be computed on client side because of Lua environment. It's even possible and easy to write an offline game. Well, I hope such techincs is future of game industry and especially RPG. |
