Macchiato Doppio FAQ

Why would I want to use Macchiato Doppio over another framework?

The idea behind the Macchiato Doppio framework is to allow flexablity when programming. At first this might seem like a strange concept to base a game framework off of, since the person doing the programming can, theoretically, make the program do just about whatever they want. However, generally speaking, the whole point of using a framework or engine is to save the coder from having to do some of the more mundane tasks, such as writing display classes and worrying about animation. This is where the Macchiato Doppio framework and engines are intended to excel, with classes and factory methods to take care of the more mundane accounting, file I/O, and display aspects and providing ways in which to organize and execute game logic, while trying to keep interference in the actual way in which the game will play to a minimum. When completed, Macchiato Doppio is envisioned as being equally adept at side-scrolling platformers as it will be at turned-based strategy games.

What kinds of things can Macchiato Doppio do?

Strictly speaking Macchiato Doppio does very little on it's own. However, it does (or will have in some cases) the capacity to:

• Do png graphics based tile level display and sprite animation (including options for parallax movement).
• Provide a uniform way to track the stats of entities in the game, with the ability to quickly clone entities or reset all entities stats to their default values.
• Provide classes for the execution of game logic seperate from the workings of other classes within the game.
• Provide display, I/O (file, user interation, and networking), and sound classes.

Will Macchiato Doppio work for 3D games?

Macchiato Doppio is designed as a 2D game framework, with no true 3D capability. However, this does not mean that it is incapable of rendering the illusion of depth. Certainly before 3D accellerators were commonplace games that simulated 3D existed. The same methods that worked for those games will work with Macchiato Doppio, and in fact, have in some limited ways, already been demonstrated.

For TRUE 3D, however, Macchiato Doppio will not work. A future project, Macchiato Triplo (which will do for 3D what Macchiato Doppio does for 2D) is in the planning stages at the moment, but is still quite a ways off.

How can I get Macchiato Doppio?

At the moment the only way to get it is to be a developer on SourceForge and download it via CVS. Soon there should be additional ways to download it via sourceforge. For more information see the project page.

What liscense is Macchiato Doppio released under?

Macchiato Doppio is released under the Perl Artistic Liscense:

• Perl Artistic Liscense at Perl.com
• Artistic Liscense at opensource.org

For more information I recommend the forums.

Project Page

Forums

News:

Page Update

1/17/06: Homepage for Macchiato Doppio goes up! It's pretty plain at the moment because I'm saving all my effort for coding