Geex - Edit, Play, Game - 2D Game for PC/Xbox

[M.Roys]

Thanks, I use the engine for my own game (The Fall of Gods), so it might be the first rmxp import you'll be able to play on the xbox
So far I have finished the Design using rmxp and Geex Make, and I am testing the whole game on the Geex Engine

PS: I am not it prove something, but for suspicious, here comes a little video (sorry my video capture doesn't record the sound on 7)
http://vimeo.com/13933887

It's a simple rmpx game, moved to Geex. With Geex Make (our rmxp scripts) you can apply an ondulation to fogs and panorama, but as you can use pixel shaders with XNA, we replaced this ondulation by a water effect pixel shader in Geex

 

[M.Roys]

7 steps to xbox game

1- Download and install RPG Maker XP
2- Download the Geex Make script and its documentation
3- Create your Game
4- Once almost finished, post your game at http://www.geexpowered.com
5- Your game datas are exported to Geex (today it's done by us, but the export tool will be shared)
6- Customisation eventually, if you want custom code (by us or you in your know c#, the engine is under testing but it'll be open-source)
7- We can publish it for you

Why do we share the information now, because we are very close to finishing and YOU can already start creating your game/project using rmxp+geex make
Should you have questions...

 

[M.Roys]

Here comes an example of a game made with rmxp + geex make, exported to geex using geex transpose, and run on pc or xbox using geex play

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Spoiler

From the Darkness shall rise the Light
From the Ligth shall rise the Darkness

By

(Made by RMXP + Geex Make and exported to Geex)

Programmation, scénarios, musiques : Roys
Tilesets et Mapping : Harusame
Chara-making Kimono

Aides diverses et tests
Benben (tileset), DJ Fab (musique), Kriss (chara), Mekel (Mapping), 2detens (intro), Rei Dunamis(police).

Introduction

(Xbox version) http://vimeo.com/14877173

The Fall of Gods is a 2D zelda-like action-rpg. If you like vast and varied world, where you can smash your enemies with different weapons, cast many different spells or potions, solve riddles, finish multiple side-quests, climb, push, swim etc then you will love this game
Scenario starts old-school-arpg however some nice surprises await you along your path to discovering the truth.

The World
Ergia is divided in 9 big zones full of surprises, hidden places, side quests, people to meet...and enemies

Arlan(High View)
That's the central map of the game

The Inside Sea (High View)
This is the North-east part under the North-sea

Alcime(High View)
The east part where stands the Ordanims' castle

Eternal Fall (High View)
The South-West part with its magical forest and its desert

Demo
Chapter one is ready but available only for Beta-testeur (-> MP me)

Xbox
This is the last rmxp version, the game is already under testing using our xbox engine (Geex) (More info at http://www.geexpowered.com)

 

[gRaViJa]

I'm really following the development of geex for a while? The idea of my project ever being able to be played on xbox is just cool. Apart from that, 'The Fall Of Gods' has some good mapping for sure.

Btw, if i ever release my project on xbox. Will the game be "full screen" or will it mantain it's 640x480 resolution?

 

[M.Roys]

Hi
You can check on our site, there's bunch of information and question you may need to think about prior to releasing on xbox: http://www.geexpowered.com/fr/phpbbforu ... ?f=25&t=22
(oups it's in french, I will translate)

basically, the game will be full screen on xbox, but you can choose another resolution, the GPU will make the adjustments anyway. I use 124*576
Also you can use Geex to deploy on PC, indeed the engine is really smoother and faster than rmxp, and more protected against script-kiddies who would decrypt your game.
Finally you should think of using geex make to ease the migration process. The engine is basically ready to received rmxp+geex make datas
Thanks for your support it's encouraging ^^

 

[gRaViJa]

I'm close to releasing a demo of my game, i might use Geex for the release

edit: i will surely use Geex to release my games if it is able to encrypt games which are over 120 mb. The rmxp encrypter fails if you're project is over 120mb and that sucks if you have an original OST and many original graphics =/

 

[M.Roys]

I am capable of encrypting a rmyp file over 120mo, this is no problem. But you can also use Zeriab encrypter (available in the forum)
That being said you have to bear in mind that Xbox live indie game do not accept game bigger than 150mo (compressed). For a PC release there's no limit

We recently migrate the Geex Engine from xna3.1 to xna4.0, therefore we have to wait
- for XNA connect4.0 to allow us to transfer files to xbox and start testing (to be released on the 16setp2010)
- and the new version of the marketplace, to publish the game on Xbox market place (to be released december 2010)
My suggestion was more about using Geex-Make (http://www.geexpowered.com/?q=node/31) as we'll be testing Geex Play on xbox by the 16sept until december.
We are targetting end of year to release everything !

 

[gRaViJa]

If i started a new project now i'll probaply use Geex to create it, but my current project is rather big and i found a good working method so it will be best for me to stay with rmxp for now. Still i'll use geex if i ever export my game to xbox, and maybe even for pc release as well.

Thanks for the zeriab encrypter tip by the way.

