I built a small C++ game engine so an AI IDE could touch the whole thing

Originally posted on Medium.

I wanted to make a game. I also wanted the AI IDE on my desk to edit the whole running process, not just the scripts.

Godot still makes you do linking and scene wiring in the UI. Unreal would not run on this laptop. Writing a raw Vulkan renderer from scratch meant months before I could drop a cube on screen. So I took the middle: Diligent Engine for the GPU, and I built everything else.

The machine is an Intel HD 620. No discrete GPU. That forced the rest of the design. Keep draw calls low. Cull hard. Do not pull in heavy middleware.

Demo: https://youtu.be/nsptiy-I4Ps