Ares Engine
A free and open source game engine for the indie space.
Ares Engine
A free and open source game engine for the indie space.
Load fast... run fast... play fast... with less weight.
Ares Engine is designed to present a minimal footprint for your game to load and run with. Less weight means less memory needs, less time to launch your game, and less disk space requirements. It can also lead to optimal memory use for assets, both in the CPU and the GPU.
Use the engine that is easy to understand.
Ares Engine's design lays out scene data for optimal access, but not at the expense of easy comprehension. Documents explain how the scene data is stored in both the CPU and the GPU, and how systems process them at various stages of the game loop. Compute shaders are used to leverage the massive parallel processing of modern GPUs, but not in hidden or intimidating ways. Both game developers and game engine developers will find the engine easy to work with under the hood.
Build the fun factor and play out your campaign with a shooter first engine.
Ares Engine is designed exclusively for developing first person shooter games with open world support. And while the design itself is tuned specifically for performing at scale for 3D shooters in open worlds, you are certainly free to build an off label genre game of your choosing with Ares Engine.
Games should look and feel like games, not simulators.
If you want to render photo realistic images, Ares Engine is not the engine for you. Ares Engine is a game engine, built from the ground up with the philosophy that games should look, feel, and play like games, not simulators. Ares Engine offers a targeted rendering framework with support for PBR diffuse materials.
Limited platform support.
If you want to build a game for a mobile device, Ares Engine is not the engine for you. Ares Engine's code base is kept small, focused, and clean by the decision to target only PC platforms (Windows, Linux) and an architecture that should readily lend to studios to extend support to console platforms (Xbox, Play Station, Switch) under their NDAs with the consoles' manufacturers. Mobile device support does not clutter the code base.
Use the engine designed specifically for use by its creator.
Ares Engine is not "yet another 3D game engine". Ares Engine is the answer to its creator's dream to build a performant, light weight, open world 3D shooter trilogy. All requirements for the engine are laid down specifically to make those games a reality.
About Ares Engine
Ares Engine includes a rendering system using the Vulkan API, a foundation for open world streaming assets support, and the integration of the prestigious Jolt Physics Library. With these pieces in place, Ares Engine has a successful path forward. While there will always be tasks for improving the engine, none represent difficult problems to overcome.
The engine is built exclusively for a trilogy of first person shooter games. Around the time of release of the first title, the code base for the engine will be made publicly available as free and open source software through a GitHub repository as the author's way of giving back to the community.