 

[M.Roys]

I think you get me wrong, Geex Make is actually a set of script for RMXP, including pixel movement and new event commands (more than 50)
We ensure any rmxp game made with Geex Make with fit 100% with Geex Play (the PC/Xbox engine)
However if you have custom script in your game, we'll have to recode it in c# (which is a quite simple process)

That's it ^^

 

[gRaViJa]

Oh, okay i get it now. i was mixing Geex and Geex Play i think. Well, i'll have a look at the scripts then. And i i understand it right, custom scripts need to be translated by hand now but you are working on a way to automate this?

 

[M.Roys]

Custom scripts need to be recoded in c#.However we use a dll (Gun Run) that is very similar to RGSS, so the re-coding is a piece of cake, indeed you can copy the ruby script and juste change it to c# syntax
Hope it answers

 

[M.Roys]

WE MADE IT

Here comes a picture of a RPG Maker XP game running on my TV



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Are you a believer now

 

[Jason]

Yes, yes I am, although it'd be nice to see it in fullscreen without the border, I guess that's just to do with the resolution though, right?

 

[M.Roys]

Yes, XNA recommends a 10% margin for your game to fit in all TV format.
Mine is a full HD so the border is clearly visible
But anyway the resolution is a mere option in the engine. You do have a strectch option as well that is managed by the xbox itself if needed. Especially for those who'd like to keep their 640*480 RMXP resolution

 

[M.Roys]

Geex Make news

Here comes a new release of Geex Make, it includes some maps acting as tutorials, some minor bug fixing and Geex Transpose.

Geex Transpose is the script that will turn your datas in Geex Format.
During Scene Title hit:
F10 to generate datas
F11 to generate chipsets
F9 to generate masks (if you use mask collision)

Of course, Transpose use if limited but as we'll be releasing Geex Play and source codes by Christmas, you could already play around with it

If you want to share some more tutorial-map to show what is duable with Geex Make please post them here

Geex Powered
Indies are the future of Gaming

 

[MysticTrunks]

Wow, finally. Wanted to try this out for years, basically GeeX makes RMXP with limitless possibilities?
If so that's pretty cool man.
I'm more of a Express Game Maker supported as it's basically like RPG Maker but well uses C#. I may have to try this one out to see if it lives up to it's potential.

One question.
Are you forcing 32X32 tiles within Geex? I mean what if one wanted to create a snes esque RPG? They may want to use a different tile size within Geex. But I understand the RMXP end though.

 

[M.Roys]

The tile size in a mere option in Geex Make, although I did not test how the autotile would work yet with bigger or smaller tiles.
Actually the need to finalize our Editor (Geex Edit) to make such a thing really working. Indeed as long as we use rmxp+geex make as editor it might be difficult for you to change the tile size

That being said, thanks for your support. As you mentionned the idea was to go beyond rmxp-ruby limits, with an open source c# engine that allows us to port onto xbox.
We use XNA4.0 so we have to wait for the market place to open to 4.0 project, which should be in the next 3months. Perfect time to finalize all the test...and optimisation...indeed the xbox has only 512mo RAM, so we had to change the rmxp structure. I saw the limit of the xbox with a 160*120 map that had 250 events and a 256*8192 tileset.

In RMXP each event uses an Interpreter, which is a massive object, althoug event interpretation is sequential. So we had to change that logic. I guess it was one of the reason why rmxp was gettin gso slow with loads of event. There's lots of little structure changes in rmxp that could badly improve the RAM performance, if you think of anything else, let me know

 

[M.Roys]

Geex Play news

Hello there

I proudly announce that we passed the performance Test on XNA. I used:
- 160*120 map with 32*32 pixel tiles and 3 layers
- The tilemap takes tiles priority into consideration (depth between sprite and tile)
- 1280*720 résolution
- A big chipset (256*8192)
- long mp3 music, sound effet
- A fog on top of the map and a panorama behind the map
- A weather effect
- And more than 250 events

We used to have performance issues with such game config, mainly because of Xbox260 512MB memory but it's now fixed. I 've just test the game on my xbox and it runs really smoothly.

Just a small picture of the map:

Spoiler

We keep going implementing event commands (to make the xbox version compatible with Geex Make commands) and we should be really for Chirstmas with the release of market place 4.0
And I reckon sooner for a tech demo on your PC

Be advice the site and forum is open, don't hesitate to register and use our avatar to support our effort and spread the word, we'll thankful

Talk to you soon

 

[Xilef]

So what this does is take RMXP/RMVX resources and throws them into your engine that mimics the default RPG Maker engines, we'll need to rewrite scripts for it as what is ported is event scripts, maps, graphics and sounds?

 

[M.Roys]

Yes, we import all datas expect custom script. However we already translated a set of scripts in from ruby to c# (the so called Geex make ruby commands)
Anyway the custom script translation process is ease thanks to Geex Run. It's a library with the same module name and class as the RGSS.
So a sprite = Sprite.new(viewport1) would become in c# with Geex.Run dll : sprite = new Sprite(viewport1)

And so on....
As an example, it took me 10 minutes to translate my ruby custom message window script

That being said, I sure the community will provide users with a lot of even-better-than-rmxp scripts. Indeed the code is more open, you can use pixel shader and the performance of the engine (5 times faster than rmxp with a 4 times bigger resolution)