Novashell Game Creation System

License: BSD style attribution, see LICENSE.md

What is Novashell?

It's an open source multi-platform 2D game engine that was first released in 2006 and discontinued in 2009. It is not in active development and uploaded for archival & historical reasons.

• Built in editor with multiple undo, photoshop style hotkeys
• Lua scripting, scripts assigned to entities have their own local namespace
• Hierarchal goal based AI and pathfinding (including pathfinding across warps and maps)
• 2d physics (Using Box2D)
• Comes with playable demos
• Fully persistent live modifiable maps with save anywhere
• Can export maps as .xml to use with Ogmo/etc
• Full feature list here

Download

Novashell V0.85 (Windows, 23 MB)

Known problems/issues

• At very large resolutions (3440x1440+) positioned sound effects can't be heard

What's changed as of April 4th, 2023

I cleaned up the source, updated a few things (zlib, libpng) and got it running nicely in VS2022 because throwing it on github in a broken state would just be lame.

I don't actually recommend using it, but pretty cool for the time and I'm sad I never ended up using it for the big RPG I was dreaming of.

In 2009 I started working on Proton SDK, a newer engine optimized for mobile devices to make iPhone games and left this by the wayside after only using it in a couple gamejams. I learned a lot from making this engine, especially that I hate lua.

I didn't clean up the Mac/Linux builds so assume they are totally broken.

Don't be like me and waste years working on something you never use. On the other hand, be like me and learn a ton about making engines by wasting time, it came in very handy later. -Seth

• Novashell website
• Novashell tutorials
• Novashell scripting reference

Building from source

• Requires Visual Studio 2022+ (free "community" version is fine)

• Open Novashell.sln, build solution. That's it. All dependencies including Clanlib V1 are included in the project and setup for editing/debugging.

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Credits and links

Novashell created by Seth A. Robinson (seth@rtsoft.com) twitter: @rtsoft - blog: Codedojo

• Particle system based on source by Wong Chin Foo (LinearParticle)
• Box2D physics by Erin Catto (www.box2d.org)
• Pixel art used in the Top View RPG example created by Daniel Cook (www.lostgarden.com)
• Clanlib V1.0 by Magnus Norddahl, Mark Page, Kenneth Gangstoe and more

Additional Art:

• Akiko Robinson
• Erin McCLellan

Music: Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com) Licensed under Creative Commons "Attribution 3.0" http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0/

gulp.ogg (with Seth's EQ change): by Oto No Happa http://www.geocities.jp/spacheeg/ (dead link.. try here instead is the new one?)