nowfound

Dev tools · January 10, 2026

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:…

Horizon Engine – C++20 3D FPS Game Engine with ECS and Modern Renderer launched on January 10, 2026 with 5 votes, #3,400 of 14,584 launches that month and more than 75% of that year's launches.

Visit github.com ↗Alternativestop 23% of January 2026

What it does

C++20 3D FPS Game Engine with ECS architecture, OpenGL 4.1 renderer, and action-based input system - jackthepunished/horizon-engine

A modern C++20 game engine built for high-performance graphics and gameplay, featuring a Vulkan Deferred Renderer , Entity-Component-System architecture, and Jolt Physics. I'm building this engine to learn and experiment with modern rendering architecture (Vulkan, Render Graphs, GPU-driven rendering) and engine design patterns. Note : This project is currently in active development. The renderer has been recently migrated from OpenGL to Vulkan . ⟳ Vulkan Deferred Renderer : The rendering backend has been completely rewritten using Vulkan 1.3. It now features a state-of-the-art Deferred Rendering pipeline with G-Buffer, Cascaded Shadow Maps, andfrom github.com

In the maker’s words, at launch

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.…

Does a similar job

all alternatives →
  • I wrote my own RTS game engine in C2021 · github.com · ▲1,102

    An OpenGL RTS game engine written in C. Contribute to eduard-permyakov/permafrost-engine development by creating an account on GitHub.

  • IB
    I built an indie, browser-based MMORPG2024 · alpha.reconquer.online · ▲340

    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…

  • StratusGFX, my open-source real-time 3D rendering engine2023 · github.com · ▲483

    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…

  • Permafrost Engine – OpenGL 3.3 Real Time Strategy Engine in C2018 · github.com · ▲144

    An OpenGL RTS game engine written in C. Contribute to eduard-permyakov/permafrost-engine development by creating an account on GitHub.

  • Open-source shooter which made it to AC: Valhalla and Skydio drones2023 · github.com · ▲270

    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:…

  • Lumix Engine – Open source C++ 3D game engine2017 · github.com · ▲260

    3D C++ Game Engine - yet another open source game engine - nem0/LumixEngine

More dev tools this month

the category →
  • Contribute to oosexgang/hackios-xnu-kernel development by creating an account on GitHub.

    Dev tools · 2d ago · github.com

  • /dev/null▲492

    a social network for devs

    Dev tools · 5d ago · dev-null.sh

  • open-source IDE for thoughtful software design. Contribute to devdotfast/whiteboard development by creating an account on GitHub.

    Dev tools · 30d ago · github.com

  • Contribute to reladraw/reladraw development by creating an account on GitHub.

    Dev tools · 28d ago · github.com

  • OpenBot▲362

    Grok Bot alternative: free, local, open-source, multiplayer

    Dev tools · 25d ago · openbot.run

  • Talanoa▲346

    Hi HN, I’m a fullstack developer, and honestly, I’ve lost count of how many side projects I’ve worked on over the years. But one idea kept coming back to me: a different kind of email client. It first came to me in 2014: “What if we could handle emails more like conversations?” Every year, I’d revisit this concept in my “Build Notes.” Ten years later, no one had built exactly what I had in mind — so I finally decided to do it myself. That’s how Talanoa was born. I wanted something focused on people, not timelines. I was tired of marking messages as unread just to remember to reply later, or…

    Dev tools · 22d ago · talanoa.email

Source: Show HN post ↗ · launch text quoted in part

Launched alongside, January 2026

the whole month →
  • IN

    Hey HN! I wanted to share something I built over the last few weeks: isometric.nyc is a massive isometric pixel art map of NYC, built with nano banana and coding agents. I didn't write a single line of code. Of course no-code doesn't mean no-engineering. This project took a lot more manual labor than I'd hoped! I wrote a deep dive on the workflow and some thoughts about the future of AI coding and creativity: http://cannoneyed.com/projects/isometric-nyc

    AI · Jan 2026 · cannoneyed.com

  • Cowork▲1,088

    Turn Claude into your digital coworker

    AI · Jan 2026 · claude.com

  • DataFast▲867

    Revenue-first analytics

    Growth · Jan 2026 · datafa.st

  • OpenClaw▲836

    The AI that actually does things

    AI · Jan 2026 · openclaw.ai

  • Automatic AI-powered code reviews the moment you open a PR

    Dev tools · Jan 2026 · kilo.ai

  • AI Content Maker, for Social Media Publishing

    AI · Jan 2026 · postsyncer.com