The Gluon Vision
From GluonLogo
Contents |
[edit] The Vision
The Gluon project is an open framework for creating and distributing games - supporting the flow of the idea all the way from the author to the player of the finished game. The primary use of Gluon is to create games using 2D graphics. The reasoning behind this is that the niche for this type of visual is very large and so far untapped by specialised tools. In the world of 3D games there are solutions such as Unity3D, which provide a distribution system, but in the 2D game development world there are no tools to provide a complete eco system for both the creation, distribution and feedback gathering.
[edit] The Target Audience
The three main audiences of Gluon are game creators, game players and application programmers. Each of these are a user of one of the tools. The application programmers are a side-effect of the openness of the framework, but one which is no less important for that: A vibrant open source community is created from openness, not restrictions.
[edit] The Tools
To achieve the goals of the vision, a number of tools are devised to support each part of the distribution flow. Specifically Gluon Creator, Gluon Player and the underlying libraries.
[edit] Gluon Creator
Gluon Creator is the tool used by the game authors to bring their visions to life. It is a one-stop tool which allows the creative minds of the team to work together on their project, and allows them to finally publish it to anywhere the Gluon Player runs. It leverages the following technologies to achieve its goal:
KDE is a cross platform application development framework which allows Gluon Creator to run across several desktop platforms with little effort, while allowing the application to blend in with the native environment.
KDevPlatform is a framework designed to create integrated development environments, allowing Gluon Creator to handle projects in a sane manner and provide powerful code completion for the game programmers. Gluon Creator is, after all, created for all the creative parts of a game creation team, and this includes the programmers.
Open Collaboration Services (of which OpenDesktop.org is one implementation) is a set of technologies which allows for publishing and getting new items of information - including components, comments on the game, and many others.
[edit] Gluon Player
The Player is the application used by the players of games to both play the games, but also communicate with each other and share information about the games. It is a way for them to enjoy Gluon based games, and to share their enjoyment with their peers.
Most important is, however, that Gluon Player is available in a number of flavours. While Gluon Creator is a desktop application, designed to be used on platforms designed to be used for content creation, the Gluon Player will run both on desktop platforms, as well as a number of content consumption platforms. In the infographic above is shown a number of icons around the Gluon Player icon: Windows, Linux (KDE, GNOME, XFCE and more), MacOS X, Maemo and more. In other words, Gluon Player will look native on all these platforms, and while it will support the same use cases, the way these use cases are reached is different between the platforms, due to their different form factors:
Mobile platforms such as the Symbian S60 based mobile phones with OpenGL ES support. These are essentially the lowest possible target for Gluon based games. They have very low screen resolution, and have only a simply digital joystick for navigation, and a few keys for extra input. The client for this class of devices is based on Qt only, and components requiring KDE can be added conditionally.
Tablet platforms such as the Maemo platform used on Nokia's N900 device, and other devices such as AlwaysInnovating's Touchbook. They often have a touch screen, and often no hardware keyboard or keypad. The client for this class of devices is based on Qt only, but components requiring KDE may be shipped with the client, but can also be added conditionally.
Desktop and netbook platforms are together here, and mark the highest level of targets for Gluon based games. These have full OpenGL support, and any number of inputs. This class of devices often have much more space available for applications, and KDE is thus available for development of the client itself.
The reason KDE is only used for the desktop client is simple: KDE is not yet universally available on all Qt platforms. Once that is the case, the KDE dependency can be introduced on the two other platform classes.
[edit] The Libraries
In the vision is stated that Gluon is an open framework. Because of this, it is important to note that while the main method of creating games using Gluon is to use Gluon Creator, it may not be the best solution for everybody. As such - any library created for Gluon is of course also free and usable by anyone directly through normal C++ code. KGL, KCL and KAL are all available as separate libraries without being bound directly to Gluon itself or even each other.
| GluonGraphics is an abstraction layer for OpenGL, allowing for easy management of 2D items in an OpenGL viewport, amongst other things abstracting away the need for the user of the library to know whether they are using OpenGL or OpenGL ES. |
| GluonInput abstracts away the tedious management of input on the many different platforms that Qt runs on. While Qt's own input system is sufficient for most traditional desktop applications, it is not precise or featureful enough for game development. KCL bridges this gap. |
| GluonAudio wraps the cross platform OpenAL libraries in a pleasant, Qt-like API, which also abstracts away the problem of loading sounds in various formats, something OpenAL does not supply a way of doing itself. |
