Odyssey Engine

A custom 3D game engine in C++23 with a separate C#/WPF editor. The editor communicates with the engine over a local socket, allowing the engine to be restarted independently if it crashes without taking down the editor.

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Overview

Engine (C++23)

A standalone runtime that owns the window, the renderer, and the world.

• Rendering
• ECS
• Components & modules
• Reflection & serialization
• Resources
• Editor bridge

Editor (C#, .NET 10)

A native WPF desktop application built on a clean, layered architecture.

• Domain / Application / UI
• MVVM
• Panels
• Services
• Engine connection

How the embedding works

When the workspace opens, the editor:

1. Launches the engine process headless (-hide) on a chosen port.
2. Sends a get_viewport request and receives the engine window's native handle (HWND).
3. Reparents that window into a WPF HwndHost, restyles it as a child window, and keeps it sized to the panel.

The result is a single editor window with the real, live C++ OpenGL viewport rendering inside it.

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Tech stack

Area	Choice
Engine language	C++23
Graphics	OpenGL 4.6 core, GLAD, GLFW, GLM
Serialization	nlohmann/json
Engine build	CMake + Ninja, MSVC 2022
Editor language	C# / .NET 10
Editor UI	WPF, MVVM (CommunityToolkit.Mvvm)
DI / hosting	Microsoft.Extensions.Hosting
Engine ↔ editor	TCP, length-prefixed JSON (RPC + events)
Task runner	just

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Prerequisites

Windows-only - the editor uses WPF and native HWND reparenting, and the engine builds with MSVC.

• Visual Studio 2022 Build Tools (MSVC toolchain) - winget install Microsoft.VisualStudio.2022.BuildTools
• Ninja - winget install Ninja-build.Ninja
• just - winget install Casey.Just
• .NET 10 SDK (for the editor) - winget install Microsoft.DotNet.SDK.10
• Python 3 with libclang (for the reflection code generator) - pip install libclang

CMake fetches other packages automatically on first configure.

Setup

Set the path to your VsDevCmd.bat in justconfig.json.

Build & run

Build engine:

Create new project:

just new-project {parent_directory} {project_name}

Build project and run editor:

just build-and-run {parent_directory}/{project_name}

Modify codebase

Open {parent_directory}/{project_name} in VS Code.

Rebuild & release

There are buttons in the top right corner of the editor that allow rebuilding codebase and packaging project into usable output directory.