RENKEI Engine

RENKEI Engine by AtomicTorch Studio

RENKEI Engine

RENKEI Engine is a powerful multipurpose game engine designed for rapid game development. It is developed in-house for our own projects to be a powerful tool for client-server game development geared towards multiplayer/massively multiplayer cross-platform games.

It is powered by .NET Core 3.1. The Client part of RENKEI Engine utilizes MonoGame framework for the easier development of 2D games but it could be paired with any game framework or game engine that has C# bindings (such as Unity, CryEngine, etc).

The primary philosophy behind RENKEI Engine is to focus the development on implementing the actual gameplay and UI code with C# while minimizing any interruptions during the development process. Therefore the engine is designed to allow live/hot-reloading of any game code and assets (textures, models, audio, C# scripts, XAML UI markup, etc.) without recompilation or other interruptions. CryoFall, the game using this game engine, has a public Github repository with over 520 thousand lines of code and hundrends of asset files, all of which are able to reload quickly to ensure fast iteration during the development.

The title of the engine is based on Japanese words 連携 renkei (cooperation, coordination, link) and 遠景 enkei (perspective, vista).

Features Highlights

Below is a list of the features we think are the most important and differentiate RENKEI Engine from other software tools currently available. However, this list is in no way exhaustive. Hopefully, we can provide more detailed documentation and description at a later date.

• Live editing: No recompilation or asset reloading needed during development/modding. You can edit and debug the code and add or replace assets liveΓÇöthe engine will detect the file change and immediately reload/recompile it (C# scripts, textures, models, audio, XAML UI markup, etc.). You don't even need to stop your debug session!

• Networking: RENKEI Engine implementation of client-server intercommunication provides the best performance and lowest throughput and at the same time it's very easy to develop and configure. The game engine utilizes Reliable UDP implementation to avoid traffic hiccups and minimize network lags. It also allows to prioritize the most-important commands with easy-to-use declarative syntax.

• Server-based architecture: in the case of multiplayer games the authoritative game server architecture makes most of the usual forms of client-side cheating impossible. Meanwhile, game client can use all the required lag-prediction techniques to keep gameplay smooth and responsive.

• Transparent communication: RENKEI Engine blurs the line between the client and server sides. Networking was always considered as one of the hardest part of game development requiring enormous amount of effort to develop and debug. We addressed this in many ways, some of which include: smart auto-replication of synchronized objects, easy-to-use bulletproof RPC (with async-await support on both sides), unified console presenting client and server logs side-by-side with clear sequence of events. Effectively it means that the development of multiplayer game isn't much more difficult than developing a single-player game. The engine will take care of all the difficult parts.

• Data-driven vector-based UI: UI is implemented by using NoesisGUI, which is a cross-platform vector-based UI library utilizing XAML markup to declaratively define UI elements and their style. It uses C# language for programming and promotes ultimately effective MVVM-pattern for data binding. It's an evolution of UI technology used at WPF/UWP-applications, but with cross-platform support and specially tailored for video games to ensure smooth performance and perfect rendering quality. You could use variety of tools for live-editing and previewing XAML like Microsoft Visual Studio, Blend, and JetBrains Rider.

• Modding: Modding is easier. Modding is fun. Both, the game core data as well as mods are treated the same by the engine. All gameplay-related C# code and assets (including UI) are stored in the "Core.cpk" or "whatever_mod_name.mpk" files which are simple zip archives or folders on the hard drive. The game could load any number of such archives or folders expanding the available game data and logic. Powerful asset management and overriding is also possible. This allows for extremely easy mod creation, including total conversions. Modding tools are also integrated (no external tools required) into the game engine itself which aids in debugging of the mods or the core game.

• Graceful degradation: How often do you see the game crashing during development or modding? And then long and frustrating recovery process, when you're restarting the game, loading latest game world save, repeating your actions... It wastes your time and kills productivity, it literally ejects you from the creative flow. With live-editing philosophy in mind, RENKEI Engine lets you avoid all these issues. It gracefully handles all situations like an unhandled exceptions in scripting or missing assets. In the worst case scenario the engine will simply suspend the game cycle and report about the problem, clearly indicating about the faulty components and directing you right to the specific source code line if needed. After you fix the problem with the code or another issueΓÇösimply switch back to the game. If everything is fine it will automatically resume the game cycle. And you also can revert to the previous game data states by using hotkeys.

• Multiplatform support: Currently the engine can be built for Windows, Mac and Linux, but at later stage we might include mobile and console support as well.

Games

CryoFallΓÇöthe first game made with RENKEI Engine (development blog, game website).

Other

If you have any questions regarding the RENKEI Engine or if you are interested in licensing itΓÇöplease feel free to contact us via the forums or our contact form.