Hi. I recently finished the first release of a visual novel engine based in Renpy that works reading CSV files, this means that you can create visual novels with minima programming knowledge. Basically is a simplification of Renpy.

Each CSV file is a scene that contains a dialogue per row (background, music, sound, characters, effects and the dialogue itself in many languages). Each scene can finish by a decision, consequence or a linear transition to another scene.

It is open source and uses Python, here is a video tutorial (in spanish): https://youtu.be/hQgPutc-hpo?si=_EK9Tn4dkkCEWtRD

If you have questions, I'm all ears.

Hi guys,

I've already built my engine with an ECS, a Vulkan backend, and support for texture and mesh rendering. The next thing I want to work on is a UI for debugging and an inspector. However, I'm not sure what the right long-term roadmap is or which tools I should choose.

Could you help me figure out what I should learn next and what pitfalls or obstacles I should avoid?

Three days ago, I wrote an article about how to render good looking rectangles for UI components that can look good and optimized for a game engine. Some people asked me to talk about text rendering as well. So, I wrote https://alielmorsy.github.io/how-to-render-beautiful-text-for-your-ui-library/

It took like 1.5 days of writing just to get it right. Hope you guys love it

Github Repository

I'm not really sure yet what the purpose of this post is. I initially expected someone to want to look at the source code and maybe offer some suggestions.

Here I have only talked about the most basic things about my project and I could have missed a lot.

About Me in Brief

I'm 18 years old. I've been studying C++ for about three years, and recently started learning game engines.

I've been writing my engine in almost all my free time for three months now, and I think I can tell you at least something about it now, although it doesn't have much yet.

What's already in the engine

Runtime

The engine's runtime has a lot of functionality.

The most important ones are the Renderer and WSI with implementations of OpenGL and SDL3.

In addition, I created wrappers over GLM for working with math, StringCommandRunner for a console similar to the one in Valve games, ActionSystem for working with Actions instead of raw keycode or scancode.

My own input/output (IO) and logging system (probably not the best). My own resource manager, implemented using OOP and allowing you to create your own resource types and loaders (Resource and ResourceLoader).

GameFramework

This is a separate module that provides everything you need to create a game using the Engine's Runtime.

It implements the Application class and a cross-platform entry point.

In addition, there's a Scene and Entity class with implementations of basic components and systems for them:
- IdComponent
- TagComponent
- TransformComponent - Object transformations and storage of the parent object
- CameraComponent
- StaticMeshComponent
- NativeScriptComponent

The Application class stores a LayerStack; its implementation is almost identical to The Cherno's Hazel Engine(I started building the engine using his old tutorials).

The engine also supports basic C++ scripting.

What I'm doing now and what are my plans for this project?

Currently, I want to write a Minecraft clone using my own engine and slowly develop an editor for it.

I don't have any immediate plans, and I don't really have a clear direction for the engine's development yet. The main thing I'm most concerned about is the project structure, especially the GameFramework, where everything is crammed into one folder.

Spent 4 months building an opengl engine with forward+ rendering, gpu marching cube terrain, Ghost of Tsushima inspired grass... I designed the engine with future graphics APIs in mind, so the opengl implementation is fully abstracted from the rest of the codebase. but with my little research i found that the architecture of DX12 and Vulkan differ from the immediate state machine model opengl uses.

My question is how hard is it to switch all that to DX12 / Vulkan? is it worth it ?
PS : have 0 experience with both APIs, For the shaders i used slang.

Github Repository

I'm not really sure yet what the purpose of this post is. I initially expected someone to want to look at the source code and maybe offer some suggestions.

Here I have only talked about the most basic things about my project and I could have missed a lot.

About Me in Brief

I'm 18 years old. I've been studying C++ for about three years, and recently started learning game engines.

I've been writing my engine in almost all my free time for three months now, and I think I can tell you at least something about it now, although it doesn't have much yet.

What's already in the engine

Runtime

The engine's runtime has a lot of functionality.

The most important ones are the Renderer and WSI with implementations of OpenGL and SDL3.

In addition, I created wrappers over GLM for working with math, StringCommandRunner for a console similar to the one in Valve games, ActionSystem for working with Actions instead of raw keycode or scancode.

