Amid the recent turmoil in some of the popular game engine communities, I’ve decided to dive back into C++ and started working on my own game engine project. It’s not intended to replace the engines we currently use for our projects, but who knows where it might lead in the future?

I’ve named the engine “Kemena 3D,” after the river next to our office. Since a game engine involves building worlds and environments, I felt a nature-inspired name was fitting.

Right now, I’m focused on developing the framework, but once that’s in good shape, I definitely plan to work on a level editor. I’m currently using OpenGL 4.5 for the renderer in the engine. You might wonder, why not Vulkan? Well, I did give Vulkan a try initially, but I found it’s still under active development, with many changes across minor version updates, which makes it somewhat unstable for serious use and adds a lot of overhead in terms of maintenance. I don’t have the resources to manage that at the moment. So, for now, I’ll stick with OpenGL and might consider porting it to Vulkan when the time is right.

I’ve already completed several key features of the framework, including:

• A basic scene graph
• FBX mesh loading (skeletal animations aren’t supported yet)
• Various types of lighting (directional lights, point lights, and spot lights)
• Integration of AngelScript (though it’s not linked to any function yet)
• A basic input system built with SDL 2

As the framework progresses, implementing new features is becoming easier. With most of the foundational structure in place, everything is fitting together more seamlessly.

This isn’t actually my first attempt at developing a game engine. Back in 2012, I worked on something similar, though it was more of a simple level editor rather than a full-fledged engine. Unfortunately, I didn’t complete that project. It didn’t win the competition I was participating in, so it wasn’t funded for further development. As a result, I had to set it aside and move on to my first job in the industry.

That’s all for today—just a quick update. Stay tuned for more to come!