helios

Devlog

• helios: Design and prototypical implementation of a C++ game framework
  November 10, 2025 by GarageCraft Games#gamedev, #indiedev, #gameengine, #cpp, #indiegames, #softwarearchitecture, #framework

  I’ve published an accompanying technical report on my game framework helios that outlines the key architectural decisions behind the prototype and discusses its further development. The report exami... Continue reading

  
• Just make it exist first!
  October 19, 2025 by GarageCraft Games#helios, #gameengine, #devlog, #cpp, #rendering, #renderqueue, #pipeline, #indiedev, #indiegame, #gameprogramming

  As announced in a previous post , the past weeks were used to make significant progress in refining the architecture of the rendering pipeline. One of the key updates introduces the Scene Graph and th... Continue reading
• Onwards to the rendering model
  September 28, 2025 by GarageCraft Games#cpp, #gamedev, #indiedev, #gameengine, #enginedev, #opengl

  The first abstractions for the rendering model have found their way into helios , and the first example application has already rendered its first primitives onto the screen (aka the Hello World! of 3... Continue reading

  
• Event Queue and Application Controllers
  September 22, 2025 by GarageCraft Games#helios, #devlog, #game engine, #cpp, #software design, #architecture, #indiedev, #gamedev

  The endless tale of yet-another-framework I feel that I’ve spent most of my recent time with refactoring, restructuring, and developing throwaway prototypes that get discarded every weekend - and th... Continue reading
• From Camera- to Clip-Space, to NDCs and z-Fighting
  September 17, 2025 by GarageCraft Games#opengl, #helios, #game engine, #linear algebra, #math, #computer graphics, #perspective projection, #indiedev, #gamedev

  As a follow-up to my article on Model Matrix Rotations , I’m continuing my exploration of the OpenGL rendering pipeline’s mathematical foundations. This new article examines projection matrices, o... Continue reading

  
• Updates to main()
  September 14, 2025 by GarageCraft Games#indiedev, #gamedev, #programming, #tick, #softwaredesign, #engine, #devlog, #indiegame, #game engine

  In the spirit of yesterday’s refactoring efforts… main() serves as a great example of yesterday’s restructuring in practice: The OpenGLDevice is created, then passed to a GLFWApplication which m... Continue reading
• The Great Modular Restructuring
  September 13, 2025 by GarageCraft Games#c++, #indiedev, #coding, #programming, #game engine, #helios, #gamedev, #architecture, #software design

  Subsystems, subsystems, subsystems! The last few days have seen some restructuring in the helios codebase , with namespaces and modules being reorganized. This was mainly driven by a clearer definitio... Continue reading
• Layer Abstraction initiated
  September 08, 2025 by GarageCraft Games#indiegame, #indiedev, #programming, #gamedev, #cpp, #domain driven design

  This time, there will be no Feature Creep - I promise! From Vertex to MeshData to device-specific Meshes - over the weekend, I took a sidestep from the math lib to focus on the architectural planning... Continue reading
• inb4 Clip Space
  September 06, 2025 by GarageCraft Games#indiedev, #gamedev, #programming, #cpp, #lookat, #matrix, #linear algebra

  helios now implements core vector operations, including subtraction for directional calculations, dot product for scalar projections, and cross product for normal vector computation and creating ortho... Continue reading
• Model Matrix: Rotations
  September 02, 2025 by GarageCraft Games#linear algebra, #math, #3dgraphics, #computer graphics, #helios, #game engine, #model, #matrix

  As a follow-up to my article on Model Matrices , which describes the connection to change-of-coordinates matrices, I’ve found the time to revisit the topic. I’ve written a new article about matrix... Continue reading

  
• Establishing the Transformation Library
  August 31, 2025 by GarageCraft Games#indiedev, #enginedev, #gamedev, #indie, #helios, #helios engine, #3dmath, #cpp

  This weekend’s development on the helios engine centered on finalizing transformation logic within helios.math . The transformation functions translate , rotate , scale were implemented within helio... Continue reading

  
• CMake has entered the chat
  August 28, 2025 by GarageCraft Games#devlog, #cmake, #pimpl, #pointertoimplementation, #cpp, #c++, #indiegames, #gamedev

  Over the weekend, I focused on refactoring mat4 and vec3. Additionally, I’ve made some adjustments to my toolset. Refactoring and Benchmarking: helios.math.core I took the time to refactor vec3 and... Continue reading

  
• Model Matrix: Transformations
  August 26, 2025 by GarageCraft Games#indiedev, #gamedev, #solodev, #cpp, #programming, #linear algebra, #computer graphics, #indiegames

  As I was working on porting the rotation matrices for the helios.math.transform library, I took a detour to formalize the underlying linear algebra. My goal was to move beyond treating the rotational... Continue reading

  
• Sundays are for constexpr
  August 17, 2025 by GarageCraft Games#devlog, #c++, #cpp, #engine, #development, #modules

  For a game engine, the first step isn’t rendering a scene or simulating complex physics; it’s laying the foundational bricks. This weekend, I dove headfirst into that foundation for my personal C+... Continue reading