Starting next term (late september) I have been tasked with creating a 2.5D game (isometric) engine, that can be used by students at my university to create games. The Engine has to work in both C++ and VB, so i will proberly do it as a set of activeX object that can be referenced in both languages. with a ocx viewport componet

Atm, I'm looking for ideas on what capibilities game creators want from such an engine (it has to have a wide range of uses, and is a Game engine rather than a game itself)

Basic Spec:

It must support an isometric view,
(Optional: the angle may be adjustable)

it must support tile height, Transparent Bitmaps, Full animation (both tiles and objects)

background for transparent tiles

multi tile Areas

tile set

object paths

limited imput support

Optional Spec:
Sound Support
Imput events
Redraw events
Game events (eg. object on tile, new object entering viewport, object death etc.)


I will get a more detailed spec in september, I have approx 150 hours in which to get a working version + documentation finished with an addinational 150hours study work (whats already out there, graphic methods, game methods reports etc) + game development around the engine. The engine with be given to approx 50-100 university students to help them with a new game development module the university is running in march. (game methods rather than game engines, hence needing a games development enviroment)

Worked out more or less how to the above stuff in pure VB. But will be reading upon DirectX and looking at samples to see if I should use that. It may be a bit of both.

Any sugestions welcome