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https://github.com/panosk92/spartanengine

A game engine with an emphasis on real-time cutting-edge solutions
https://github.com/panosk92/spartanengine

atmospheric-scattering bindless bsdf car-simulation cpp ecs fsr game-engine global-illumination imgui livestream physx shadow-mapping spartan ssao ssr taa vulkan xess

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A game engine with an emphasis on real-time cutting-edge solutions

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README 

          


  Spartan Engine






  A research-focused game engine built for experimentation and pushing the boundaries of real-time rendering






  Build Status

  Discord

  License






  Discord •

  X •

  Wiki •

  Issues




---



## 🎯 The Vision



Spartan Engine has been in development for **10+ years**, evolving from a personal learning project into an active community of **600+ members** on Discord—including industry professionals sharing knowledge and exploring cutting-edge technology.



**There's a destination that gives all this tech a purpose.** Curious? **[Read the plan →](https://github.com/PanosK92/SpartanEngine/blob/master/plan.md)**



---



## 🎬 See It In Action



[![Engine Trailer](https://raw.githubusercontent.com/PanosK92/SpartanEngine/master/.github/images/video_promo.png)](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TMZ0epSVwCk)



---



## 🌍 Worlds






Launch the engine and choose from a selection of default worlds. Each is physics-enabled—walk around, pick up objects with your mouse, or take a car for a spin.







### Forest






The most demanding world: **256 million** procedurally generated grass blades (inspired by Ghost of Tsushima), spanning **64.1 km²** covered with thousands of trees and rocks.



### More Worlds



| Sponza 4K | Subway |

|:-:|:-:|

| 
Classic Dubrovnik building—ideal for path tracing | 
Emissive materials & GI testing |



| Minecraft | Liminal Space |

|:-:|:-:|

| 
A familiar blocky world | 
Reality shifts to a nearby frequency |



| Showroom | [The Plan](plan.md) |

|:-:|:-:|

| 
Clean showcase—no experimental tech | 
A neon-soaked city, built to push the engine toward real-time path-traced driving through rain-slicked streets at 60fps, that's the plan. |



---



## ⚙️ Features



### Rendering



Renderer Architecture, Fully Bindless, GPU-Driven



Spartan's renderer is built around a single principle: **the GPU owns the data**. Every resource (geometry, materials, textures, lights, transforms, AABBs) lives in persistent, globally accessible buffers. There are no per-draw descriptor set updates, no per-draw resource binding, and no CPU-side draw loops. The result is one of the most aggressively bindless renderers in any open-source engine.



- **Zero-binding draw path**, all per-draw data (transforms, previous-frame transforms, material indices, transparency flags) is stored in a single bindless storage buffer, push constants carry only a 4-byte index into it, keeping the entire push constant footprint at 80 bytes

- **Single global vertex and index buffer** for all geometry, inspired by id Tech, the CPU never re-binds geometry between draws

- **GPU-driven indirect rendering**, a compute shader performs frustum and occlusion culling entirely on the GPU, emitting a compacted indirect argument buffer, the CPU issues a single `DrawIndexedIndirectCount` per pass, replacing thousands of individual draw calls

- **Bindless materials, lights, and samplers**, material parameters, textures, light data, and samplers are all accessed through global descriptor arrays with no per-object binding

- **Uber shaders**, minimal pipeline state object (PSO) permutations eliminate draw call state changes and keep the pipeline count low

- **Universal HLSL**, all shaders are written once in HLSL and compiled for both Vulkan (via SPIR-V) and DirectX 12

- **Tightly packed 10-byte instance format** for hundreds of millions of instances (procedural grass, foliage)

- **On-the-fly GPU mip generation** (FidelityFX SPD) **and texture compression** (FidelityFX Compressonator), assets are processed on the GPU at load time, not baked offline

- **Unified deferred rendering with transparency**, opaque and transparent surfaces share the same BSDF and render path, no separate forward pass



Lighting and Global Illumination



- **ReSTIR path tracing**, reservoir-based spatiotemporal resampling for real-time multi-bounce global illumination

- **Ray-traced reflections and shadows** via hardware ray queries

- **Atmospheric scattering** with real-time filtering and image-based lighting with bent normals

- **Screen-space shadows** (inspired by Days Gone) and **ambient occlusion** (XeGTAO with visibility bitfield)

- **Shadow map atlas** with fast filtering and penumbra estimation

- **Volumetric fog** with temporal reprojection



Performance and Upscaling



- **GPU-driven frustum and occlusion culling** (Hi-Z), the CPU never touches per-object visibility

- **Variable rate shading** and **dynamic resolution scaling**

- **Upscaling** with Intel XeSS 2 and AMD FSR 3

- **Temporal anti-aliasing**

- **Custom breadcrumbs** for GPU crash tracing and post-mortem debugging



Camera and Post-Processing



- Physically based camera with auto-exposure

- Physical light units (lumens and kelvin)

- Tonemappers, ACES, AgX, Gran Turismo 7 (default)

- HDR10 output

- FXAA, bloom, motion blur, depth of field, chromatic aberration



### Car Simulation



One of the most realistic out-of-the-box car simulations available. Physics runs at **200Hz** for precise tire and suspension response.



