luxe
A lovingly crafted
cross platform game engine
About
luxe is a cross platform, rapid development game engine to make games for Mac, Linux, Windows, and Web, with console support in development.
luxe is an easy to learn game engine for making 2D or 3D games. As an engine it prioritizes design and workflow for rapidly expressing ideas.
Designed as a 2D first engine, luxe aims to provide a strong 2D toolset ready to make games. This applies whether it's a one hour or one+ year project.
Beyond the 2D layer lives a powerful but accessible hardware driven renderer, with great support for shaders, asset pipelines, render paths and more.
This allows 3D rendered games to use luxe all the same.
luxe itself is written in c++, although luxe games will usually be made in a custom version of the Wren programming language. Later, any language that can interact with C can be used.
Read on further for more details about luxe!
Made by a game studio
luxe is used to make games by the engine developers directly.
We've always believed an engine is driven by real world use, so we made a game studio around it because that's what makes sense to us. We're making Mossfield Origins and Mossfield Archives.
We're a diverse game studio with a strong vision for good community, sustainable business, empowered workers and empowering more voices to create games.
Development updates
Sign up for the luxe mailing list
Don't miss when luxe becomes available!
We'll only email for important development news or access.
Join the community
Visit the 'create with luxe' community.
You can also join the discord.
Read the latest dev logs
Most recent - a series on using luxe:
dev log #11 - modifiers
dev log #12 - custom modifiers
dev log #13 - scenes
dev log #14 - projects
Development status
luxe is now available in soft launch mode!
This means it's available to preview, but we're still ramping up to an announcement. The docs and all details can be viewed below:
Design philosophy
Modular
A tightly designed core engine with a module system ensures a lightweight yet expressive set of tools.
Fluid
The heart of luxe is rapid iteration and expression of intent. These are design pillars, because workflow matters.
For humans
Built by people that make games with it, luxe cares about the people that are using it day to day.
Workflow
The luxe editor is optional?
luxe is for solo developers as well as teams, so while it provides a great code based workflow, it is not limited to code only.
editors and tools enhance the luxe workflow, which empowers artists, designers and programmers in the expression of ideas, and rapid game development.
The editor is designed for game specifics, just like the rest of the engine, so custom/project editors are easy, and shareable via modules.
editors help to build worlds, animation, ui and more
Tools, not features
worlds, modifiers, entities and systems
Games are a diverse medium with unique challenges. luxe makes the distinction between tools and features explicit, and builds around tools as a core principle.
This frees the engine from being bloated by things a fraction of games want, and instead aims to empower games to be specific, adaptive and exact. At runtime, you only pay for what you use.
By combining systems both high and low level, luxe is like a toolbox, and a game is the connection of these into a whole.
When configuring a type of project to reuse (like a 2D platformer or 3D first person project), luxe provides outlines, which jump start projects into predefined workflows. Outlines are where custom workflows are defined above the engine level.
luxe provides pieces that snap together,
ready to make games
Rendering for everyone
luxe is powered by an easy to learn but highly flexible renderer
Games can have unique needs, and game specific choices. luxe allows games to choose the best suited rendering style for their world, and offers high level interaction from the game.
With a full abstraction over portable backends, a new shading language designed with the luxe philosophy, and a scripted pipeline driven workflow, rendering is right at home in luxe.
Rendering is a complex field where fast iteration is important, and experiments can be done quickly and easily. luxe aims for that, and to be approachable, so that beginners can learn foundations without starting from scratch.
Modular by design
luxe is built around a modular package system
luxe has a rich set of systems ready to make games, but it couldn't possibly provide all systems that all different types of games need, without becoming bloated or unfocused.
When the engine doesn't provide something, it's often by design. Modules serve this need by providing a way for you to expand the tools and systems that are available to you when making games. Modules also provide ways to use other programming languages.
This modularity is a fundamental part of luxe,
even the luxe API itself is a module.
Read the luxe blog
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