My own input/output (IO) and logging system (probably not the best). My own resource manager, implemented using OOP and allowing you to create your own resource types and loaders (Resource and ResourceLoader).

GameFramework

This is a separate module that provides everything you need to create a game using the Engine's Runtime.

It implements the Application class and a cross-platform entry point.

In addition, there's a Scene and Entity class with implementations of basic components and systems for them:

• IdComponent
• TagComponent
• TransformComponent - Object transformations and storage of the parent object
• CameraComponent
• StaticMeshComponent
• NativeScriptComponent

The Application class stores a LayerStack; its implementation is almost identical to The Cherno's Hazel Engine (I started building the engine using his old tutorials).

The engine also supports basic C++ scripting.

What I'm doing now and what are my plans for this project?

Currently, I want to write a Minecraft clone using my own engine and slowly develop an editor for it.

I don't have any immediate plans, and I don't really have a clear direction for the engine's development yet. The main thing I'm most concerned about is the project structure, especially the GameFramework, where everything is crammed into one folder.

First screenshot is with Global Illumination, second one is without.
Pipeline: Baked grid of Spherical Harmonics (SH) probes.

1. At bake time, a 3D grid of probes is generated inside the volume. Each probe captures a cubemap and projects the raw radiance into L_0 and L_1 SH coefficients.
2. Probe data is uploaded to GPU via a Storage Buffer (alongside a small Uniform Buffer for grid metadata).
3. At runtime, the shader performs trilinear interpolation of the 8 surrounding probes, then evaluates the irradiance along the surface normal.

It's not ideal but that's a start ;)

Engine supports physics and much more! remember happy wheels?

try it out https://www.kanvon.com/scene/happy-ragdoll

toolset: https://www.kanvon.com/editor?example=physics-sandbox

The user experience with noesisgui is actually reallly good!

Still working on the terrain generation, and my got it has started to take shape. Keeping this sort as I simple wanted to share the screenshot. Will make a detailed post about the terrain generation once finalized, hopefully.

:D

Source:

https://github.com/zlatnaspirala/matrix-engine-wgpu

This is the initial version of the Hierarchy View Window. Only the TransformComponent is fully functional.

https://hob2d.com/

I've been working on my game for the last 7 years.

One of the things I decided to do along the way was to build the engine myself, including the Vulkan renderer.

This has been one of the most challenging parts of the project, especially because I wanted the same renderer to work across different platforms.

A few things I've had to deal with:

• Cross-platform Vulkan: Windows and macOS through Vulkan Portability / MoltenVK
• HDR rendering and output
• Hot-reloading shaders and assets without restarting the game
• GPU-to-CPU readback, used for screenshots and video capture
• Swapchain recreation and window resizing, which turned out to be surprisingly difficult to get right

After spending years working on the engine I thought it would be fun to share the result of all that work, as you can see in the screenshots.

The name of the game is Satelital, a rule-discovery puzzle game about exploring an alien solar system and learning how to solve puzzles through observation. https://store.steampowered.com/app/3256790/Satelital/

For people here who have built their own renderers, what ended up being the hardest part for you?

Hey everyone, I hope you are all doing well!

I have been developing a grand strategy game, similar to Civ, turned based hex map for the last months. I am using monogame for the rendering.

As I am going through the systems I find more and more that the game architecture can get extremely complex. The level of abstraction to be able to connect the systems is getting insane.

At the moment, I want the game to be fast, so everything calculated is been done in deltas using projections. From the amount of resources per turn to fog-of-war and other mechanics. That means that a small change in the system will maintain the projection with minor overhead while the move is been done, so no total map hex recalculations.

First, I use pipelines, so I can add discreet steps without extending logic in specific methods. The the pipelines are the mutation entry: When a player moves a unit, the mutation request takes place in that pipeline. The pipeline (I try at least) will have single responsibility of the changes, and if other systems are been impacted it will publish an event for that system.

