Why an Engine?

So, you might wonder why, out of all the projects I could have built, I chose a “game” engine?

Well, I don’t really intend to make a full game. I want to build a Graphics Playground.

I want to test rendering techniques, understand how modern games render a frame in 16ms (that’s 60 FPS for those struggling with time units), and see how math and physics come together to create pixels. I love seeing the code I write directly impact what appears on screen. I also love optimizing things, so it only feels right to target real-time rendering, not offline rendering.

The Tech Stack: Why make it hard?

You might ask: “Why Rust and Vulkan? Why not just use Unity?“

1. Vulkan

It is the industry standard. It receives constant updates and demands that the programmer actually understands the graphics pipeline, rather than just moving arrays around and calling it a day.

• Note: I already used OpenGL for a previous project. I’ll likely reference that work at some point in the future.

2. Rust & Cargo

Yes, Rust is a beautiful language. It provides memory safety without the overhead of Garbage Collection (looking at you, Java) and without the segfaults of manual management (looking at you, C/C++).

But the real reason? Cargo. I could have used C++, carefully managing pointers and RAII. But C++ does not have the greatest package manager ever created. I like to solve problems and create things; I do NOT like spending 3 hours telling CMake where my libraries are or debugging a Makefile.

The Goal

This project (and some parts of this documentation) will serve as my Bachelor’s Thesis.

A Note on Timing

Yes, it is quite early to worry about my thesis. But since an engine is a complex beast, I decided to kill two birds with one stone.

I plan to start development a day or two after writing this, taking a hard-earned rest after finals week.

Along the way, I will explain why things are the way they are. I’ll break down how the engine works behind the scenes—from the math of a dot product to the rasterization of a triangle.

So, even if you don’t care about my specific engine, if you want to learn the concepts behind Graphics Programming, you are in the right place. I will also include interactive visualizers to help you actually see the math.

I will try to make these explanations as accessible as I can, so even if you have no prior experience with graphics, you will still understand most (if not all) of it.

So, without further ado, let’s get started!