Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to Horizon Engine – C++20 3D FPS Game Engine with ECS and Modern Renderer
Hi HN, I’m working on an experimental 3D FPS game engine in C++20, aiming to deeply understand engine internals from first principles rather than just using existing frameworks. Currently I'm strictly following LearnOpenGL docs. This project focuses on: Entity-Component-System (ECS) architecture for high performance. OpenGL 4.1 rendering with a PBR pipeline, material system, HDR, SSAO, and shadow mapping. Modular systems: input, physics (Jolt), audio (miniaudio), assets, hot reload. A sample FPS game & debug editor built into the repo. Repo:…
Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1
An OpenGL RTS game engine written in C. Contribute to eduard-permyakov/permafrost-engine development by creating an account on GitHub.
2021 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 2IB
I've been working on an MMORPG that is now in alpha as a solo developer. Here are the major open source technologies that I use: Blender - 3D modeling software for creating the overall environment and every game object. I've gotten a lot of CC and Public Domain assets from https://poly.pizza GLTF - I export assets from blender to the GLTF asset format JSON - I write a JSON config for every game object that describes things like its name, its interactions, its collisions, etc. Node.js exporter - I iterate over the environment and every asset to create a scene hierarchy. I use…
2024 · alpha.reconquer.online · its alternatives →
- 3UL
In the wake of all the Unity nonsense, just wanted to toss the Raverie engine into this mix :) We’re building off a previous engine that we worked on for DigiPen Institute of Technology called the Zero Engine with a similar component based design architecture to Unity. Our engine had a unique feature called Spaces: separate worlds/levels that you can instantiate and run at the same time, which became super useful for creating UI overlays using only game objects, running multiple simulations, etc. The lighting and rendering engine is scriptable, and the default deferred rendering…
2023 · raverie-us.github.io · its alternatives →
- 4
It's been closed source for a long time while I worked on it on and off as a hobby research project, but yesterday the repo was made public for the first time under the MPL 2.0 license. A feature reel showing its capabilities can be found here: https://ktstephano.github.io/rendering/stratusgfx/feature_re... A technical breakdown of a single frame can be found here: https://ktstephano.github.io/rendering/stratusgfx/frame_anal... It's still in a very beta state (bugs and instability expected), but I felt like it was a good time to make it…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 5
An OpenGL RTS game engine written in C. Contribute to eduard-permyakov/permafrost-engine development by creating an account on GitHub.
2018 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 6
So just for fun, I wrote a complete multiplayer game in pure C++. I even wrote my own texture atlas packer, which is now used by Assassin's Creed, 2 scientific publications as well as a drone manufacturing company - each of these basically mentions the name of my game. There is even a claim that Unity patented some of the ECS ideas that originate from this project. See https://github.com/TeamHypersomnia/Hypersomnia#tech-highligh... for details. By the way the game is pretty darn good. 10 people connected yesterday to test a new map:…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 7
3D C++ Game Engine - yet another open source game engine - nem0/LumixEngine
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 8
Hi HN! Korean high school senior here, about to start CS in college. I built a browser engine from scratch in C++ to understand how browsers work. First time using C++, 8 weeks of development, lots of debugging—but it works! Features: - HTML parsing with error correction - CSS cascade and inheritance - Block/inline layout engine - Async image loading + caching - Link navigation + history Hardest parts: - String parsing(html, css) - Rendering - Image Caching & Layout Reflowing What I learned (beyond code): - Systematic debugging is crucial - Ship with known bugs rather than chase…
Jan 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 9
A 3D Engine I wrote as a kid in C++. Contribute to vladaionescu/E3Dos development by creating an account on GitHub.
2019 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 10
Hi all This has been my hobby project for quite a few years now It started as a small engine to serve as a sandbox to try out new 3d graphics ideas After adding many features through out the years and re-writing the entire engine a few times, this is the latest state It currently supports loading models with animations, textures, lights, shadow maps, normal maps, and some other goodies I've also recently added voxel raymarching as an alternative renderer, along with a fun physics simulation :)
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11
Unreal Engine 5▲316New imaging technology Transforms Movies Into Video Games
2022 · unrealengine.com · its alternatives →
- 12
Been making this rasterizer engine in C++ for the past few months, now also adding ray-tracing functionality to the system. Simply load a model or generate a mesh, add some lights, and render.
