Verge (gaming)

Verge (which stands for Vecna's Extraordinary Roleplaying Game Engine) is game engine intended to allow users to design their own computer role-playing games, particularly console-style, 2D games along the lines of Final Fantasy VI.

Developed by Benjamin Eirich (vecna) as well as other contributors: aen (Charles Rector), zeromus (Matt Gambrell), loretian (Joe Osbourn), Hahn (Brian Peterson), and tatsumi (John Hargrove). Verge1, released in 1997, and Verge2, released in 1999, both ran entirely in DOS (and later Windows to allow Verge 1 and Verge 2 games to be playable on the newer Windows operating systems where DOS is no longer fully supported). Verge2 was significantly more flexible than Verge1, but was more difficult to use and poorly documented.

The latest engine, Verge3 (sometimes referred to as "V3"), was released for Windows in 2004, and expanded the compiler's flexibility while re-introducing Verge 1's stricter options, providing the best of both worlds. An Apple Macintosh port of the main engine was recently released, allowing users to play Verge3 games on a Mac, although no Mac compatible development tools have been released yet.

Official and Unofficial Engines

* Verge 1 - a DOS RPG engine with builtin item, party, status, magic, and save functionality. Battle system was not implemented, and attempts to make a battle system in the engine were difficult due to limitations such as only having a flags [] array and variables a to z. It was easy to use as it was originally intended, but difficult to extend the behaviour of the engine through scripting.

* Verge 1+ - an unofficial extension to the Verge engine which enabled new features.

* WinVerge - a Windows port of the original Verge engine. Does not emulate Verge 1+ games.

* Verge 2 - a new version of Verge which added many new features, such as variable sized .chr sprites, ability for the user to declare variables and functions and pre-processor statements in a C-like manner.

* Verge 2.5 - like Verge 2, but with a better compiler and new features.

* Verge 2k+j - like Verge 2.5, but with some limited high-color (16bpp) functionality.

* Verge 2.6 - a Windows version of Verge 2.5, which makes use of Audiere, corona and SDL and toggleable high-color mode. This version's high color mode enabled additive, subtractive, and translucent blending (as opposed to a lookup table called trans.tbl).

* Verge 2.7 - an unofficial version of Verge 2 which uses the Python scripting language. After disputes with the Verge community, the author eventually renamed the engine to ika.

* WinV2 - a Windows port of the Verge 2 engine with a rewritten interpretter, which utilizes DirectX.

* Verge 3 - the latest version of Verge for both Mac and Windows builds which includes such features as: high color, networking, mouse, joysticks and gamepads, clipboard, declaration of C-like structures, support for loading common image formats (GIF, PNG, PCX, JPEG), and support for loading audio and module formats (MP3, IT, S3M, WAV, Ogg Vorbis).

VergeC

"VergeC" is language similar to C. It differs though, in that it's easier to use at the cost of some limitations.

Here is Hello World in VergeC:

void AutoExec(){ Log("Hello World");}

Notable Games

* Sully Chronicles is a game created by hahn that was released for Verge1, which demonstrated the original engine's capabilities. This game is the only Verge game to date to receive a GameFAQs article. There is a remake of this game for Verge3 that's slowly progressing, which will give a flexible code library to beginning users who'd like to do as little programming as possible. [http://www.verge-rpg.com/files/detail.php?id=110 Windows Verge 1 Download] | [http://www.verge-rpg.com/files/detail.php?id=537 Windows Verge 3 Download] | [http://www.verge-rpg.com/files/detail.php?id=623 Macintosh Verge 3 Download]

* Diver Down is an Indie game created by grenideer with notably unique artwork by arias and metro. Released for Verge2, this game was an instant hit in the Verge community and continues to be recognized as a classic there. Diver Down is now ported to WinV2. The code in this game implements a custom engine scripted in the Verge2 engine called PURGE, which was also created by Grenideer. Although gameplay is fairly straightforward, the story is most celebrated by fans of this game. [http://grenideer.com/diverdown/files/temp/diverdown_win.zip Windows Download] | [http://grenideer.com/diverdown/files/temp/diverdown_dos.zip DOS Download]

* Zeux's World is a 2D platformer similar to Super Mario made with Verge2. The "Smiley Standard Hero" is noted to resemble that of a character in Caverns of Zeux (the default game for the MegaZeux engine). The game automatically saves progress after each level, save for the Tower of Dystopia (which connects the different worlds, and features some of the strangest and arguably most difficult levels in the game). It is one of many games made by [http://zara.verge-rpg.com/ Zaratustra Productions] .

External links

* [http://www.verge-rpg.com/ Verge Homepage]
* [http://www.grenideer.com/diverdown/ Diver Down Homepage]
* [http://zara.verge-rpg.com/ Zaratustra Productions]
* [http://www.compmike19.com/verge/index.htm Compmike19's Verge Page]