Orx SDK

Orx SDK is a 2D game engine. It is open source and plugin-based. Very easy to use and to understand and very lightweight. It can run in both Windows and Mac computers as well as Linux and can develop games for iPhone, Android, Linux, Windows and OS X. Orx is focused in 2D games although all the objects in Orx are placed in a 3D space. This makes Orx very suitable to develop games in a 2.5D environment, which is mostly used nowadays in mobiles games.

Features

Orx is a full SDK oriented to 2D games or most specifically to 2.5D games. It allows you not only to manage the physics but also to create the graphics of your game. The framework includes hardware accelerated 2D rendering, input, animation for the sprites and many more options. It can be used not only for the game itself but also to create the assets so you won’t need any 3^rd party tool to do so. Yes, 3^rd party tools are more powerful, but this one is already integrated and it is Open Source. The sprite rendering in Orx is very powerful because it uses 3D hardware acceleration so it will allow you to make transitions, rotation, alpha blending, mirroring, tiling and anisotropic scale.

The environment you will use in Orx is very user-friendly and intuitive and as you can check in the picture below, there are not so many options to tinker with, but enough for the purpose you are trying to achieve.

Orx handles collisions and allows you to use rigid body physics with joint support. This means it is very easy to animate your characters by using this SDK. The event management in Orx is a bit limited if you compare to other SDKs, but it is still powerful enough to allow you to build complete games just with it.

What makes a difference in Orx is the differential scrolling system. You can create a 2.5D environment with almost no code and just a few configuration parameters. Things that are done in other languages can be done in Orx, but in an easier way.

When it comes to sound, you can also edit your sound in Orx as well as record and process it. You can do it even on the fly.

The controls you can define for your games are abstract. This means you can easily define keys not only for your keyboard but also for mouse and gamepad or joysticks. This is a great feature that lets us forget about the input of the game and let the player choose by themselves in a much easier way than it is done in heavier SDKs.

There is no native scripting language in Orx, but it uses C itself so you can use C as a scripting language as well. This is good because C is known by many programmers, but since it is a game engine designed for starters it may not be as good. Many beginners can’t program in C and learning C is a difficult task. We would love to see an easy scripting language in SDKs like Orx.

Orx is written in C and the source code is open for you to tinker with. The license is Zlib, which basically means you can do what you please with it and you won’t have to pay anything, not even if you are making profit out of your projects. This kind of license attracts many users and the community around Orx is pretty big, with lots of tutorials and forums for you to learn the ins and outs of the SDK.

This SDK is aimed mostly to make casual games for mobile phones or for PC and also to make prototypes for larger games. Orx is so easy to use and to learn that even the most inexperienced developer can start right away after installing without having to read many manuals or tutorials. Knowing how to code is necessary though, but it is approached in a very lightweight manner.

Portability is something Orx developers had in mind since the very beginning of the project. All games made with Orx are easy to port from one platform to another and at the time writing, you can make your projects for windows (mingw and native using visual studio), linux (x86/x86_64), MacOS X (ppc/x86), iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad and Android.

But it is not all shiny things in Orx. For example one of the biggest missing features is network support. Games in Orx are bound to be standalone games and the only way to make a multiplayer game in Orx is to add any plugin written in another language.

There is also no 3D support. Orx is completely driven to 2D or 2.5D games and there is absolutely no 3D support.

PROS and CONS

Pros

• Lightweight
• Very easy to port projects
• Very intuitive and easy to use
• Nice environment to work with
• Everything integrated
• Open source with Zlib license
• Makes 2.5D games easy

Cons

• Not very powerful
• No 3D support
• No networking
• No scripting language

CONCLUSION

Orx is very recommended for many things. If you are a young developer who wants to get his feet wet and start in the world, Orx is a good place to start with. The easiness of use and the intuitiveness of Orx makes it an ideal candidate for starters. It has everything integrated so you don’t need to use any other 3^rd party tool for anything, just download the SDK and start developing right away. It is also very recommended to make mockups and prototypes of larger games due to the deploying fastness. Overall it is a good product although it lacks of 3D support and network support. There are other limitations inherent to its lightweight size but, it is a good SDK to start. It is also being developed at the moment and their authors keep adding more features every day so, it is not dead at all and if you start learning it now you won’t be in a dead end in the future.