Info

Project 'Boxen’ is aiming to be a multi-player first person shooter game involving human characters and vehicles, similar to games of the Battlefield series.

The game’s engine is written from scratch in the D programming language. Naturally not all of its wheels are re-invented. Boxen utilizes the Havok library for physics, FMOD for sound, OpenGL 3.2 and CgFX for graphics and enet for a reliable UDP layer. The networking component is based on an authority scheme enabling rich vehicle and kinetic controller dynamics.

The artistic side is covered by my brother, Marcin Stachowiak, who makes awesome low-poly meshes. A gallery of preliminary models can be viewed here.

Progress

A simple prototype of networked physics and basic gameplay has been successfully constructed and tested with 7 players scattered around the world. The prototype was based on the PhysX engine and a very experimental rendering system. I’m currently working on a new renderer, which is also the main topic of my MSc thesis. In parallel, I’m replacing the PhysX-based simulation with Havok which has proven to be much more user friendly so far.