Coral Engine began as a personal project during a summer holiday. Over time, it evolved into a full-fledged engine featuring visual scripting and a robust editor. From the start, the goal was to create a simple, accessible API for developers while ensuring the engine remained intuitive for designers.

After seven months of solo development, I was joined by five talented programmers to enhance Coral Engine, making it production-ready. We used it to develop Lichgate. The designers who joined our team were able to utilise its capabilities to create their own prototypes, assets and gameplay features.

I continued working on Coral Engine for several months, ridding it of some technical debt that had built up over the course of development.

My Contributions

Visual Scripting

Built a performant node-based visual-scripting interpreter from scratch, fully integrated with the ECS system (EnTT).

Engine Architecture

Designed and iterated the core architecture from concept to release.

Asset Management

Created a system for importing, editing assets and efficiently managing resources in a multi-threaded environment.

Physics

Helped create a 2D physics system with optimized collision handling.

Reflection System

Created a system to represent both C++ and Visual Script classes through a unified interface.

Optimisations

I have consistently benchmarked, profiled, and accordingly optimized the worst bottlenecks.

Utility AI

Created a framework for state-based AI behavior.

Prefab System

Implemented a system similar to Unity's prefabs, allowing entity reuse.

Level Editor

Developed a user-friendly editor for level design, including tools for quickly transforming objects and undoing changes.

Particle System

Created an extendable, data-oriented particle system.

Serialization

Designed a serialization system for assets and levels with backwards compatibility.

Event Handling

Developed a powerful, easy-to-use event system.

Unit Test Framework

Created a lightweight framework for quickly creating tests in-engine.

CI/CD

Set up GitHub Actions for automatic compilation, testing, and distribution.

Project Management

I managed the team of programmers, overseeing task distribution and ensuring alignment.

Frontend

I played a large part in utilizing ImGui to create an accessible interface for designers, including the content browser and most editor windows.

Games Created with Coral Engine

• Lichgate