Roadmap.md

ZEngine — Roadmap

ZEngine is a professional-grade 3D engine built from scratch in C++20 targeting Vulkan, developed by a team of contributors. The goal is a data-oriented, high-performance engine capable of shipping singleplayer and multiplayer games on Windows, Linux, and macOS.

Design documents for all systems live in ZEngine/docs/ and ZEngine/docs/future-plan/. Implementation follows the phased plan in ZEngine/docs/migration-plan.md.

Legend

Symbol	Meaning
[x]	Complete and production-quality
[ ]	Designed — ready to implement
[-]	Planned — not yet designed

Foundation

Status	Feature
[x]	Custom arena and pool allocators (ArenaAllocator, PoolAllocator)
[x]	Custom containers (Array, String, UnorderedHashMap, HashSet)
[x]	Custom math library (Vec2/3/4, Mat2/3/4, Quaternion, full math utils)
[x]	Arena-backed scratch memory (ZGetScratch / ZReleaseScratch)
[x]	Intrusive reference counting (Ref<T>, WeakRef<T>)
[x]	Thread pool (ThreadPoolHelper)
[x]	Logging system (ZENGINE_CORE_INFO/WARN/ERROR/CRITICAL)
[ ]	Memory budget system — per-subsystem watermarks and limits
[ ]	Profiling and instrumentation (ZENGINE_PROFILE_SCOPE, Tracy integration)
[ ]	Crash handler — minidump, stack trace, user dialog, optional telemetry upload

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ECS and Object Model

Status	Feature
[ ]	Entity-Component System — sparse-set + archetype mask hybrid
[ ]	Generational entity handles — stale handle detection
[ ]	ComponentStorage<T> — dense arrays, O(1) add/remove/get
[ ]	ECS::Scene — top-level context, ForEach template query
[ ]	Query<Ts...> — cached mask, zero virtual dispatch
[ ]	Actor layer — Tier 1 objects (player, camera, lights) over ECS
[ ]	ActorManager — lifetime management, OnTick dispatch
[ ]	WorldCommands — deferred structural mutations from systems
[ ]	ECS component reflection — type names, field metadata for editor

System Scheduler

Status	Feature
[ ]	DAG-based parallel system scheduler
[ ]	Conflict detection via read/write component masks
[ ]	OrderBefore(SystemID, SystemID) — explicit ordering edges
[ ]	Wave-based parallel dispatch on ThreadPoolHelper
[ ]	Cycle detection — asserts on invalid dependency graphs
[ ]	Runtime system enable/disable

Game Loop

Status	Feature
[x]	Main thread + render thread split
[x]	Delta time, vsync toggle
[ ]	Fixed timestep accumulator — physics-correct, deterministic simulation
[ ]	Frame rate cap — deterministic sleep + spin-wait
[ ]	Frame packet double-buffering (main thread to render thread)
[ ]	Transform interpolation — alpha blending between fixed steps

Rendering

Status	Feature
[x]	Vulkan device abstraction (VulkanDevice)
[x]	Render graph with node/resource/pass compilation
[x]	Multi-threaded command buffer recording
[x]	Swapchain management and frame synchronisation
[x]	Vertex/index/transform/material storage buffers
[x]	Gizmo rendering (ImGuizmo)
[x]	ImGui integration
[ ]	Render resource manager — GPU lifetime, deferred deletion, hot-reload swaps
[ ]	Cascaded shadow maps — 4 cascades, directional light
[ ]	Spot and point light shadow maps
[ ]	Post-processing pipeline — bloom, ACES tone mapping, SSAO, FXAA, LUT color grading, vignette
[ ]	PBR material pipeline — roughness/metallic/normal/emissive
[ ]	Shader hot-reload — SPIR-V recompile without frame stall
[-]	LOD system — distance-based mesh switching
[-]	GPU frustum and occlusion culling
[-]	GPU-driven indirect rendering
[-]	Async compute
[-]	Deferred rendering path
[-]	KTX2 / BCn / ASTC texture compression
[-]	Motion blur
[-]	Ray-traced global illumination (long-term)
[-]	DirectX 12 / Metal RHI backends (long-term)

Lighting

Status	Feature
[x]	Directional, point, and spot lights
[x]	GPU-packed light structs
[ ]	Shadow mapping for all three light types
[ ]	IBL / environment lighting — cubemap, irradiance, specular probes
[-]	Tile or cluster-based light culling
[-]	Lightmap baking

---

Animation

Status	Feature
[ ]	Skeletal animation — SkeletonComponent, AnimatorComponent, SkinningComponent
[ ]	AnimationSampleSystem — uniform 30fps clip sampling, pose buffer
[ ]	SkinningUploadSystem — global pose to GPU bone matrix upload
[ ]	AssimpImporter skeleton and clip extraction
[-]	Animation blend trees — multi-clip blending with weights
[-]	Animation state machine — transition graph
[-]	Root motion extraction
[-]	Animation events — frame-triggered callbacks

