PC/Nintendo Engine for Strategy Games | FireAnt
A cross-platform engine demo featuring particle systems, ECS architecture, inspector hierarchies, and GLTF 3D model support.
🎓 About the Project
FireAnt is a cross-platform engine, with Nintendo and PC. It was made to create strategy game in a team of 7 programmers, over 8 weeks. I focused on graphics programming and on the cross-platform API for Nintendo using OpenGL.
🛠️ Skills Developed
- Cross-Platform Development: Designed the rendering layer for Nintendo and PC compatibility with a focus on abstraction and maintainability.
- Core Engine Systems: Worked within an ECS architecture using
enttand cereal for serialization. - Engine Inspector UI: Utilized ImGui to create editor windows for managing entities, resources, and scene data.
- Teamwork: Contributed to code reviews, enforced coding standards via Github Actions, and led some meetings.
⚙️ My Contributions
⛰️ Terrain with Tessellation Shaders
I first tried to implement tessellation while working on the Grand Strategy Renderer, but didn’t manage to finish it due to time constraints.
In this project, I got it working, rendering the same terrain ~4× faster than geomipmapping on the CPU, with better visual quality and lower memory usage.
GPU-based terrain tessellation with dynamic LOD
| Technique | Performance | Memory Usage | Scalability | Visual Quality |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Naive | ~17ms | High | Poor | Good |
| Geomipmapping | ~4ms/frame | Lower than naive | Good | Good (with tuning) |
| Tessellation Shaders | ~1ms | Low | Best | Best |
🎯 Frustum Culling
To optimize rendering, I implemented an early out check using a two-stage culling system.
With 8000 billboarded sprites, frustum culling reduced the render time from ~30ms to 5ms.
Color-coded culling visualization - Green: visible, Red: outside frustum, Orange: outside sphere
Performance improvement: 8000 animated sprites rendered in ~5ms (down from ~30ms)
🎇 Particle System
The particle system was our main tool for adding “juice” and responsiveness to the game. It supported basic parameters with interpolation: color, velocity, acceleration and scaling.
Particle scaling interpolation over lifetime
Hit particle effect triggered on enemy impact
🎬 Animation System for Billboarded Sprites
Our brief required a 3D world with 2D sprites representing units. I implemented an animation system with events used in gameplay by other programmers.
Event-based animation system triggering console messages at keyframes
🎮 Demo
Isle Be Damned was a strategy game in the style of Bad North.
Isle Be Damned - Strategy game demo inspired by Bad North
We also attempted a more traditional RTS similar to StarCraft, but ran out of time adapting it for Nintendo Switch.
Terranox - Traditional RTS prototype