http://code.google.com/p/sole-scion/

STATUS: Unfinished. On hold. Only of interest to the geekiest of my enthusiastic programmer friends.

The vision of Sole Scion is to be a slow-paced but real-time 2D vector graphic RPG, styled somewhat on Nethack, but with smoothly moving and rotating vector shapes. I hope to supplement the limited amount of content I can produce with some emergent behaviours based on the shape of objects and a rigid-body physics system. (eg. imagine the player stacking boulders to block a corridor before the monsters arrive.)

Currently complete are:

• SVG objects loaded
• conversion of SVG into vertex arrays for OpenGL rendering
• conversion of SVG into shapes for the Chipmunk rigid-body engine
• A basic random procedural level generation
• The player can zoom a small shape around within the level
• Camera pans around to follow the player, (with added subtle zooming and rolling for comedy vertiginous disorientation.)
• Player can push and shove a bunch of randomly generated objects in the level, derived from loaded SVG, and they tumble and roll around in appropriate response.

I am pleased with the work to date, but progress has been very slow. I plan to postpone completion of this for the time being, and work on a few very small, less ambitious games, before hopefully returning to this vision when I have a little more experience.

Screenshots

More screenshots are here.

To Play

Windows: Download the latest Windows binaries from the downloads page. Run SoleScion.bat

Linux, Mac, PyPy: A simple way to download and play does not yet exist. The complicated way is:

• Install Python v2.5 or v2.6.
• Install Python packages: pyglet, Pymunk, Shapely.
• Install the C library GEOS.
• Download the source distribution.
• Run bin\run.sh

To examine or modify the source code

See the Subversion repository. You will need to install the above dependencies.

Known Problems

• There isn't a game there yet. It's still very early days. Lower your expectations.
• See the issues page.

Thanks

Many thanks to the creators of the following excellent libraries, without which this project could not exist.

• Pymunk, Excellent Python bindings to the magnificent Chipmunk physics library, which provides 2D rigid body dynamics.
• pyglet game library, providing fantastic facilities for creating windows, OpenGL graphics, keyboard and mouse input, sound, etc.
• Shapely, superb Python wrapper of GEOS (Geometry Engine Open Souce), which provides 2D geometry operations.
• Many thanks to Martin O'Leary of http://supereffective.org, whose Squirtle module inspired the SVG data loading for this project, and in particular his sublime tessellation code, which I have copied wholesale under the terms of the BSD.

Contact

Jonathan Hartley, tartley at tartley dot com, http://tartley.com, @tartley