BLITZMAX FRAMEWORK

Create your own professional quality 2D games with the IGNITION framework for BlitzMax. Instead of wasting time on the technical side you can focus more on the productive side of creating games.

Powerful, easy to understand and flexible.

To use it you need a PC running Windows XP / Windows Vista / Windows 7 with a DirectX 9 capable 3D graphics card or an Intel / PowerPC Mac running OSX with an OpenGL capable 3D graphics card (Linux is not yet supported!), full version of the latest BlitzMax compiler and a reasonable level of Object Oriented Programming experience.

If you don't know or don't have BlitzMax you can download a 30 days trial for Windows or MacOS here.

Some of the frameworks features are

• Common code library
• Support for OS specific files & folders (e.g. for loading and saving application data)
• Support for handling configuration (.ini) files
• Support for handling highscores
• Support for player profiling
• Tile system + editor
• Sound effects library
• Support for protecting your media (eg graphics, sound) by encoding and / or compressing it
• Core files can be used as include or module 

The Engine mode is a powerfull 2D display system:

• Core components are playfields, layers, layer objects and gui objects to create screens
• Objects attached are updated and rendered automatically
• Automatic fixed rate logic, delta time and tweening for all engine objects
• Jump from one screen to another by using the engine flow system
• Virtual resolution support
• Zoom in/out, rotate or fade in/out the whole screen
• GUI system
• Horizontal and vertical splitscreen support
• Special effects generator for creating explosions and smoke
• Sprite to sprite, sprite to tile collision detection methods
• Sprite animation
• Layer and sprite depth sorting
• Change the view by moving playfield cameras
• General purpose screen mode selector
• General purpose game menu interface

Ignition comes with source code examples, documentation and a fun 2 player demo game called Gravity Zone.

Have a look at our game Defenstar. It's powered by Ignition!

The screen mode selector (General purpose) - Background can be changed / sliders can be turned ON or OFF depending on your needs.

Game menu (General purpose) - Game options menu. Creating a game is one thing, building the interface around it / presentation is another. This can save you a lot of work.

Gravity Zone - Small demo game to show of the split screen and zooming support.

Media Protector
Ignition supports a way to protect media files by encrypting them. It's a good alternative for using BlitzMax incbin that works fine, but makes your executables larger.

For encrypting / decrypting individual files you can use the frameworks functions iEncodeFile () / iDecodeFile ().

However, encrypting individual files can be a daunting task if you have a lot of them. To make this more easy you can use the Media Protector tool.

Basically it's choosing an encryption key, a source directory (the files to encrypt), an output directory (where the encrypted files go), push 'ENCRYPT TO OUTPUT' button and let Media Protector do all the work. Files already encrypted by Media Protector will be ignored.

Files encrypted with Media Protector can be loaded with the frameworks iDecoder_LoadAnimImage (), iDecoder_LoadAudioSample (), iDecoder_LoadImage (), iDecoder_LoadImageFont (), iDecoder_LoadPixmap (), iDecoder_LoadSound () funtions in the same way as the corresponding BlitzMax functions. The framework automatically recognizes if a file is encrypted or not.

Media Protector currently supports the following Files : PNG, BMP, JPG, OGG, WAV, TTF

BUT BE CAREFUL! Using Media Protector can result in loss of data if you lose your encryption key so ALWAYS keep a backup of your source files. SO USE AT OWN RISK!

Download Media Protector for Windows