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 13
Hello HN, Just wanted to show this little 2D game engine that I've been working on for some time (around 2 years on the editor part, longer on some of the components). It's quite full featured but obviously this a project of such magnitude already that the work never really ends. That being said it's definitely already at a point where games can made and published. The editor runs natively on Windows and Linux using Qt5. The games can run on both Win and Linux as well as on WASM with WebGL. Feature wise there's a bunch of the stuff you'd expect. Audio, graphics, scripting,…
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
Crown Engine. Contribute to dbartolini/crown development by creating an account on GitHub.
2017 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15
Hello Hacker News! Long time reader but first time poster here... Recently I've been diving into doing mods for Cities: Skylines 2, which been very interesting as it's one of the first games that is using ECS and that I also have a deep interest into. I've mainly used ECS via Bevy before, but this time it's Unity, but many things still work the same way. In order to help myself and other modders to navigate the ECS Systems and Components from the decompiled code, I created this interactive D3 graph. You can click on nodes to "navigate" to that system/component, and once you're zoomed in…
2023 · captain-of-coit.github.io · its alternatives →
- 16
A top-down 2d game engine, written from scratch in under 1000 lines of C. Development of the game based on this engine is streamed on Twitch: https://www.twitch.tv/ryanpcmcquen - ryanpcmcquen/basque
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 17
A 3D game rendered entirely in CSS/HTML. Relying as much as possible on traditional html/css features instead of modern graphic APIs. Supports lighting, shadows, culling, etc. Can you escape the dungeon?
2020 · pantel.is · its alternatives →
- 18
I open sourced my HTML5 multiplayer 3D voxel browser game engine.
2023 · kevzettler.com · its alternatives →
- 19
Render 3D models (OBJ, glTF, GLB, STL, .vox) as ASCII art — in the browser, in React or Vue, or straight in your terminal. A three.js-style API with no WebGL and no canvas: just text in a single <pre>.
Jun 2026 · glyphcss.com · its alternatives →
- 20
toy is a thin and modular c++ game engine that also runs on the web.
2018 · hugoam.github.io · its alternatives →
- 21
A 2D shoot 'em up game made with Go, Ebitengine, and donburi. Featuring ECS (Entity Component System). - m110/airplanes
2022 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 22MP
I have been working on this game somewhat sparsely for the past three years or so. However, it is still in a very early stage, and there is a lot of work to do. One of my friends encouraged me to post about it here, since he felt people might find interesting how I don’t use any libraries for it. The game can be played on a browser by virtue of WebAssembly. There are native ports using either MiniFB or SDL2, but you have to build those yourself. I decided to write the game in C because I feel like it is a simple language that a lot of people can understand well enough, and I didn’t think I…
2023 · zamfofex.neocities.org · its alternatives →
- 23
A liminal brush-based CSG editor and game engine with unified (forward) renderer inspired by Radiant and Worldcraft/Hammer Compact and lightweight (target: Snapdragon 8CX, OpenGL 3.3) Real-time lighting with stencil shadows without the need for pre-baked compilation
Mar 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 24
A CSS 3D engine for the DOM. Renders polygon meshes in HTML by leveraging matrix3d transforms. - GitHub - layoutit/polycss: A CSS 3D engine for the DOM. Renders polygon meshes in HTML by leveraging matrix3d transforms.
Jun 2026 · github.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
- I wrote my own RTS game engine in C alternatives
- I built an indie, browser-based MMORPG alternatives
- Unity like game editor running in pure WASM alternatives
- StratusGFX, my open-source real-time 3D rendering engine alternatives
- Permafrost Engine – OpenGL 3.3 Real Time Strategy Engine in C alternatives
- Open-source shooter which made it to AC: Valhalla and Skydio drones alternatives
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