February 1, 2009
The PushButton Engine is built on two pillars - its component system and its serialization library. The first is what makes it possible to build and share pieces of functionality. The second is what makes it easy to combine them.
Create your components, then use the engine’s simple XML level format to combine them into game objects - and the objects into a whole world.
You can learn more about the component system in the Component Systems section of the manual, and about the level format in the XML section.
Visit the PushButton Engine component store to obtain components for use in your products!
February 1, 2009
PushButton Engine is absolutely free. Modify, release, rewrite whatever you need to get your game shipped. The whole thing is available under the liberal MIT license.
We believe that basic engine functionality is a commodity. You don’t pay for your logging system or your memory manager or your file formats. Why should you pay for your game engine?
Spend your money on what matters for your game. Make it worthwhile for someone to write a great particle system, or a physics editor, or awesome AI. That’s what the PushButton Engine and the component store is all about.
February 1, 2009
You’re writing your game and you need a networking solution. Or some AI libraries. Or a different graphics effect. You could write it yourself, or you could visit the component store and spend five or ten bucks and get something that works right away.
Or maybe you’ll find something for free. There are a ton of great libraries out there for Flash - PaperVision3D, Away3D, Five3D, Sandy3D, Motor, Box2D, Flint, and more. We already have integrations for some; more are coming.
Our component store is open to everyone. Sign up, then package and sell your components. Make a starter kit to help people make their favorite genre of game. Upload game-ready art and see an immediate return on your time.
Don’t just take our word for it. Rate and review components, and rely on the wisdom of the mob to find the very best.
Visit the PushButton Engine component store.
February 1, 2009
Flash is built to run over the net, and the best thing about the net is how easy it is to interact with others. But the problem you’ll run into is that games require lots of small updates to run well. HTTP is bad at this, and XML over TCP, like most Flash networking solutions, is only a small step up.
Our networking library is built on the same efficient techniques used in high-end C++ game engines like Torque, Crytek, and Unreal. Every bit is precious, and the result is that our networking can cram an order of magnitude more updates into the same bandwidth. Instead of hundred of bytes of XML for every update, the PushButton Networking component can update an object’s state in less than 4 bytes.
Even if you roll your own TCP socket protocol, that’s about what you pay for a single integer.
Because updates are so small, we can fit more of them in less bandwidth. More updates faster reduces latency. Less latency gives a better player experience.
We also provide a server-side player, so that you can run your game’s ActionScript 3 code unmodified on the server instead of having to port it to Java, C# or C++. For an action game, this reduces your development time tremendously.
The PushButton networking component is currently available through the PushButton Engine component store.