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Wintermute Engine
Original author	Jan "Mnemonic" Nedoma
Developer	Dead:Code Software
Initial release	January 12, 2003; 22 years ago (2003-01-12)
Stable release	1.9.1 / January 1, 2010; 15 years ago (2010-01-01)
Preview release	1.10.1 beta / July 19, 2012; 13 years ago (2012-07-19)
Repository	bitbucket.org/MnemonicWME/wme1
Written in	C++
Operating system	Windows
Platform	Personal computer
Available in	English,Greek,Spanish
Type	Game engine
License	MIT
Website	dead-code.org

Wintermute Engine (WME) is a set ofsoftware tools and aruntime interpreter (game engine) primarily designed for creating and runninggraphical adventure games.

Wintermute Engine (WME) was designed and programmed by Czech programmer Jan Nedoma, who goes by the nickname Mnemonic on the WME forums. The name "Wintermute" is a reference toWilliam Gibson's novelNeuromancer. The firstpublic beta version was released on January 12, 2003. The engine was developed with several updates released every year, though irregularly due to the small development team.

Since 2013 the Winter Mute Lite Engine is hosted onBitbucket and released under aMIT License.^[1] Development continues on the repository, latest additions addingAndroid support.

Thegame engine provides most of the features necessary for creating classic2D graphical adventure games. Although originally built as a 2Dgraphics engine, with a built-inscript interpreter for implementing game logic, the Wintermute Engine provides support for the combination of real-time3D characters and 2D backgrounds, a combination sometimes known as "2.5D", that has become the de facto standard for modern adventure games (for exampleSyberia,Still Life), and survival horror games.

• Resolution and Color Depth - Unlike many similar systems the engine supports virtually any resolution: from 320x200 retro-style to high-res 1024x768 modern looking ones or higher. Both 16bit and 32bit color depths are supported. Colour depth can be also configured by the player at run time - the engine handles the conversion automatically.
• Rendering subsystem - WME can use hardware3D acceleration (from any modern graphics card) to provide fast 2D graphics in high resolutions. It also includes graphical effects such as transparency,alpha blending andantialiasing (on old computers, WME is able to run in a "compatibility mode", which doesn't require a 3D accelerator, but disables the advanced graphics effects).
• File Formats - In addition to supporting common file formats WME also supports alpha channels forPNG andTGA. However it does not support theMP3 format (due tolicensing issues) but uses theOgg Vorbis format instead, arguably providing better compression and sound quality. Furthermore, the engine is able to play videos inOgg Theora andAVI format, including automatic subtitles display (in the SUB format).
• Scripting - WME provides a flexible object-orientedscripting language that supports a set of methods and attributes to allow you an easy access to the internal engine workings. You can also create your own custom objects and override and customize built-in methods. It uses aC-like syntax, similar to C++, C#, Java or PHP.
• Parallax scrolling - Multi-layeredparallax scrolling for the scenes is natively supported by the engine and scene tool. Unlike most other comparable software no additional scripting is required to implement it.
• Packages - A game can be compiled into one or more packages which contain all the game resources in a compressed form. This enables, for example, a developer to distribute a separate speech pack, or to release individual game episodes as packages. Packages can have various priorities, to release apatch for a game for example.
• 3D characters - WME can render3D characters in real time. While originally supporting only the MilkShape 3D format, it now supports the more universalDirectX format ".X".
• GUIs - It is possible, using standard controls, to build a complex user interface for a game, such as load/save windows, settings windows, an inventory window, etc. All the controls are fully "skinnable".
• Localization - A game can be translated into other languages, and isn't limited to text. Localization packages containing localized string table, fonts, graphics, or sounds are possible.
• Accessibility Support - WME provides several options to improveaccessibility for vision-impaired players:
  • Written text can be sent to a text-to-speech synthesizer
  • Active areas on screen can be highlighted using keyboard shortcuts, making them easier to find for people with visual disabilities.
  • The player can pause the game at any time to be able to read text or examine the scene.

There is also an active community that, while small, is growing in size and is willing to help newcomers with coding or recommendations.Community-createdfree book of tutorials went online in summer 2008.^[2]

Wintermute Engine follows theobject-oriented design philosophy. The game developers use the engine tools for building various game objects (actors, scenes, windows etc.) and assembling them together. Every game object is defined by its appearance (graphics, animations, captions, fonts) and by a script, which defines the underlying logic of a given game object and its responses to game events. All those game definitions are then interpreted by the engine runtime interpreter, which is otherwise completely independent on any actual game implementation.

Starting with version 1.7, Wintermute Engine is distributed asdonationware, meaning that it is completely free to use for both commercial and non-commercial purposes, but if the users find it useful, they are encouraged to make a donation to support its further development. Starting with version 1.8.9,source code of the engine and some of the supporting tools has been released under theLGPL license. It currently is available under anMIT License.

Thesource code of the portable Wintermute Lite 2D engine has been released under anMIT License and is hosted on aBitbucket repository.^[1] While the Wintermute Lite engine is free of charge also for commercial use, licensing of the included BASS sound library is required.^[3] It is alsoDonationware, as the author asks for donations for continued development.^[4] Later the author released also Wintermute 1.x and Wintermute 2 to bitbucket under MIT.^[5]ScummVM integrated the WME lite engine into their framework as part ofGSoC 2012 and 2013 student works.^[6]

Previous releases were free to use for non-commercial purposes, but required a separate paid commercial license.The flexible nature, and relative inexpense, of the licence for even large commercial projects has made the Wintermute Engine a popular tool amongindependent commercial game developers.^[7][8][9]

• Official website
• Wintermute Engine source code repository onbitbucket

• 2003 software
• Adventure game engines
• Free game engines
• Software using the MIT license
• Video game development software

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