Cross-API-Engine

Cross-API-Engine is a fully modular and plugin-oriented engine architecture designed to decouple every subsystem into independently loadable runtime modules. Rather than focusing only on graphics API abstraction, the objective is to create an engine where every component can be swapped, extended, or replaced without modifying core code. This enables rapid experimentation, platform portability, performance benchmarking, and true freedom in engine architecture research.

Architecture Diagram

Supported Platforms

Platform	Compiler	Build system	Status
Windows	MSVC (Visual Studio 2026 / 18.x)	MSBuild / Ninja	✅
Linux	GCC ≥ 13	Ninja / Make	✅
MacOS	GCC ≥ 13 / Clang	Ninja / Make	✅
iOS			❌
tvOS			❌
Android			❌
Web			❌

Quick Start

Prerequisites

Make sure you have the following dependencies installed on your system:

Build (UNIX: Linux, macOS)

cmake -S . -G "Ninja" -B cmake-build-release -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

cmake --build cmake-build-release --config Release

Build (Windows)

cmake -S . -G "Visual Studio 18 2026" -A "x64" -B cmake-build-release -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release

cmake --build cmake-build-release --config Release

Run

./cmake-build-release/bin/cae -h          
Usage: cae [options]
 
Options:
  -h, --help              Show this help message
  -v, --version           Show version information
  -c, --config <path>     Specify JSON configuration file

Documentation

Online Doxygen documentation: Full engine architecture, APIs and design rationale.
Modules: Overview of available modules and their responsibilities.
Plugins: Plugin system and how to create new runtime modules.

Development

This section targets engine developers and contributors.

CMake Build options

CAE_STRICT_WARNINGS (default: OFF): Enable strict warning level.
CAE_ENABLE_SANITIZERS (default: OFF): Enable address and undefined sanitizers.
CAE_ENABLE_LTO (default: OFF): Enable LTO on final targets.
CAE_BUILD_TESTS (default: OFF): Enable building unit tests.
CAE_CLANG_TIDY (default: OFF): Enable clang tidy usage.
CAE_CLANG_FORMAT (default: OFF): Enable clang format usage.
CAE_BUILD_DOC (default: OFF): Enable building doxygen documentation.

Testing

Unit tests are based on Google Test.

Use the CAE_BUILD_TESTS option.

./cmake-build-release/bin/cae-tests

Build Doxygen documentation

documentation is generated using Doxygen.

Use the CAE_BUILD_DOC option.

Third-party libraries

Doxygen Awesome CSS: A custom CSS theme for Doxygen documentation.
Google Test: A testing framework for C++.
nlohmann-json: A JSON library for C++.

Contributing

Want to contribute? See Contributing guidelines.

Security

Please review our Security Policy for more information on reporting security vulnerabilities.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the License file for details.