Temporal Guardians Wiki Cormorant Jacob FAQ

Cormorant is the world's first dedicated stacked sprite game engine, developed from the ground up in C# using the MonoGame framework. It was made specifically for utilising stacked sprites to create a unique faux-3D art style.

Features
  • JSON Parsing: All assets are interpreted from JSON at runtime. This means that you can make changes to both maps and entities without recompiling your code.
  • Perfect O(1) depth sorting: The engine renders the world one layer at a time, meaning that there is no need for traditional sprite/y/depth sorting, nor is there any need for cutouts or culling. It is hyperefficient and unmatched in accuracy when compared to competing solutions.
  • Proper pitch and rotation support: Some game engines like Godot do not support rotating or pitching a 2D camera. Not the case here. The camera can be freely rotated, pitched, and moved to your heart's content.
  • Accurate editor representation: The editor uses the same camera and rendering pipeline as any game projects you may create. This means that there's no need to run your game to see what your level will look like with the stacked sprites fully rendered in. You can view it right there in the editor and manipulate the camera to test different angles before playtesting.
  • Fake depth: Entities can be shifted upward and downward through offsets that feign a Z axis. This allows you to stack things on top of one another and create fake height!
  • Decoupled code: The core Cormorant code is packaged into a DLL that can be used with any projects you create. The editor is likewise its own executable file. This means that a finished game project is fundamentally separate from both the editor and cormorant codebases.