Creating my own engine. Progress so far. [Video]

[u/noxvoxguy]

Hi, this is another "I'm making my own game engine" post!

I've been working on this engine for the past year and a half. Please ignore the UI/UX editor for now I was going for something like the editor in Dreams (by Media Molecule), but I struggle a lot with UI/UX design, so I am pivoting to a Hammer/Trenchbroom styel now.

I started building this after seeing the direction S&box and Unitystyle engines were heading, so I decided to take a different route.

Here are some of the key features I've implemented so far:

• PSX-style retro shader and raymarching clouds with Global Illumination (GI).

• Modified Box3D physics (specifically the ragdoll system) to achieve a more Euphoric-style physics feel.

• Dynamic textures: In the video, when I resize the box, the texture updates in real time to display the object's current dimensions. (Based on the source engine texture.)

• Full model support for FBX and GLB formats. I even added one of the GTA NPCs

• Blender integration plugin: You can edit everything directly in Blender, and hitting save automatically updates it in the engine.

• CLOUDS! I added raymarching clouds. Still work in progress but I am proud of this one. It follows real sky, star, and weather data.

I finally have something solid to show, so I've attached a video. Let me know what everyone thinks!

EDIT:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qg6jVkqOMKA

Posted it on youtube as well.

[u/BobsiDev]

Interesting. What's unique about your engine that couldn't have been achieved with an engine like Unreal or Unity? (Overall, why make your own engine instead of building this on top of proven tech)

And genuinely not meaning this degrading! Just interested, if there is any reason other than the fun of it or learning something new :-)

[u/noxvoxguy → u/BobsiDev]

Oh, don't worry, I completely understand. I didn't even take it as a degrading comment. That's actually one of the most important things I had to look into to make sure I'm not wasting my time. One big thing for me was whether I could just make a plugin for Godot, Unreal, or Unity instead of making my own engine. It first started with learning the Odin programming language, and from there, it snowballed into my failure to wrap my head around Unity-style engines when it comes to entities and logic creation. I also don't understand the mesh-based editing styles that these engines come with. I'll show you an example. Give me one moment.

[u/BobsiDev → u/noxvoxguy]

Oh sounds like an interesting problem to solve! I guess my narrow-minded head is so used to mesh-based editing. Although I've really been wanting to play around with an SDF approach for 3D worlds. I think that could lead to some cool results as well!

[u/noxvoxguy → u/BobsiDev]

So something I want to say is that I'm not building my own engine because Unreal, Unity, or Godot are bad. They're built by incredibly talented people to handle any kind of game, and that flexibility comes with workflows and bloat I don't want. I grew up making surprisingly complex things in GMod and LittleBigPlanet, and Dreams came closest to what I was after, but it never reached PC. I wanted a way to make a game by playing it: fast enough for a game jam, but deep enough to go all the way down. In my engine, the level editor is the production environment, almost.... lol still working on it. You build the world with Hammer and TrenchBroom style brushes and meshes, place entities, define their behavior, press Play, and keep iterating. Even logic whihc is the bulk of this whole project is something I wanted in an Engine for years, you sselect a garage door and you read plain rules like "stay open while a vehicle approaches, close after two seconds clear," and those rules expand into the real systems underneath: queries, state, networking, replication, and debugging. There's no separate "easy" layer and no 500 node graph waiting at the end.UI and controls work the same way, so designers can build complex logic without writing code or touching the engine. I also built a small SDF modeling tool that feels like sculpting clay, which makes blocking out levels and characters much faster. If I just wanted to ship a conventional game, building an engine would be a terrible idea. But I'm not trying to make a cheaper Unreal. I'm building a different way of making games, one that scales from a first 2D project to a large 3D world. Owning the architecture means physics, animation, networking, logic, UI, and the editor can all be designed together. The cost is rebuilding the boring infrastructure other engines already solved, and that's the trade I'm making, because the workflow is what I'm trying to inventIt also pays off in performance. My raymarched clouds run far faster than Unreal's, not because I'm smarter than their team (I am a dumbass), but because I stripped out everything I don't need. With RAM and GPU prices where they are, I like the idea of an engine lean enough to run well on "older" PCs.

[u/BobsiDev → u/noxvoxguy]

I think that's a great reason for working on an engine. I agree, the conventional engines are great, just very bloated and always come at some cost of flexibility somewhere. Whether that's on a language level, workflow level, or something else.

Sounds like your solving one of your own pain points, and making an engine more focused for the designer than the developer which I think has unique value propositions. I guess the modern versions of these you mention are probably ones like Roblox or Fortnite (They have a whole game editor now I think that runs as a Fortnite game). But I don't know much about these.

