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Permafrost Engine is an OpenGL 3.3 real-time strategy (RTS) game engine written in C, designed to capture the feel of classic RTS titles while incorporating modern rendering and AI techniques. It uses a programmable pipeline with features like skeletal animation with GPU skinning, Phong lighting, bump mapping, terrain texture splatting, water rendering with reflection and refraction, and skyboxes. The engine is tailored specifically for large-scale RTS gameplay, supporting huge maps, efficient batched rendering, hierarchical flow-field pathfinding, formation movement, boids-style steering behaviors, and GPU-accelerated crowd simulation. It integrates tightly with Python 2.7 for scripting, exposing engine internals to Python and even allowing serialization and restoration of the entire Python interpreter state for robust save/load systems.
Features
- OpenGL 3.3 RTS engine with skeletal animation, bump mapping, terrain splatting, and advanced water rendering
- Extensive RTS gameplay systems: minimap, unit selection, fog of war, base building, resources, garrison and transport
- Sophisticated pathfinding and crowd simulation with hierarchical flow fields, formation movement, and GPU-based crowd updates
- Python scripting with embedded interpreter, interactive console, and full save/restore of interpreter state
- Built-in map and scene editor plus advanced debug visualizations and profiling instrumentation
- Cross-platform (Linux and Windows) with multithreaded simulation–rendering pipeline for large maps and big battles
Project Samples