Full Simulation Details



| System | Features |

|--------|----------|

| **Tires** | Pacejka magic formula, combined slip, load sensitivity, temperature model, camber thrust, relaxation length, multiple surfaces (asphalt, concrete, wet, gravel, grass, ice) |

| **Suspension** | 7-ray contact patch per wheel, spring-damper with bump/rebound split, anti-roll bars, camber/toe alignment, bump steer |

| **Drivetrain** | Piecewise engine torque curve, 7-speed gearbox (auto/manual), rev-match downshifts, LSD with preload, turbo with wastegate, engine braking |

| **Brakes** | Thermal model (cold/optimal/fade zones), front/rear bias, ABS with configurable slip threshold |

| **Aerodynamics** | Drag with frontal/side area, front/rear downforce, ground effect, yaw-dependent forces, pitch-dependent balance, rolling resistance |

| **Steering** | Ackermann geometry, high-speed reduction, non-linear response, self-aligning torque |

| **Assists** | ABS, traction control, handbrake lock |

| **Input** | Controllers with analog throttle/brake/steering, haptic feedback (tire slip, ABS, drifting) |

| **Camera** | GT7-inspired chase camera with speed-based dynamics and orbit controls |

| **Debug** | Raycast, suspension, and aero force visualization with telemetry logging |



### General



- **Scripting**: Lua 5.4 scripting with full engine API access (entities, components, math, physics, audio)

- **Input**: Keyboard, mouse, controllers, steering wheels

- **Physics**: Comprehensive PhysX integration

- **Profiling**: CPU & GPU profiling tools

- **Data**: XML support, thread pool, entity-component and event systems

- **File Formats**: 10+ fonts, 30+ images, 40+ models



---



## 🚀 Getting Started



### Building



One-click project generation—see the **[Building Guide](https://github.com/PanosK92/SpartanEngine/wiki/Building)** for details.



### Learning the Engine



Start with **[Game.cpp](https://github.com/PanosK92/SpartanEngine/blob/master/source/runtime/Game/Game.cpp)**, it shows how default worlds are loaded and is the best entry point for understanding the engine's structure. For gameplay scripting, check out the **[Lua Scripting Guide](https://github.com/PanosK92/SpartanEngine/blob/master/scripting.md)**, it covers the full API, lifecycle callbacks, and examples.



---



## 🎙️ Podcast



  

    

    

      Exploring the tech world and beyond



      Meeting the brightest minds across cutting-edge industries.



      📺 Watch on YouTube


      🎧 Listen on Spotify

    

  



---



## 🤝 Community & Support



### Contributing



Contributors get access to **[exclusive perks](https://github.com/PanosK92/SpartanEngine/wiki/Perks-of-a-contributor)** designed to accelerate learning and skill development.



**[Read the Contributing Guide →](https://github.com/PanosK92/SpartanEngine/blob/master/contributing.md)**



### Sponsorship



I cover the costs for Dropbox hosting to ensure library and asset bandwidth is available. If you enjoy running a single script and having everything download, compile, and work seamlessly, please consider **[becoming a sponsor](https://github.com/sponsors/PanosK92)**. Direct sponsorship helps more than Discord boosts—it goes directly into maintaining and improving the project.



---



## 🏆 Projects Using Spartan



| Project | Description |

|---------|-------------|

| **University Thesis** | Originally created as a learning project and portfolio piece during university at [University of Thessaly](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/University_of_Thessaly) with Professor [Fotis Kokkoras](https://ds.uth.gr/en/staff-en/faculty-en/kokkoras/) |

| **Godot Engine** | Integrates Spartan's TAA ([view source](https://github.com/godotengine/godot/blob/37d51d2cb7f6e47bef8329887e9e1740a914dc4e/servers/rendering/renderer_rd/shaders/effects/taa_resolve.glsl#L2)) |

| **S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Anomaly** | Rendering addon using Spartan's source ([ModDB](https://www.moddb.com/mods/stalker-anomaly/addons/screen-space-shaders)) |

| **Programming Book** | Jesse Guerrero's [beginner programming book](https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0CXG1CMNK) features Spartan's code and community |



**Using code from Spartan?** [Reach out](https://twitter.com/panoskarabelas), I'd love to showcase your project!



---



## 📄 License



**[MIT License](https://github.com/PanosK92/SpartanEngine/blob/master/license.md)** — free to use with attribution.