When i went looking for 2d game engines a while ago i was immediately in love with HGE - fast, elegant, beautiful, and just had a nice feeling about it. It's since gone open source and seen less development, but a new release just came out! woot!
Note that HGE is for 2d and windows only, and it's much more minimal and focused on graphics (and collision) than ancillary stuff, but it sure is sweet if that's what you're into. Donations are requested.
30 August, 2006
HGE 1.6 released. Major new features are long awaited Bitmap Font Builder and string tables support. See Version history for detailed change log. HGE is now open source and is distributed under The zlib/libpng License. Visit HGE at SourceForge.net, your contributions are welcome!
HGE is an easy to use yet powerful hardware accelerated 2D game engine. It is a full featured middleware for all who want to develop commercial quality 2D games rapidly and easily. It covers all imaginable 2D game genres: you could create everything from a simple puzzle to advanced multilayered platformer or strategy without even thinking of any non game logic code! And you don't have to know anything about "window messages", DirectX programming and all that stuff. Instead you can start developing your own game within 15 minutes!
HGE runs on Microsoft Windows 98, 2000, NT, ME, XP and requires DirectX 8.0. It will run even on low-end video cards, including built in video cards such as Intel Solano (i815 chipset). HGE can be used with virtually any C++ compiler including Visual C++, Borland C++, MinGW and Metrowerks Codewarrior.
Version 1.6, 30 August 2006
Texture_Load now has optional third parameter allowing to use automatic mipmapping
Added hgeDistortionMesh methods GetRows and GetCols
Fixed minor bugs in mouse routines
HGE now restricts cursor movement to it's window when a mouse button is pressed
Added Input_IsMouseOver function
Added HGE_RENDERFUNC system state, which allows more correct behaviour in windowed mode
New font file format introduced allowing to use script and artistic fonts
Bitmap Font Builder authoring tool released
Added hgeFont methods SetSpacing and GetSpacing
Added hgeFont method printfb, allowing to render a formatted string into specified rectangle
hgeFont methods Render and printf made more consistent
hgeStringTable class added
hgeResourceManager updated to support hgeStringTable resources and new features of hgeFont
hgeGUISlider now supports vertical sliders
hgeGUIListbox class added
Fixed bug in Stream_Play function, added 3-rd parameter volume
Tutorials updated to show HGE_RENDERFUNC callback usage
Licensing changed to The zlib/libpng License
