EppoEngine

EppoEngine is a C++20 game engine and editor for Windows and Linux, with Vulkan rendering and .NET 10 scripting.

Prerequisites

• Python 3.
• Vulkan SDK with dxc; set VULKAN_SDK to the SDK root.
• .NET SDK 10; set DOTNET_ROOT to the SDK root.
• CTest 3.21 or newer. CTest is used directly and does not configure or build Eppo.
• Windows: Visual Studio 2022 or 2026 with the Desktop development with C++ workload.
• Linux: clang, clang++, uuid-dev for building Premake, and the X11/OpenGL development packages required by GLFW. Ubuntu distributes CTest in the cmake package, though Eppo does not use CMake to generate or build:

sudo apt install clang cmake uuid-dev libxinerama-dev libxcursor-dev xorg-dev libglu1-mesa-dev pkg-config

Setup uses Premake 5.0.0-beta8 and vcpkg from the system when available. It checks VCPKG_ROOT and then PATH for vcpkg, and checks PATH for the exact Premake version. Missing Premake or vcpkg can be cloned and built locally under .eppo/ only after permission is granted. Ninja 1.6 or newer must already be available on Linux. Eppo's installed vcpkg dependency tree is shared by all configurations per host under build/vcpkg_installed/<System>; vcpkg keeps its downloads, build trees, packages, and binary cache in its own configured locations.

Generate build files

On Windows, setup asks whether to generate Visual Studio 2022 or Visual Studio 2026 files. MSVC is the default compiler; pass --compiler clang to use Clang instead. Ninja is supported on Linux only.

Scripts\Setup.bat

Linux defaults to Ninja and Clang:

sh Scripts/setup.sh

Setup generates EppoEngine.sln for Visual Studio 2022, EppoEngine.slnx for Visual Studio 2026, or Linux build.ninja at the repository root. The Visual Studio solution groups the real C# projects under EppoScriptCore; those projects expose Debug and Release, with solution Dist mapped to managed Release. Visual Studio project files are generated in their project directories; Premake beta8's Ninja project files sit beside the root build.ninja. Generated build files can be opened or built directly; there is no build wrapper.

After the first setup, regenerate the build files without reprovisioning tools or reconciling the vcpkg manifest with Scripts\GenerateBuildFiles.bat on Windows or sh Scripts/generatebuildfiles.sh on Linux. It reuses the action, compiler, Premake and vcpkg root recorded in .eppo/build.json, so it never prompts; --action and --compiler still override the recorded values.

For Visual Studio, open the generated EppoEngine solution and build the desired project and configuration. Visual Studio builds the real C# projects directly. For Ninja:

ninja EppoEditor_Debug_x64
ninja EppoEngineTesting_Debug_x64

Binaries are written to build/bin/<Configuration>-<System>-x86_64/<Project> and intermediates to build/intermediate/<Configuration>-<System>-x86_64/<Project>.

Remove all setup and build outputs, including locally provisioned tools, with:

On Windows run Scripts\Clean.bat; on Linux run sh Scripts/clean.sh.

Tests

Premake writes standalone CTest manifests alongside each configuration. After building the test target:

ctest --test-dir build/bin/Debug-linux-x86_64 --output-on-failure
ctest --test-dir build/bin/Debug-linux-x86_64 --label-exclude graphical

On Windows, replace linux with windows. Graphical suites require a display and Vulkan-capable GPU.

Editor

Run the editor with EppoEditor/ as its working directory so it reads Resources/ and Projects/ from the source tree:

cd EppoEditor
../build/bin/Debug-linux-x86_64/EppoEditor/EppoEditor "path/to/MyProject.epproj"

On Windows the executable has an .exe suffix and the output directory contains windows. Without an explicit project path, the editor opens Projects/Test/Test.epproj.

Every game project contains its own premake5.lua. Generating that file creates a project-local solution which references the existing scripts .csproj; Visual Studio builds the C# project directly.