Solaris Machinae Engine Goes Open Source

After quite a long break, I've decided to resume work on the Solaris Machinae Engine. Basically, there are a number of features that I want to add to the engine to make it more versatile and easy to use. I've also made the engine open source, so I can share the code much easier, and take advantage of project tools, such as google code.

Project link: http://code.google.com/p/solarismachinaeengine/

1. Adapt a component based architecture
By adding components, it will be easier to customize objects, and edit them. These components can provide a much simpler wrapper around the graphics and physics engines.

2. Allow the loading of maps and files from xml, not lua scripts

XML is a much more versatile format for defining objects, and fits in well with the component based architecture. It will also make it easier to "derive" objects, and basically only modify certain attributes about it.

3. Start to "de-nativize" code

I'm not sure what the actual term is, but I basically want to start moving most of the code for loading maps and objects into lua. This will allow for easier customization and faster development, seeing as everything doesn't need to be compiled as often.

4. Add audio

The engine, currently, has no audio module, which is pretty stupid, seeing as that's pretty important.

5. Add features to the map editor
In it's current state, the map editor can only be used to create extremely basic maps such as the one in the tech demo. There are a number of areas of improvement, such as a better GUI, a tile editor, object specific editing, etc.