Arete Games, a software development company based in San Francisco, USA, officially announced the game engine “Arete Engine” on November 11th and released version 0.1. As a game engine mainly for 2D/3D game development, it currently supports PC (Windows/Mac/Linux)/iOS and VR devices. In the future, it is planned to be compatible with home game consoles, Android, and Steam Deck.
Arete Engine is an ECS game engine developed based on Rust, and its main feature is optimization for unified memory as an unconventional approach based on its unique architecture. Development began about two years ago as a project at Stanford University. In addition to Rust, the programming languages supported include C, C++, Swift, etc., and support for C# is also in the works.
Advertisement
When building with Arete Engine for a platform that uses unified memory, there is no need to copy data from the CPU to the GPU for each frame, significantly eliminating overhead compared to traditional game engines. This unified memory optimization helps avoid data processing bottlenecks, especially in complex scenes with many dynamic objects.The developer claims that it is “1000 times faster than Unity” in terms of CPU frame time.claimare doing.
Another feature is a feature called Load Balancing. This system identifies bottlenecks in the system and distributes rendering tasks to the CPU or GPU. It is said that frame rates can be expected to improve not only with unified memory but also by improving the balance of the system load. This function is said to be particularly useful in cases where it is difficult to predict system bottlenecks due to various specifications, such as custom-made PCs and Android devices.
Version 0.1, which has been distributed this time, is the first version released as Arete Engine, and since it is still in the early stages of development, the content is designed to introduce basic functions. Note that the Load Balancing described above is currently disabled. It seems that various functions will be added as further development progresses.Development roadmapis also published.
Additionally, the code for a simple sample game will be distributed at the same time. One is “Tanks,” which is a reproduction of the game introduced in Unity’s official tutorial using Arete Engine. The other is the shooting game “Space”, which is said to have been influenced by “Galaga” and “Space Invaders” (video posted in the post below).
Advertisement
Regarding the usage fee after the official release of Arete Engine, it is free for non-commercial use such as learning and research purposes. For commercial use, it can be used for free until the revenue of the developed product reaches $1 million (approximately 150 million yen), after which a 1% royalty payment will be required. Revenue numbers are self-reported by users. The first three years after the official release will be an early introduction period, and this price plan will be maintained during this period.
For more information about Arete EngineOfficial sitePlease check.