nCine Is An Interesting Open-Source 2D Game Engine

While there is Godot and other 2D game engines out there, nCine has been quietly developed since 2011 as an interesting 2D cross-platform game engine.

This MIT-licensed game engine supports Linux / Windows / Android / macOS and while it has been in development since 2011 only exited a closed beta in 2016. A Phoronix reader tipped us off to the project today.

Of note is this project is led by Angelo Theodorou, a former rendering engineer for EA/Frostbite as well as having done stints at Arm and elsewhere.

The engine supports Lua scripting, the code-base is C++11 code, there is SDL2 support, and other features you'd expect from a competent 2D game engine. The nCine engine currently supports rendering with OpenGL / OpenGL ES but there are plans to add a Vulkan renderer. Some other road-map items include adding collision detection, splitting game/input/audio updates to separate threads, reworking the thread-pool system, a 2D skeletal animation system, and other features.

Those wanting to learn more about this game engine can do so at GitHub.