Open Source C++ Game Engines
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C++ Game Engines
View 34 business solutionsBrowse free open source C++ Game Engines and projects below. Use the toggles on the left to filter open source C++ Game Engines by OS, license, language, programming language, and project status.
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Source Engine
Modified source engine (2017) developed by valve and leaked in 2020
The Source Engine repository under that particular GitHub user appears to be a custom (or forked) version of a game engine — likely an engine derived from or inspired by the classic Source engine lineage (or at least the name evokes that lineage). However, publicly-available documentation, community support or clarity about the project’s scope and maturity seems limited: the repo does not clearly advertise a full engine release or wide adoption. As such, it feels more like an experimental or hobby project: potentially a work-in-progress engine or engine-in-progress reimplementation rather than a full production-ready game engine. For a developer, this means you're likely to face missing features, limited tooling, and the need to fill gaps yourself, but also that you have a chance to influence or shape the architecture as you develop. -
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3D game engine (more powerful redesign of the Cube engine) and FPS game
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A game engine for running Ultima7 on modern operating systems, plus a map-editor and other tools for creating your own mods and games.
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Unreal Engine 4/5 Scripting System
Injectable LUA scripting system, SDK generator, live property editor
Lua scripting system platform, C++ Modding API, SDK generator, blueprint mod loader, live property editor and other dumping utilities for UE4/5 games. The goal of UE4SS is not to be a plug-n-play solution that always works with every game. The goal is to have an underlying system that works for most games. -
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Multi Theft Auto: San Andreas
Multi Theft Auto is a game engine
Multi Theft Auto (MTA) is a software project that adds network play functionality to Rockstar North's Grand Theft Auto game series, in which this functionality is not originally found. It is a unique modification that incorporates an extendable network play element into a proprietary commercial single-player PC game. Multi Theft Auto is based on code injection and hooking techniques whereby the game is manipulated without altering any original files supplied with the game. The software functions as a game engine that installs itself as an extension of the original game, adding core functionality such as networking and GUI rendering while exposing the original game's engine functionality through a scripting language. Originally founded back in early 2003 as an experimental piece of C/C++ software, Multi Theft Auto has since grown into an advanced multiplayer platform for gamers and third-party developers. -
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GDevelop
The game engine for everyone
GDevelop is an open-source, cross-platform game development software designed to make creating HTML5 and native games easy for everyone. Experts and novices alike can create their own games with GDevelop as it is fast and easy to learn, requiring no knowledge in a specific programming language. What makes GDevelop unique and so easy to use is its powerful and intuitive event-based system. Events are a powerful way to build up your game logic, without having to learn a programming language. GDevelop also features ready-made behaviors for your game objects, and allows you to create new behaviors through the easy to learn events. And when you're done, you can publish your game just about anywhere-- web, iOS, Android, Windows, Mac, Linux and even Facebook Messenger. Making games has never been easier or faster than with GDevelop! -
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GemRB Game Engine
GemRB is a portable open-source implementation of the Infinity Engine
GemRB (Game engine made with pre-Rendered Background) is a portable open-source implementation of Bioware's Infinity Engine. It was written to support pseudo-3D role playing games based on the Dungeons & Dragons ruleset (Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale series, Planescape: Torment). It should run on GNU/Linux, Microsoft Windows, OS X, possibly other UNIX derivatives and more. It is licensed under the GPL. -
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Amazon Lumberyard
Amazon Lumberyard is a free AAA game engine
Amazon Lumberyard is (or was) a free AAA-capable game engine developed by AWS, with deep integration into AWS cloud services and the Twitch streaming platform. It provided full source access and offered developers tools to build high-quality games and simulations with networking, rendering, physics and cloud backend features built in. The engine allowed game creators to hook into AWS infrastructure for multiplayer services, analytics, voice chat, and more, and leveraged Twitch to build live-stream-enabled experiences. Although Amazon has since archived the repository and transitioned focus to the open-source successor Open 3D Engine (O3DE), the project remains of interest as a large-scale example of cloud-enabled game engine architecture. Developers studying game tech or infrastructure integration can inspect how the engine’s subsystems were designed, including entity/component architectures, rendering pipelines and networked game services. -
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Unity Hub
Every creative journey starts with Unity Hub
With Unity Hub start new projects using powerful templates. You can manage all of your Unity Projects and Editor installations. With a new look, you can customize your workflow, share and collaborate with your team, and more! From the Unity Hub, create and link a Unity Version Control repository to new projects, compare file sources, and link repositories to existing local projects for rapid iteration and collaboration with your team. -
