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OverviewThe Nautilus Engine is a radical new approach to traditional game development. Nautilus handles all of the grunt work in creating a game, allowing the developers to concentrate on design. Powerful editors are provided for everything from map design to character animation. Simpler games can be created without any programming at all. In a competitive marketplace, Nautilus will be the tool of choice for serious game developers.Nautilus is currently in a pre-alpha state. We plan to have an alpha ready for public testing eventually. A freeware version will be available for hobbyists. Bug-Free DesignNautilus provides an ideal development environment, with modifications allowed both at design-time and run-time. A consistent code style that is prioritized for simplicity makes code navigation and comprehension fast and easy. Debugging assistance is extensive without being intrusive. Detailed reports and logging help to quickly locate and identify problem code.Run-time non-fatal warnings help to locate less obvious problems, and can be globally disabled for public builds. Debugging menus and information can also be overlaid in an internal panel while running. The Power of SimplicityNautilus uses a simple modular design that is very easily understood, so its powerful features can be used to their full potential, and unneeded features can be ignored. Many developers dread the thought of having to make sense of obfuscated new OS API's, especially in today's overly complicated, illogical, bloated, and bug-ridden operating systems!Nautilus is designed with the actual goal of being simple and enjoyable to work with, while remaining immensely powerful. The target OS is no longer a concern - Nautilus provides intuitive generic interfaces to the sloppy OS API's. Nautilus shields programmers from ever having to deal with the operating system. Expand Our HorizonsNautilus is designed to be completely customizable. Most of our routines can be overriden without interfering with related functionality. "Plug-ins" using class derivatives can cleanly replace entire libraries without any other modifications. You can add your own file importers and exporters, graphics routines, AI algorithms, input devices, output devices, and almost anything else you can imagine. You can even choose between custom libraries at run-time.Portability to supported platforms is completely automatic. Nautilus makes supporting a new platform relatively painless, requiring only the bare minimum of custom code to support a few base interface classes. From Ideas to RealityWhen you start a project with Nautilus, you can begin creating immediately. Your tools are already provided, and the capabilities and limitations of the game engine are known. You can see your ideas take shape immediately instead of having to design every last detail ahead of time - making it easy to perform adjustments when things don't work out as planned!The Nautilus World Manager includes several graphical tools for editing every aspect of game design, like the map, creature, and animation editor. More importantly, these powerful tools are built in to your game. With Nautilus, you design your game from the inside. Fine TuningPress a key at any point within a Nautilus game, and you can instantly edit anything on the screen. You can redesign and see the changes take place instantly and on a huge scale, without needing programming changes. You can modify maps using block copy and paste, move cameras within your world, set up menus, change sound effects, music, world physics, tiles, creatures, abilities, animations, A.I. behavior, and your own custom settings - all while your game is running.The speed and power of game design with Nautilus lets you stay true to your creative vision. Features SummaryGeneral
Design Tools
Resource Management
Video System
Audio System
Networking
Included Plug-Ins (so far)
Making MilestonesWe've all heard the nightmarish stories about VaporWare, games that spend years in development only to be cancelled. Other well intentioned games take years longer than expected, costing many times the initial estimates, only to bomb when they are finally released. Nautilus gives your development team a running start, and reduces the risk in financing a game by greatly speeding up the development process.A single game can take over 20,000 man-hours to create. Depending on the game, Nautilus can reduce that time by as much as 80%. Milestones are easier to set because the capabilities of Nautilus are known from the beginning of the project, and easier to meet because Nautilus greatly reduces unexpected problems and bugs. Unlimited PlatformsOne of our goals is true portability, so a game can be designed once and built on any platform, like Windows, Linux, iMac, and the Sony Playstation - with no code changes. Games aren't limited to the platforms that Nautilus supports - adding support for a new platform is relatively easy. Most of the work is done inside Nautilus, so the only requirements are a few interfaces to the new OS.With Nautilus, not only is your product out faster, it's out on several different platforms without any extra development time. Net ProfitsThe most important aspect of a game to potential buyers is fun gameplay. Many games today are released too soon, because their development cost has risen too high or the developers are burned out from a long development process. This results in hundreds of games every year that have stunning graphics, low innovation, and poor gameplay. Nautilus lets developers put fun gameplay and innovation first, without sacrificing graphics quality. Nautilus speeds development so projects can be financed for a fraction of the standard cost, and adds features to your project that may have been impractical to create in a normal development time frame.Nautilus delivers better sales, low development costs, and a shorter development cycle. The only question that remains is how to keep your competition from finding out about Nautilus! |