Roadmap

Don’t see the feature you need? Tell us on the forum or Discord.

If you would like to see some feature implemented sooner, please support the engine development on Patreon!

VR: Michalis has access to Oculus Quest since the beginning of 2022. Port most likely using OpenXR (to include the widest possible range of devices using a single cross-platform API).

AR: most likely using Android / iOS built-in frameworks, as these make AR widely available on modern phones.

Extend our editor with features mentioned on 2022 plans. Remaining:

See about existing Delphi compatibility. We plan to support more platforms with Delphi: Linux, Android, iOS…​ We also plan to implement TCastleControl on VCL and FMX forms.

We should read meshes in a way that keeps binary layout of data in glTF, so that it is ultra-fast to load, and it is loaded almost straight from glTF to GPU.

Some modifications to CGE may be required here (CastleGeometryArrays will have to be made more flexible for this). New X3D nodes should be introduced, like BufferGeometry (same as X3DOM?).

We should also perform skinning fully on GPU, avoiding CoordinateInterpolator done on CPU.

More physics engine integration:

The details are listed in the manual about physics.

Using FPC + WebAssembly, new target announced at the end of 2021.

Some parts may also be done using pas2js. Done most likely just "wrapper", and the majority can be done using WebAssembly.

This is already in-progress by Trung Le (Kagamma).

With a designer. Example usage: blood, snow, rain, fire, smoke…​ 2D, 3D.

This is already in-progress by Trung Le (Kagamma). Use cge-3d-particle-emitter or Effekseer Integration. See CGE components.

Official Steam integration in CGE, see https://trello.com/c/RNDjQhqe/71-steam-headers . We already used it for The Unholy Society, we want to either “just publish that approach” or propose a new, improved (without an intermediate “wrapper” library) approach.

We should also upload CGE as app to Steam.

This is almost done, thanks to Jan Adamec. We need to release it :)

Associated with glTF, X3D and other formats that the view3dscene (and Castle Game Engine) handles. Available in the App Store / Google Play Store. For free or for 1 USD (not sure yet; but definitely without ads, I really dislike ads).

Easily design a height map (X3D TElevationGridNode node, with trees, rocks, grass). Saved and loaded as an X3D file.

Implementing this feature will most likely be split into a couple of small releases:

Implement nice shaders to show it, like this BareGame example.

What we have now: The engine includes a unit CastleTerrain to generate terrains in various ways (most notably, from smoothed random noise). We have examples/terrain/ demo to play around with it. We have the "Wyrd Forest" game that also uses CastleTerrain, and also includes a simple editor of terrain settings.

What we need: Visual, interactive editor for the ElevationGrid (the thing you get from TTerrain.Node call). To make hills, valleys in a comfortable way. And comfortably plant there stuff (rocks, grass, trees…​).

Allowing to trivially get multi-playter functionality in your games.

Vulkan renderer.

We have a simple example code that shows how you can start a new renderer: see examples/research_special_rendering_methods/new_renderer_skeleton/.

This would make the whole TCastleViewport.Items a single graph of X3D nodes, allowing for more sharing in code. The TCastleTranform would be just like TTransformNode, but a little diferently optimized (but it would become toggable at runtime).

See about Distance field fonts. See code from Chris Rorden showing how to do it in Lazarus.

We have some small TODOs to make OpenGLES (mobile) renderer as capable as OpenGL (desktop).

This will:

See macOS.

This will allow to run CGE editor on macOS by just double-clicking it, out-of-the-box.

See macOS.

We should also enable developers to easily sign their own applications packaged with CGE build tool.

These 5 units (CreatureCreatures / CastleResources / CastleLevels / CastleItems / CastlePlayer) expose a high-level API, that sits on top on existing classes (like TCastleScene and TCastleTransform). But I am not 100% happy with their API. Reasons:

Gradually I will want to express their features in different ways, in ways that are more closely and obviously connected with TCastleScene / TCastleViewport / TCastleNavigation. Basically, I’m very happy with current API of TCastleScene and TCastleTransform, and I want to make it more obvious how it is related to creatures/placeholders and other concepts introduced in CastleLevels and CastleCreatures and CastkeResources. Currently they use TCastleScene and TCastleTransform inside, but the relationship is non-obvious.

It’s not going to happen any time soon, but it will happen gradually, over the course of next 1 or more years. That is, some of the features of the 5 units mentioned above will become available in other ways too (more flexible, and more obviously connected to TCastleScene).

I know this sounds vague, because I have not yet clarified these plans in my head:) These 5 units are useful, they provide various features on top of TCastleScene. I’m not going to just "ditch" them or even deprecate them, before I made a better API that also has these features. For example:

I know I want to go in this direction. Based on the questions (including on Discord) I see that the API of these 5 units is not clear to people. It wraps TCastleScene / TCastleViewport / TCastleNavigation, but in ways that are not obvious, and that is something I want to improve.

Again, bear in mind that it will not happen any time soon :) You can safely and happily use these units, probably for a few years to come.

But it is something I think about for the future, and it may explain some of my decisions. E.g. that is why I don’t plan special integration of TCastleCreature with castle-editor. Instead I want to enable you to add future TWalkAttackLogic to any TCastleTransform one day. And thus we will have "easy creatures" in CGE but with more flexible API.

See also here.

We can make 3D modeling of realistically-looking stuff much easier by reusing libraries of realistic materials.

Explore possibility to support USD – Universal Scene Description format as a first-class citizen, alongside glTF and X3D, in CGE.