Developed a custom game engine in C++ from the ground up, featuring a modular architecture designed for scalability, asset management, and efficient game object composition.
Key Features
- Custom Entity Component System (ECS).
- Generic resource management system with asset caching.
- Centralised engine core handling update and render loops.
- Modular, extensible architecture for adding new engine features.
Technical Highlights
- Designed a custom Entity Component System (ECS) where entities are lightweight containers and behaviour is composed through reusable components (e.g. Mesh Renderer, Audio, Collision), avoiding deep inheritance hierarchies.
- Implemented polymorphic component updates using virtual methods, allowing the engine core to process all component types through a unified update loop.
- Used weak pointers for safe communication between entities and the engine core without creating ownership cycles.
- Built a templated resource manager that loads assets once and caches them by type and file path, significantly reducing loading times and memory usage.
- Demonstrated resource sharing by loading a single mesh instance for multiple game objects (e.g. nine enemy instances sharing one mesh).
Reflection
This project strengthened my understanding of engine architecture, object lifetime management, generic programming, and data-driven design. Future improvements include expanding the resource system to support textures, shaders, audio, and materials, alongside introducing dedicated rendering and physics systems.