Namespace AlphaFramework

AlphaFramework is a high-level game framework built on top of OmegaEngine. It provides an architecture for managing game worlds, logic, and presentation. Its design emphasizes clean separation of responsibilities.

Core concepts

AlphaFramework organizes game development into two domains:

World layer

For building engine-agnostic models of game worlds.

Universe: Defines static world data, describes what exists in the world
Session: Represents the current game state, tracks dynamic state and change

See AlphaFramework.World for details.

Presentation layer

Presenter: Translates world state into renderable objects
Game: Manages the application lifecycle and orchestrates updates

See AlphaFramework.Presentation for details.

flowchart LR
    subgraph World
        Universe
        Session
    end

    subgraph Presentation
        Presenter
        Game
    end

    subgraph OmegaEngine
        Engine
    end

    Session --> Universe
    Presenter --> Universe
    Presenter --> Engine
    Game --> Session
    Game --> Presenter

Render hierarchy

Presenters can use the engine's render hierarchy to group everything that belongs to one game world entity: its render components, selection highlights, lights and sounds. Moving an entity then only means writing its position and rotation to a single anchor node.

To do so, hand a PivotedRenderables to ModelViewSync instead of Positionables. It bridges the flat collections ModelViewSync works with and the hierarchy:

AddTo(renderable, entity) puts a renderable into the entity's group.
AnchorFor(entity) returns the node to write the entity's position and rotation to.
PivotFor(entity) returns a Pivot for lights and sounds to attach to.
PlaceUnder(renderable, parent) places a renderable below an explicit parent instead, e.g. water planes below the terrain.

A group holding a single renderable, the common case of an entity with one mesh, needs no pivot: the renderable is a scene root and carries the entity's transform itself, with its own placement folded into PreTransform. Adding a second renderable or calling PivotFor promotes the group to a pivot without moving anything. Groups are never demoted. Releasing a group disposes only its pivot; the renderables stay owned by whoever added them.

A component's Shift becomes the renderable's local Position, while its rotation and scale go into PreTransform. For LightSource and Sound components the shift becomes the Offset from the pivot they are attached to.

Because a lone renderable uses Position for the entity's world position, do not read it as the renderable's offset within the group. Use LocalTransformOf(renderable) instead.

Additional resources

Project Templates
Use the official OmegaEngine templates to quickly scaffold a project using AlphaFramework.
Practical Examples
See FrameOfReference for real-world usage patterns and sample implementations.

API

Namespaces

AlphaFramework.Editor: Toolkit for creating IDE-like editors for games based on OmegaEngine and AlphaFramework. You can use it to create GUI dialogs, maps, particle systems, etc. for your game.

AlphaFramework.Presentation: Provides a basis for building presenters that visualize AlphaFramework.World-based game worlds using OmegaEngine.Graphics.Renderables.

AlphaFramework.World: Provides a basis for building engine-agnostic models of game worlds.

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