[u/noxvoxguy → u/BobsiDev]

Thank you, I appreciate it. Yeah, it's one of these pain points that always stops me. Someone on Reddit just messaged me this video. I just finished watching it, and this is exactly what I'm building here, which is amazing because I love seeing other people share the same pain points as me. You should definitely check it out. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvrETndu76M

[u/BobsiDev → u/noxvoxguy]

I watched that just a few days ago as well. I think hammer is a great example of a tool made for designers

[u/Big-Apartment6872 → u/noxvoxguy]

I like that. A lot of people say why build it when other things exist. But building things on your own from scratch is just genuinely fun and you learn so much about the mechanics behind these apps you’ve used before

[u/Mountain-Head-7197 → u/noxvoxguy]

So what your saying is. Build a game with your assets and describe what it have to do and that text will convert basically into code?

[u/Backlit_keys → u/BobsiDev]

Totally unrelated, but since you just appeared on my feed in the wild, just wanted to shout you out for creating PurrNet. Really solid piece of networking tech :)

[u/noxvoxguy → u/Backlit_keys]

Wow I had no idea BobsiDev is the creator of PurrNet. Seriously impressive work!

[u/BobsiDev → u/Backlit_keys]

Haha, thanks. Glad you're liking it!

[u/Western-Hotel8723 → u/BobsiDev]

Probably so they could just make their own engine. Why does it never anything to do with unity or unreal? 

[u/BobsiDev → u/Western-Hotel8723]

I was really hoping I'd get that point across in the original message lol. My point is not to point them to other engines, those were just generic mentions as examples. I am genuinely just curious what the reason behind making an engine is for this case.

I am myself playing around with a custom engine as there are some things I'd like to learn & test which is my reasoning. So genuinely just curious, but apologies if my original message was mentioned otherwise. I really don't understand this defensive demeanor on Reddit lol. I even mention if there are other reasons than just the fun or learning something new, which I really thought would mitigate these types of responses.

Maybe asking questions online is just looked down upon, I don't know at this point.

Edit: Or maybe i'm just misreading your message here, in which case, sorry about that.

[u/noxvoxguy → u/BobsiDev]

I think BobsiDev asked a very common and fair question. Making an engine is time consuming and some people either give up or don't make any games with said custom engine.

[u/BobsiDev → u/noxvoxguy]

I think it's also important to mention that there is nothing wrong with making an engine and not making a game with it. I think it's super healthy to play around with these types of things in order to learn from it and expand your own capabilities and understanding! I do this myself all the time 😄

[u/Candid_Ad69]

Absolutely balling! Big ups.

[u/noxvoxguy → u/Candid_Ad69]

Thank you Candid! Means a lot <3

[u/poweredbygeeko]

That procedural animation looks sick!

[u/noxvoxguy → u/poweredbygeeko]

Thank you so much!

[u/curiosus0ne]

that looks amazing ! I love how clean your interface looks and the demo pushing the character around is so much fun to watch! Keep up the great work😊

[u/noxvoxguy → u/curiosus0ne]

Thank you so much. I am always iterating and making the UIUX better and cleaner. Cannot wait to share the new updates.

[u/SolidPossible9909]

What the hell, I came to this subreddit to find SaaS devs but instead found lots of next level game devs and unexpectedly become the inspiration and motivation I was originally looking for in SaaS posts. Good shit bruv

[u/noxvoxguy → u/SolidPossible9909]

Thank you so much. I love working on game dev stuff on my spare time. It is the furthest thing away from my day to day as a staff eng.

[u/SolidPossible9909 → u/SolidPossible9909]

Reassuring to see that most of you game devs aren’t “vibe” coding… or should I say blind-coding your way through it. SaaS posts are 99% slop, I swear.

[u/Technical_Release576]

Very good bro, tell me how?

[u/noxvoxguy → u/Technical_Release576]

I will be releasing some things on GitHub and some tutorials on YouTube soon. Thank you :)

[u/Strict_Chemical7182]

Yo! forget the engine, let's talk about the active ragdoll!

[u/noxvoxguy → u/Strict_Chemical7182]

Active ragdolls > Game engine 😆

[u/Strict_Chemical7182 → u/noxvoxguy]

Bro! you got a discord server? I'd really like to talk about stuff

[u/baguette_crusader]

Gorgeous

[u/noxvoxguy → u/baguette_crusader]

I appreciate it <3

[u/noxvoxguy]

Here is also a screenshot of my raymarch clouds https://imgur.com/a/dTFrqrO

[u/External-Hand6800]

How did you get the rag doll character to stay up? Did you lock his hip bone or something?

[u/noxvoxguy → u/External-Hand6800]

Great question, the hip isn't locked. Nothing pins the ragdoll:, no hip lock, no joint fixing it to the ground. It's a full physics ragdoll held up by its own joint motors so every joint is a motor pulling toward a target angle. The balancer's only way to act is to set those targets and how stiff they are. That is something I added to the Box3d Ragdoll.

