Developer Voices

Building Fyrox: A Rust Game Engine (with Dmitry Stepanov)

Jan 9, 2025

Dmitry Stepanov, an independent game developer known for creating the Fyrox game engine in Rust, dives into his fascinating journey. He discusses the challenges of building a game engine solo, the advantages of Rust, and innovations like hot reloading. Dmitry shares insights on game architecture, scripting, and managing complex UI elements. He also touches on community contributions and the financial aspects of pursuing creative projects, highlighting the passion driving the Fyrox development.

01:43:45

Creator website

Episode guests

Dmitry Stepanov

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Episode notes

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Quick takeaways

Dmitry Stepanov's five-year journey in creating the Fyrox game engine highlights the immense complexity and extensive knowledge required for game engine development.

His choice of Rust over C and C++ for Fyrox stems from the desire for improved memory safety, leading to fewer bugs and enhanced productivity.

The innovative hot-reloading capability in Fyrox's scripting system significantly accelerates development workflows by allowing real-time code updates during gameplay testing.

Deep dives

The Complexity of Building a Game Engine

Building a game engine is an immense and intricate endeavor that encompasses numerous components, including game business logic, networking stacks, rendering engines, and more. Dmitry Stepanov highlights that even with extensive resources, creating a successful game engine is an uncertain proposition, as seen in his own rigorous five-year journey with the Fyrox game engine. He emphasizes the breadth of knowledge required, from graphics programming to game development fundamentals, noting that many developers gain only superficial understandings when using higher-level libraries. Consequently, creating a game engine can lead to a deep comprehension of both game design and computer architecture.

Intro

2min

Journey of Game Engine Development

17min

Game Engine Architecture: Balancing Approaches

20min

Scripting and Hot Reloading in Game Development

16min

Game Engine Development Insights

7min

Navigating UI Complexity in Game Engine Development

20min

Evolution and Challenges of the Fyrox Game Engine Development

3min

Optimizing Game Worlds with World Streaming

4min

Documenting Fyrox: The Game Engine Journey

6min

10.

Navigating Financial Stability During Creative Pursuits

2min

11.

Supporting Fyrox: Community and Development

5min

12.

Exploring Tutorial Preferences and Future Projects

3min

To kick off 2025 we’re looking at Fyrox a game engine built in Rust, largely by one person - Dmitry Stepanov. For an individual project, it’s covered an incredible amount of ground, covering the rendering and animation features you’d expect from a game engine, with some features that might surprise you - like Rust scripting support with hot-reloading.

As we dive into Fyrox, Dmitry explains what it takes to build a game engine, why he chose Rust (and why he’s happy with the choice), and how one person can hope to build a project of that size.

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Fyrox Homepage: https://fyrox.rs/

The Fyrox Book: https://fyrox-book.github.io/

Rapier Physics Engine: https://rapier.rs/

The Mine (on Steam): https://store.steampowered.com/app/898980/The_Mine/

Dmitry’s Engine: https://github.com/mrDIMAS/DmitrysEngine

GJK Collision Detection Algorithm: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gilbert%E2%80%93Johnson%E2%80%93Keerthi_distance_algorithm

WPF: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Windows_Presentation_Foundation

PICO-8: https://www.lexaloffle.com/pico-8.php

Kris on Mastodon: http://mastodon.social/@krisajenkins