ika (game engine)

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ika is a basic game engine platform for Windows and Linux. ika was all but discontinued at one point, but a rise in interest has led the developers to begin working towards a new version. The latest released version of the game engine is version 0.62, which uses Python 2.5.

ika originally began as derivative of the RPG engine Verge, and was known as Verge 2.7. However, due to disputes over its use of the Python programming language instead of VergeC (which is the custom C-based scripting language used by Verge) it became a separate entity and formed its own community.^[1]

Similar to Pygame, ika can use all of the functionality of Python, and includes additional built-in libraries for functionality commonly used in games, like playing music and sound effects, utilizing keyboard, joypad, and mouse input, as well as managing graphics. Unlike with Pygame, it usually isn't necessary to install the Python libraries to play an ika game, since the engine-specific libraries are embedded in the ika executable, and external Python modules should be included with the game for the user's sake. It should be remember, though, that ika is a basic game engine, whilst Pygame is mainly a graphics library.

The game engine consists of a map editor and the main executable. There are also a number of other utilities used for creating the sprites and fonts that are used by the game engine, since these files, as well as the map and tile files, are stored in a custom file format based on XML. Code is written in .py files.

A common complaint about ika is its lack of consistent user-friendly tools for creating the various custom files that the game engine uses. However, these utilities are being worked on. A common editor for code, maps, sprites, and other resource files may be released with future versions of ika.