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Solar2D Game Engine
Solar2D Game Engine main repository (ex Corona SDK)
This is a fully open source project that is forked of the well-established and widely used Corona SDK game engine, which is no longer commercially supported. Development is lead by Vlad Shcherban, former technical lead engineer at Corona Labs Inc. If you are using this engine, consider supporting its development. Develop for mobile, desktop, and connected TV devices with just one code base: iOS, tvOS, Android, Android TV, macOS, Windows, Linux, or HTML5. Update your code, save the changes, and instantly see the results in our instant-update Simulator. When you're ready to test on real devices, build and deploy your app just once and then see code/assets update automatically, all over your local network. It's like magic. Select from numerous plugins which extend the Solar2D core for features like in-app advertising, analytics, media, and much more. A vast variety of plugins is available via Solar2D free directory or third party stores, like Solar2D Marketplace and Solar2D Plugins. -
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fheroes2
fheroes2 is a recreation of Heroes of Might and Magic II game engine
fheroes2 is a recreation of the Heroes of Might and Magic II game engine. This open-source multiplatform project, written from scratch, is designed to reproduce the original game with significant improvements in gameplay, graphics and logic (including support for high-resolution graphics, improved AI, numerous fixes and user interface improvements), breathing new life into one of the most addictive turn-based strategy games. You can find a complete list of all of our changes and enhancements in its own wiki page. -
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VCMI Project
Open-source engine for Heroes of Might and Magic III
VCMI is work-in-progress attempt to recreate engine for Heroes III, giving it new and extended possibilities. To use VCMI you need to own original data files. -
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Cocos Engine
Cocos simplifies game creation and distribution with Cocos Creator
The Cocos Engine repository powers the open-source core of Cocos Creator, a cross-platform game engine and editor designed for building 2D and 3D games for web and native targets. It aims to simplify game creation and distribution, with support for high-performance rendering, physics, scene management, asset pipelines, and more. The engine is built using a mix of C++ (for performance-critical systems) and TypeScript/JavaScript (for scripting), enabling developers to script game logic while relying on a robust, high-performance core. Because of its cross-platform nature, games built with cocos-engine (via Cocos Creator) can target mobile, desktop, and web, making it a popular choice for developers wanting flexibility and broad reach. The engine includes extensive tooling and example/demo projects to demonstrate 2D and 3D physics, animation, UI and rendering capabilities. -
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Descent 3
Descent 3 by Outrage Entertainment
The Descent3 repository is the open source release of the Descent 3 game engine by Outrage Entertainment, maintained by the community under the GPL-3.0 license. It provides the full C and C++ engine source code, including the historically significant “1.5” patch that was previously created by developers and later stabilized by fans. The codebase covers the game’s rendering, physics, audio, networking, tools, and editor components, allowing enthusiasts to build, run, and modify the classic 6-degrees-of-freedom space shooter on modern systems. To actually play the game, users must supply their own original game assets, following instructions in the repository’s usage documentation. The project uses CMake and related modern tooling for cross-platform builds, with support for Linux and Windows among other environments. A dedicated community maintains the engine, publishes updated releases, documents internals on a wiki, and coordinates contributions via an active Discord server and GitHub. -
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Flax Engine
Flax Engine, multi-platform 3D game engine
The most agile game engine is now available. Full source code. Full power. Fully featured. Flax Engine is a high-quality modern 3D game engine written in C++ and C#. From stunning graphics to powerful scripts - Flax can give everything for your games. Designed for fast workflow with many ready-to-use features waiting for you right now. Flax Visual Studio extension provides better programming workflow, C# scripts debugging functionality, and allows to attach to running engine instance to debug C# source. Unleash your creativity and be more productive. With Flax you can boost your game development and bring it to another level. We’ve created tools that are slim and agile. No more lagging actions, long importing, or slow compilation. Everything you do as a developer with Flax is meant to be instant. Flax was built up with the idea of giving more power to the creators. Game development tools we create are making this goal possible. -
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Panda3D
Powerful, mature open-source cross-platform game engine for Python
Powerful, mature open-source cross-platform game engine for Python and C++, developed by Disney and CMU. Panda3D is a game engine, a framework for 3D rendering and game development for Python and C++ programs. Panda3D is open-source and free for any purpose, including commercial ventures, thanks to its liberal license. To learn more about Panda3D's capabilities, visit the gallery and the feature list. To learn how to use Panda3D, check the documentation resources. If you get stuck, ask for help from our active community. You can build Panda3D with the Microsoft Visual C++ 2015, 2017, 2019 or 2022 compiler, which can be downloaded for free from the Visual Studio site. You will also need to install the Windows SDK, and if you intend to target Windows Vista, you will also need the Windows 8.1 SDK. -
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Spring RTS Engine
Spring is a free RTS engine developed for Windows, Linux and Mac OS X.
