Xenko Game Engine, previously known as Paradox 3D, just released version 1.9 and frankly it’s a rather impressive update. We reviewed the Xenko game engine in the Closer Look series, including a brief tutorial series should you wish to learn more. Xenko is a (currently) free, C# powered full featured cross platform game engine with a comprehensive editor. This release brings dozens of minor improvements as well as a handful of rather major ones including an integrated code editor, a switch to standard .NET projects instead of the somewhat awkward PCL format, vastly improved copy and paste, new starter templates ( FPS, TPS and Top Down RPG ) and a new NavMesh system.
From the changelog:
- From now on, new projects are created as .NET Standard projects rather than PCL projects.
NuGet restore
is automatically run on projects having aproject.json
file- Bumped FBX SDK to 2017.0.1
- Mesh importing now supports ByEdge smoothing which was previously ignored. If you notice any difference with vertex normals for your models please check your FBX export settings.
- Prerequisites installer will ask for UAC once instead of many times, and perform a silent installation for all of the prerequisites.
Game Studio
- Previously, when an
EntityComponent
(i.e. script) couldn’t be loaded because game or plugin assembly didn’t compile properly, we kept a Yaml representation of it so that it could be saved or reloaded after a code fix. Now we allow it to happen anywhere, so that you can use and/or implement custom classes for any type of the engine in your game/plugin.- Improve asset logs and errors to properly display failure/warning icon on all assets, including the one with icon-style thumbnails.
- Improve loading/refreshing of assets in the scene editor.
- Asset editors will display a * in the tab name when an asset is dirty.
- Add editor for C# source code.
- C# files and .csproj files are automatically reloaded as they are modified on hard drive (using a Yes, Yes to All, No, No to All dialog).
- C# files have their own undo/redo stack
- Add a Save All button that saves both assets and source code files.
- The Game Studio now uses AvalonDock as docking system
- Improve DPI support (#454 and #470)
Assets
- Asset YAML serialization has been changed to handle overrides in collection in a better way. More scenario of overrides are now supported.
SharpYaml
has been integrated into our codebase asSiliconStudio.Core.Yaml
. Most of the duplicated types have been merged back in theSiliconStudio.Core.Reflection
.- Assets don’t use a ~Base section nor a ~BasePart.
- Change
Asset.Id
to be of anAssetId
type rather thanGuid
, to avoid invalid comparisons with other kind of ids.- Remove the
Properties
member of Package.- Introduce a new assembly Assets.Quantum
- Overrides of properties is now handled using Quantum instead of
ShadowObject
.- Remove the asset diff/merge classes.
Engine
- DataSerializers are now generated in a file with .pdb information, so that the user can debug them.
- Add Local offsets to procedural models.
EntityComponent
now implementsIIdentifiable
and has anId
property.Audio
- Add
SetRange
support toAudioEmitterSoundController
- Improve compilation speed of audio files
Materials
- Normal maps now have the option to
Invert Y
, supporting both textures where the green component is facing up or downParticles
- Minor optimizations around vertex buffer building
- Add StopEmitters() method to the particle system, which prevents new particles from spawning without pausing the entire system
Physics
- Add Cone collider shape.
- Replace float with
AngleSingle
forMaxSlope
of character controllers.
For more detailed information as well as a list of fixes in this release be sure to check out the complete announcement post.