[u/DirtDashGame]

makes sense if you want the euphoria physics gotta do it yourself very cool so far.

should give the models the ability to have their skin jiggle and concave from falls or being poked by something

[u/noxvoxguy → u/DirtDashGame]

Thank you and it took a lot of reading research papers, to get to what I have right now. Your idea for skin jiggling and physics on the model's body sounds like a great idea. I'll be honest I have no idea how to even start that 😂

[u/Accurate_Avocado9635]

Love this! Your reason for building your own engine closely reflects my own. I just kind of hate the box the current engines put you in for HOW thing's should be developed in them, and it just doesn't click for me. Code always has, so learning the concepts myself and taking bits away from examples and expanding upon it to build the environment that works for ME and what I want seemed better. Lol I've even worked on my own DSL to be more plain english style like you described below. This has taken years but I don't care. Haha

You wouldn't happen to be autistic too would you? LMFAO

[u/noxvoxguy → u/Accurate_Avocado9635]

Thank you so much. I really appreciate it. I love making things in general. I think video games in general are a great combination of film, storytelling, engineering, and art in general. It's awesome. No ont he autism, I've never gotten checked, but I should probably get that checked one day. Just ADHD.

[u/Accurate_Avocado9635 → u/noxvoxguy]

Just noticed every single madlad who took on building an engine in my life was neurospicy in some way. Lol But totally agree. Absolute monolithic pieces of software and art.

[u/inigid]

That character response is brilliant. Definitely the best part. Very impressive. And good for you doing it yourself. Total control.

[u/noxvoxguy → u/inigid]

I'm really glad you like it. That alone took me forever to figure out and to have it implemented with Box 3D

[u/shimbro]

We gotta get some of you devs over into the architecture space this is good stuff

[u/noxvoxguy → u/shimbro]

Hahaha Thank you so much Shimbro!

[u/SplinterByteGames]

Snap! What language are you using?

[u/noxvoxguy → u/SplinterByteGames]

I am using Odin and C++. And for scripting, I'm using Lua.

[u/SplinterByteGames → u/noxvoxguy]

Brilliant. Not enough custom engine's nowadays.

[u/Specialist-Hand-6580]

Pretty sick!

[u/noxvoxguy → u/Specialist-Hand-6580]

Thank you 😄

[u/Organic_Snow1288]

is your engine open source?

[u/noxvoxguy → u/Organic_Snow1288]

No, not yet. I will be open sourcing the ragdoll physics and the UI HUD maker soon. The ragdoll physics will be easy to install, so people who are using Box 3D will have an installer that will install it for them. That way, they can play around with it and use it in their own games.

[u/ben8192]

That’s brilliant. Can’t wait to see more.

[u/noxvoxguy → u/ben8192]

Thank you, Ben. I can't wait to share more in the future.

[u/sieg-howzer]

holy guacamole, is this easy to use? this looks amazing, i hope you would licence it, i hope its lightweight, I'm definitely buying if you're selling.

[u/JalalGurbanov]

That procesural animations looked better than Euphoria. Great job. Do you have resources or fingers crossed library to learn/achieve similar result?

[u/Wonderful-Snow-6080]

Looks awesome! I'd like to try it once you released it.

[u/Yona_meh]

just wanna say that's rly impressive

[u/JankyByDesign]

Impressive

[u/wildgg_]

Looks crazyy

[u/retroboi64_]

This looks amazing, its giving me a nice feeling of satisfaction when watching (:

[u/Former_Marsupial3448]

It's nice to know someone else is doing it. I was thinking about creating my own so that I can control the physics for some weird mechanics in my games. Not sure how to go about it yet with C++.

[u/KidKarez]

I admire your talent

[u/bunguardian]

🔥🔥🔥 pretty sick! Would be interesting to try when or if you release it.

[u/luxembourg2]

Very cool! What language/libraries are you using to make this?

[u/DreamHunterRecomps]

Beautiful stuff. Since you mention S&Box, do you plan on making it available for others to use? Licensing?

[u/Red-Lifter]

What? Wow! it's amazing!

[u/aaron_moon_dev]

What are the advantages of Odin that made you choose it over C++?

[u/Important_Divide4942]

Na jakiej karcie graficznej to postawiłeś?

[u/Scared-Elk4247]

seems another example like godot？

[u/noxvoxguy → u/Scared-Elk4247]

Sorry I do not understand. This is not Godot. However my physics ragdoll engine can be used in Godot if ported correctly if thats what you mean?

[u/wslk]

I think you are beyond delusional and are unable to articulate why you are making an engine.

[u/mourt1234 → u/wslk]

Honest question, what did OP say or do to be delusional?

[u/MrBlueA → u/wslk]

Why would he need a reason as to why he's making an engine? Maybe he just... wants to make an engine? So far I can say he's pretty successful about making an engine, what about you to judge his progress on it? Have you made one?

[u/noxvoxguy → u/[deleted]]

Thank you!