Orb is an indie 2D game engine made by Chalice Games. Orb is fast, lightweight, and uses many open standards. Orb makes it possible to make a lot of different types of 2D games, from RPGs to platformers, shoot em’ ups to puzzle games. Orb comes with its own level editor to help you build your games even faster.
Orb has absurdly complete documentation, a great set of tutorials and code samples to get you started. Getting help with Orb is very easy, either through the wiki or the community forums.
One of Orb’s best features is its price: free (as in beer!) You also have full ownership of any games you make with it.
OrbEdit
OrbEdit is the level editor for the Orb Game Engine. OrbEdit makes it easy to build levels for your game and write scripts for all your game objects. If you’re familiar with other Windows development environments, you should feel very much at home with OrbEdit.
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Lua Scripting System
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Orb boasts a fast and powerful Lua scripting system. Lua is lightweight, easy to write, and is widely used throughout the industry. Every object in Orb is fully scriptable, through more than 350 API functions in dozens of fully extensible classes.
Orb’s scripting system features an intuitive system of events and callbacks and powerful threading capabilities. Scripting is an essential and rewarding task within Orb. |
Box2D Physics
| Orb uses Box2D for its physics engine. Box2D is a 2D rigid body simulation library made specifically for games. Box2D has a lot of great features such as continuous collision detection, stable stacking, and a robust constraint system.
Orb’s physics system provides you with an intuitive way to add complex animations and player interactions to your game. |
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OpenGL Graphics
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Orb relies on OpenGL for its graphics. OpenGL is the industry-standard graphics library and is available on nearly every platform. It is incredibly reliable and efficient, and allows Orb to support thousands of sprites on-screen at one time.
Orb offers full support for pixel shaders, written in GLSL which allow you to create some great special effects. |
FMOD Sound System
| Orb uses the FMOD sound library for playing sound effects and music. FMOD supports a wide variety of sound formats, including .midi, .wav, .ogg, and .mp3. Any sound can be streamed for immediate playback or cached for repeat playback.
Orb offers full support for FMOD’s DSP system, allowing you to dynamically alter any sound with special effects such as distortion or echo. |
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TrueType Font Support
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Orb uses a version of the FreeType font library for rendering text. Orb supports all TrueType fonts (.ttf format), which can be scaled, rotated, and colored as you choose. Like all Orb objects, fonts are fully scriptable.
Orb features an embeddable markup language for changing the justification, color, or size of your text inline. |
Documentation
| Orb has an abundance of helpful documentation, including HTML help files, a great wiki, active community forums, and a set of tutorials to get you started.
Orb’s API reference is integrated right into OrbEdit’s script editor, making it easy to look up function documentation as you type. OrbEdit can also be configured to automatically integrate the documentation for your own functions. |
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Requirements
Orb’s software and hardware requirements are as follows:
Software Requirements:
- Microsoft Windows XP or Windows Vista
- Microsoft .NET Framework 2.0
Minimum Hardware Requirements:
- Pentium 4 1.8GHz+ or AMD 2200xp+
- 512 MB RAM
- 200 MB of free disk space
- OpenGL-compatible video card with 32 MB of VRAM or greater
Recommended Hardware Requirements:
- Pentium 4 3.2GHz+ or AMD 3200xp+
- 1024 MB RAM
- 500 MB of free disk space
- OpenGL-compatible video card with 128 MB of VRAM or greater