Engine²

Engine² (or Engine Squared)

[](LICENSE)

Engine² is an engine focused on 3D game development. The engine is free and remains free in multiple significations of it:

Free as control

Engine² makes you able to understand it, use it, and contribute to it easily, for you, artists. Any kind of artist should be able to take the project in their hands and make stuff with it. If you are an engine programmer, game designer, sound designer, tool programmer, and so on, you will have the possibility to create and express yourself. And as I like to say: "For me, the quality of a game is reflected in the messages it conveys."

Free as freedom

Engine² is not made to make realistic games nor little arcade ones. This project is made to help you create any kind of project. If you want to make something, you will be able to do it. Anything is possible.

Free as a price

Engine² will not force you to spend any money to use any kind of services it proposes. It’s 101% free to use.

Free as liberty

Engine² lets every process, planification, and evolution be visible and understandable by the community. The point here is to know the priorities of the engine, its direction, and to let the community impact most of the engine.

Technical

Examples

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Prerequisites

Make sure the following tools are installed before proceeding:

Tool	Minimum version	Install
xmake	v3.0.x	See xmake installation guide

Warning

No other tools should be needed. If you get stuck at some step, please report it by opening a bug issue 🙏 (before doing that, check the documentation about how to create an issue)

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Clone the repository

git clone https://github.com/EngineSquared/EngineSquared.git
cd EngineSquared

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Configure and build

# Configure (downloads dependencies automatically)
xmake f -y
 
# Build the engine
xmake build -y

Note

Windows only xmake will automatically pull the MSVC toolchain, so you don't need to have it already installed on your machine.

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Run a minimal example

Build and run the basic_core_usage example to confirm everything works:

xmake f --basic_core_usage=y -y
xmake run BasicCoreUsage

If the basic core usage run without errors, you're all set. ✅

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Project Overview

Here is a graphical overview of the project:

graph TD
  ROOT["EngineSquared"]
 
  ROOT --> SRC["src/"<br/>All source files of the project]
  ROOT --> EX["examples/<br/>Runnable demos"]
  ROOT --> TOOLS["tools/<br/>Some useful general tools"]
  ROOT --> DOCS["docs/<br/>Images, doxygen"]
 
  SRC --> ENGINE["engine/<br/>ECS Core of the engine"]
  SRC --> PLUGIN["plugin/<br/>Groups of context"]
  SRC --> UTILS["utils/<br/>Shared utility stuff"]
 
  PLUGIN --> PLUGIN_SRC["src/<br/>Source files"]
  PLUGIN --> PLUGIN_XMAKE["tests/<br/>Tests files"]

Engine² is STRONGLY built around an ECS architectural design pattern. The engine core (src/engine/) provides all necessary stuff to agglomerate logic and data to create any kind project. The Core class is the entry point of the framework, it allows to manipulate entities and systems through schedulers. All features (graphics, physics, sound, etc.) are implemented as plugins that you register into the engine core.

Available plugins

Here is a list of available plugins:

Plugin	Description
graphic	3D rendering via WebGPU
physics	Rigid body physics via JoltPhysics
input	Keyboard/mouse input via GLFW
sound	Audio playback via miniaudio
window	Window management via GLFW
scene	Scene graph management
event	Publish/subscribe event system
relationship	Parent/child entity relationships
native-scripting	Attach C++ scripts to entities
rmlui	UI rendering via RmlUi
camera-movement	Built-in camera controller
rendering-pipeline	Rendering pipeline abstraction
default-pipeline	Pre-assembled default render pipeline

Warning

Those plugins may not be up to date as they are not updated automatically. To check current plugins, you can check plugins folder.

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How a minimal program looks

Here is a very basic example that can be useful to understand the pattern before contributing:

#include "Engine.hpp"
 
// A Component should only holds data related to an entity
struct NameComponent { std::string value; };
 
// A System is a callable element (function, class or lambda) that only run logic
void HelloSystem(Engine::Core &core) {
    core.GetRegistry().view<NameComponent>().each(
        [](auto &name) { Log::Info(name.value + " arrived."); });
}
 
int main() {
    Engine::Core core;
 
    // Register systems on lifecycle schedulers: Startup, Update or Shutdown
    core.RegisterSystem<Engine::Scheduler::Startup>(HelloSystem);
 
    // Create entities and attach components
    auto entity = core.CreateEntity();
    entity.AddComponent<NameComponent>("Alice");
 
    core.RunSystems(); // Executes systems once; use Run() to run the scheduler repeatedly until Stop() is called.
}

Warning

This example may not be up to date as it's not updated automatically. For concrete working examples, you can check examples folder.

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Where to go next

• 📚 Full documentation & wiki: Everything you need to know to understand the project.
• 💻 Technical documentation: If you want to get in depth in the engine.
• 🧩 All examples: Explore graphics, physics, input, sound, and more.
• 🤝 Contributing guide: How to contribute to the project.
• 👮‍♀️Code of conduct: How you should behave while interacting in this community.
• 🧪 Run the test suite: xmake test -y
• 🗺️ Roadmap: Where the project is going.

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Interested ?

You can start to discover the engine through contribute to it through looking at good first issues and checking how to contribute

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Troubleshooting

For now there is no troubleshooting found. If you encounter a problem, please report it by opening a question issue 🙏 (before doing that, check the documentation about how to create an issue)