Research in Motion recently announced that it has launched an open-source, cross-platform C++ game development framework for indie developers called gameplay.

The gameplay project is contributed to and hosted on github.com by the two co-founders of the project, Sean Paul Taylor, Team Lead for Gaming R&D at RIM, and, Steve Grenier, Senior Software Developer, Gaming R&D at RIM.

New gameplay v1.2 features include:

  • Newplatforms now supporting:
    • BlackBerry Tablet OS 2.0 and BlackBerry 10 ready!
    • Apple iOS 5.1 for iPhone and iPad
    • Google Android 2.3+
    • Microsoft Windows 7
    • Apple MacOSX
  • New shader-based material system with built-in common shader library.
  • New declarative scene binding.
  • New declarative particle system.
  • Improved physics system with rigid body dynamics and constraints.
  • New character physics and ghost objects.
  • Improved animation system supporting animated skeletal character animation.
  • New declarative user interface system with support for declartive theming and ortho, and 3D form definition with built-in core control classes such as Button, Label, TextBox, Slider, CheckBox, RadioButton. Also includes Layout classes such as Absolute/Vertical and FlowLayout.
  • New cross-platform new game project wizard scripts.
  • New game developer guide.
  • New game samples and tutorials.

The gameplay project is a contribution that is directly targeting the indie game developer ecosystem. We realize developers want to easily target as many platforms as they can to monetize and we want to help you do this… If you are familiar with other popular open-source 2D game engines like cocos2d-x and now want a high-quality 3D solution, then gameplay might be exactly what you are looking for!

[Source]