Overview

The gameplay framework is an open-source, cross-platform gaming framework that is designed to make it easy to learn to write 3-D mobile and desktop games using native C++. In this guide, we cover a top-down approach to teaching you the gameplay library, tools, and all the major parts of the APIs that are included in the framework. This guide covers a set of the C++ classes that you can use to write your games.

Design goals and considerations

In creating the gameplay framework, the goal was not only to focus on creating a high performance native C++ game framework, but also on a clean, simple, and elegant architecture. The framework uses a minimal set of cross-platform external dependencies and tries to take a minimalist approach to designing the classes. This approach allows you to learn from the classes in the library and extend the framework to build your own game engine or tools. The framework is a good starting block for learning how to write 3-D cross-platform mobile and desktop games, allowing you to spend more time designing your game.

Why write another game engine?

We actually hope it will be considered more of a gaming framework; however, in essence, it is really still just the core components of a game engine. There are several reasons why the gameplay framework was developed.

First, most modern 3-D game engines, while sometimes free or cheap, are closed source. Additionally, they usually have licensing fees. The gameplay framework is free, open-source software under the Apache 2.0 license. We want more people to learn about the fact that cross-platform is a reality and building a good base lets you move forward to writing game titles.

Secondly, a game engine is not only about rendering. Yes, it’s a huge part, but equally important are other aspects of game engines, such as audio, physics, animation, UI forms, particle emitters, scripting, and math. Searching on the web and trying to find information on how to fit these things into your game engine, or games, will likely scatter you across many different places, with the chance of gaps in your learning. This framework will hopefully bring it all together for you.

Lastly, mobile is hot! The gameplay framework will have a lot of emphasis on gaming on mobile devices. Today, mobile gaming is the largest growing sector of the game industry. Additionally, we still provide support for desktop platforms for both tooling and gaming. However, we think more focus should be on mobile gaming and learning how to write games that can easily target the cross-platform mobile sector.