Ilmeee Engine (In Development)

A Vulkan-based C++ game engine in active development. Targets 2D first (visual-novel style scenes) with a 3D OBJ pipeline already wired in for prototyping. The editor (GameEngineSDL) ships alongside IlmeeeHub (project launcher) and HandlerIlmeeeEngine (companion process used while the editor is running).

Building

The build is pinned to a Nix shell that brings in SDL2/3, GLFW, Vulkan, GTK3, FFmpeg, shaderc, etc.

mkdir -p build && cd build
nix-shell ../shell.nix --run 'cmake ..'
nix-shell ../shell.nix --run 'make -j$(nproc) GameEngineSDL'

Shader compilation uses glslc which is not in shell.nix directly:

nix-shell -p shaderc --run 'glslc input.vert -o output.vert.spv'

Running the editor

Two normal entry points:

# Through the Hub (recommended — wires up the project handshake):
./build/IlmeeeHub

# Standalone with an explicit project:
./build/GameEngineSDL --project /path/to/MyProject

Standalone debug fallback

When no --project is supplied, the editor boots a hardcoded debug scene so the renderer always has something to display:

./build/GameEngineSDL                # 3D: loads assets/3dmodels/yixuan.obj
./build/GameEngineSDL --2d=true      # 2D: loads assets/testimage.png as a sprite
./build/GameEngineSDL --2d           # same as --2d=true

The 2D fallback drops a single sprite at world origin (300x300 px) and shows a dynamic editor grid + colored XY axes overlay that follow pan/zoom.

Scene controls

• 3D mode (mesh loaded):
  • RMB drag — mouselook
  • WASD — fly
  • Shift — fast modifier
  • LMB drag — move selected mesh in screen plane
• 2D mode (no mesh):
  • RMB drag — pan camera
  • Wheel — zoom (0.1×–5×)
  • Toolbar Reset View resets camera

Project structure

src/cpp/
  main.cpp                       # editor entry, CLI parsing
  ApplicationManager.cpp         # lifecycle, network, propagates CLI to MainWindow
  Hub.cpp                        # IlmeeeHub launcher
  core_engine/
    SceneRenderer2D.cpp          # Vulkan renderer (2D sprites + 3D mesh pipeline)
    TextureManager.cpp           # sprite texture loads
    IlmeeeScene.cpp              # binary .ilmeeescene serializer
  ui/
    MainWindow.cpp               # ImGui shell
    HandlerChildWindow.cpp       # scene/hierarchy/inspector panels, debug bootstrap
    HandlerProject.cpp           # project IO
assets/
  3dmodels/                      # OBJ test models
  testimage.png                  # 2D debug-fallback sprite
  shaders/vulkan/*.spv           # compiled shaders

Project file format

Projects use a binary .ilmeeescene v1 layout. User data (recents, preferences) lives at a cross-platform ~/.ilmeeeengine/ location via ilmeee::UserDataRoot().

Status

• Vulkan renderer with offscreen target + ImGui presentation: ✅
• 2D sprite pipeline + dynamic grid overlay: ✅
• 3D OBJ loader (positions + normals, flat lighting): ✅
• 3D primitives (cube/sphere/plane): ✅
• OBJ material / texture support: ⏳ planned
• Android target: ⏳ planned