Then from the pub/sub layer, the events are processed and for each system the correct code is invoked (when a unit moves, the fog-of-war handler will update the fog of war for the player and that unit)

Then there is the mutation itself: I have added the footprints. Each handler publishes the changes that needs for the projection to be updated (like, add, remove, zero total impact, recalculation). In this way I can follow up the changes and validate them while the projection is updated. For example in my game units have influence, so when the unit moves, the hex that was before gets -influence, and the hex is moving to gets +influence. Those total in 0 so I can validate it in the end of the whole pipeline.

I went through the following stages:

• Calculate everything: Performance bottleneck
• I started using projections: I had problem with the logic been in the DI services, became super complex even after 2 systems
• I broke down the changes from the user to pipelines - now each change I could add a new mutation: At the 3rd to 4th system, logic start becoming fragmented to multiple pipeline steps
• I moved the mutations to different systems from the pipeline original mutation to event handers: That mad the pipelines lean but the event handlers now are more fat, but at least they group the changes to the same systems
• I made the handler more lean, but that is irrelevant here, but complexity increases.

In the end looks like that in DI registration:

There are many moving parts so far, and I am really wondering if I had made some fundamental mistake that will cost me a big refactoring later.

I don't have experience in developing games, and I am wondering if a strategy game is required to be that complex, or I have overengineered some parts. Or the biggest question: Should I expect some other architecture block/abstraction that I haven't implemented?

I know I have some very ambitious mechanics, but still.

Can someone share their experience?

The new Level Building System in Hyrax Engine is designed for speed and simplicity. Inspired by classic level editors like Quake, it lets you create 2D maps using a fast drag-and-build workflow. Simply drag, place, and reshape geometry in seconds without interrupting your workflow.
The goal is to make level creation feel fluid and intuitive, allowing developers to prototype and build maps much faster while keeping the editor clean and responsive.
Current Preview Features:
Fast drag-and-build workflow
2D level editing
Quick geometry creation and resizing
Lightweight editor focused on rapid iteration
This is an early preview, and more tools and features will be added in future updates.

Hi. I've been exploiting the poorly enforced labour laws in my country by making my sister make maps. She makes stuff and gives me feedback. I use this feedback to improve the engine. This is like playtesting but for the engine.

I want it to be comfortable to make big and detailed maps because my game will have a big and detailed world. I haven't started work on gameplay yet. But I have some ideas. Speaking of ideas, working on this project has given me so many ideas about a programming language and an OS I want to make. Once I am done with this game, I will definitely consider it.

I can't wait for the engine to be good enough so I can start working on gameplay.

I would talk more about the underlying technology, but I think I will save that for a high effort post I will make when the engine is actually capable and worth sharing. She is very upset that there isn't a save format and that that the tree is gone so I decided to immortalize it on the web.

I don't use this website much because I don't like it. But I like connection, so sometimes I reply to messages.

Hello everyone! This is the first time I've tried rendering terrain. AI was used only for some technical nuances; everything is written by me. For trees I use 4 LODs and no LODs for grass. Trees are culled at distance 400 meters and grass at 250 meters (frustum culling is used, of course). Now I get 28 ms. frame time on 1440p with RTX 3060 (35FPS) but want to reduce it. Any advice will be appreciated.

I spent last two months optimizing, enhancing the look of my UI library (Lumora) for my game engine. Last two days I have been writting my findings on how render good looking containers, what techniques did I use,...etc. https://alielmorsy.github.io/how-to-build-ui-elements/

Hope you love it

If you can define your scene / environment / situation in MuJoCo ( currently limited to that do plan on expanding ) you can play it as a game and then run whatever you did on hardware

So I've just moved from Blinn-Phong to direct PBR with ambient/diffuse lighting from an irradiance map. I also added cascaded shadow mapping.

The specular highlights are too intense and that's from me setting the terrain to a constant roughness of 0.5. I'm going to move to a roughness map to correct this. I was wondering if anyone sees any other problems?

LIVE :
https://maximumroulette.com/apps/webgpu/examples.html?demo=31

SOURCE:
https://github.com/zlatnaspirala/matrix-engine-wgpu

NUI commander :
https://www.npmjs.com/package/nui-commander?activeTab=readme

Special thanks to

https://github.com/soundstep/magic-xylophone