Spring is a versatile 3D RTS game engine. Using extensively Lua for scripting game-specific code to make nearly every aspect of the engine customizable, from GUI, to unit AI, to pathfinding. -
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Luanti
Voxel game-creation platform with easy modding and game creation
Luanti, originally known as Minetest, is a free, open-source voxel game engine and platform designed to let players, modders, and developers build and play diverse sandbox-style 3D worlds. Written in C++ for core performance and Lua for scripting, Luanti runs on multiple operating systems (Windows, macOS, Linux, BSD variants and even Android), making it highly accessible and cross-platform. Rather than being a single game, Luanti is meant as an engine and toolkit: individual “games” are actually collections of mods — written in Lua — that define terrain, items, NPCs, mechanics, and rules. This modular design enables rich customization and community-driven content: users can install new games, mods, and texture packs via a built-in content browser that draws from a central repository (ContentDB). Luanti supports both single-player and multiplayer via servers; players can host their own or join publicly listed ones, with server-side mods being applied automatically. -
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Overload Technologies
3D game engine with lua scripting
Overload is a six-degree-of-freedom (6DoF) shooter game developed by Revival Productions. It serves as a spiritual successor to the classic 'Descent' series, offering intense combat, labyrinthine levels, and a rich sci-fi narrative. Players navigate fully 3D environments, battling robotic adversaries with a variety of weapons, all while experiencing complete freedom of movement in any direction. -
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Redot Engine
Multi-platform 2D and 3D game engine
Redot Engine is an open-source game engine that aims to provide a flexible foundation for building games — likely offering a modern, modular structure so developers can compose only the systems they need (rendering, physics, input, scripting, etc.). It is built to give a base framework rather than a full “batteries-included” engine, which makes it suitable for developers who prefer minimalism, want complete control over architecture, or desire to build custom workflows. Because it’s open-source, Redot-Engine is potentially community-driven, allowing anyone to inspect, extend, or customize core functionalities. Its modularity and open nature make it attractive for indie developers or hobbyists who want to avoid heavyweight engines with lots of built-in assumptions. Even if the engine may not yet rival more mature engines in features or polish, its openness and design philosophy can offer an appealing balance between simplicity and flexibility. -
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openage
Open source clone of the Age of Empires II engine
openage is a free cross-platform RTS game engine that provides the mechanics of Age of Empires. Using modern technologies as C++17, OpenGL/GLSL, Python, Qt5 and CMake allows people using GNU/Linux, BSD, macOS or Windows to play the game natively. Our aim is to make openage a platform for the original Age of Empires games providing the same look and feel, but with more features for modding and multiplayer. openage uses an open API powered by our human-readable configuration language nyan. We implement a client-server architecture with dedicated servers that supports more than 8 players. The overarching system will provide matchmaking, lobbies, server discovery and other community features. openage is a community project that values every contribution, the only requirement is your enthusiasm. Don't hesitate to get in touch with us if you want to help! -
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Jolt Physics
A multi core friendly rigid body physics and collision detection lib
A multi core friendly rigid body physics and collision detection library suitable for games and VR applications, used by Horizon Forbidden West. So why create yet another physics engine? First of all, this has been a personal learning project and secondly I wanted to address some issues that I had with existing physics engines. In games we usually need to do many more things than to simulate the physics world and we need to do this across multiple threads. We therefore place a lot of emphasis on concurrently accessing the physics simulation data outside of the main physics simulation update. Sections of the world can be loaded / unloaded in the background. A batch of physics bodies can be prepared on a background thread without locking or affecting the physics simulation and then inserted into the world all at once with a minimal impact on performance. -
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Doomsday Engine
DOOM / Heretic / Hexen source port with enhanced graphics and UI
A portable game engine for classic first person shooters such as DOOM, Heretic and Hexen. Lets you enjoy the original games using modern technology, including high-resolution OpenGL graphics, 3D models, and dynamic lighting effects. -
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PainTown
Paintown is a 2d fighting game engine.
Paintown is a 2d side scrolling beatem-up engine. Paintown supports game styles similar to the Sega Genesis game, Streets of Rage 2, as well as traditional 1 vs 1 fighting games through an implementation of MUGEN. Many aspects of Paintown are customizable, from the menu system to the levels and players that can be controlled. Paintown is highly portable. So far Paintown can run on Windows, OSX, Linux, BSD, Wii, PS3, Android and other systems. -
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OGRE
scene-oriented, flexible 3D engine (C++, Python, C#, Java)
OGRE (Object-Oriented Graphics Rendering Engine) is a scene-oriented, flexible 3D engine written in C++ designed to make it easier and more intuitive for developers to produce games and demos utilizing 3D hardware. The class library abstracts all the details of using the underlying system libraries like Direct3D and OpenGL and provides an interface based on world objects and other intuitive classes. We consider the results of our GL3Plus RenderSystem as the gold standard. The respective shaders are generated by the RTSS component with per-pixel specular lighting. Therefore the legacy render systems naturally have differences due to the use of fixed-function. However, when rendering diffuse surface both produce pixel-perfect results. Simple, easy to use OO interface designed to minimise the effort required to render 3D scenes, and to be independent of 3D implementation i.e. Direct3D/OpenGL.