Physics

Status	Feature
[ ]	Jolt Physics integration (MIT, C++17)
[ ]	Rigid body dynamics — static, kinematic, dynamic
[ ]	Collider shapes — box, sphere, capsule, convex hull, triangle mesh
[ ]	Character controller (JPH::CharacterVirtual)
[ ]	Raycasting and shape casts
[ ]	Trigger volumes and contact events
[ ]	Collision layer filtering

Audio

Status	Feature
[ ]	miniaudio integration (public domain, single-header)
[ ]	Spatial 3D audio — distance attenuation, listener positioning
[ ]	AudioSourceComponent / AudioListenerComponent
[ ]	Per-frame audio command buffer — no audio calls during WorldTick
[ ]	Music streaming — PlayMusic, FadeMusic
[ ]	Supported formats: OGG Vorbis, WAV, MP3

Networking

Status	Feature
[ ]	INetTransport — pluggable transport interface (GNS, ENet, raw UDP)
[ ]	GNSTransport — GameNetworkingSockets (Steam relay, NAT punch-through, encryption)
[ ]	ENetTransport — lightweight transport, no Steam dependency
[ ]	UDPTransport — raw UDP for studios that own the full stack
[ ]	NetworkSession — peer registry, broadcast, tick
[ ]	Network clock — NTP-style two-way sync, median drift filter
[ ]	NetBitWriter / NetBitReader — bit-packing, compressed float, smallest-3 quaternion
[ ]	NetReplicationRegistry — component descriptor table, serialize/deserialize dispatch
[ ]	ReplicationSystem — authority-side dirty-flag delta compression
[ ]	ReplicationReceiveSystem — client-side apply and interpolate
[ ]	RollbackModule — GGPO-style rollback (snapshot ring buffer, resimulate)
[ ]	PredictionModule — client prediction with server correction reconciliation
[ ]	NetRPC — flat dispatch table, reliable remote procedure calls
[ ]	LagCompensator — server-side history rewind for hit detection
[ ]	NetRelevanceSystem — spatial grid, per-peer relevance sets, newly in/out diff
[ ]	Lobby and matchmaking — Steam P2P via Steamworks
[-]	BVH-based relevance (v2) — replaces spatial grid for non-uniform entity distributions
[-]	Snapshot interpolation for remote entities (v2) — eliminates jitter at packet loss
[-]	Visual rollback — rollback cosmetics over server-authoritative game state (v2)
[-]	QUIC transport backend via msquic (v2) — encrypted, multiplexed, no Steam dependency

Virtual File System

Status	Feature
[ ]	VFSPath — normalized, immutable, no-alloc path value type
[ ]	IVFSFile, IVFSBackend, IVFSContext — clean I/O interfaces
[ ]	VFSDiskContext — passthrough to std::filesystem
[ ]	Mount table — priority-ordered backend resolution
[ ]	VFSDiskBackend and VFSZipBackend
[ ]	Async directory scanner — replaces directory_iterator on render thread
[ ]	VFSMemoryBackend — scratch and test store
[ ]	File watcher — inotify / FSEvents / RDCW, debounced events
[ ]	.meta sidecar files — stable UUIDs, SHA256 reimport detection
[ ]	Asset registry — multi-index store, dependency graph, hot-reload cascade

---

Asset Pipeline

Status	Feature
[x]	Assimp mesh, material, texture import
[x]	Asset manager — UUID-to-handle map, pending queue
[ ]	Priority-driven async import coordinator
[ ]	Shader asset pipeline — GLSL to SPIR-V at import, UUID-keyed cache
[ ]	Cook pipeline — SHA256-incremental, parallel, headless CI
[ ]	VFSPakBackend — runtime mounting of cooked .pak archives
[ ]	AssimpImporter skeletal animation extraction
[ ]	SDF font atlas generation (msdf-atlas-gen)
[-]	GLTF 2.0 import
[-]	Asset streaming — incremental load at runtime

Scene Serialization

Status	Feature
[ ]	YAMLSceneSerializer — human-readable, VCS-diffable (editor builds)
[ ]	BinarySceneSerializer — zero-parse, memcpy-speed load (shipping)
[ ]	Stable UUID asset references — never file paths
[ ]	Component serializer registry — auto-discovers all component types
[ ]	Scene migration — versioned binary format with upgrade paths
[ ]	Atomic write — temp + rename, no partial-write corruption

UI System

Status	Feature
[x]	Editor UI (ImGui + ImGuizmo)
[ ]	In-game UI — immediate-mode API over arena-allocated retained tree
[ ]	Widget types — Label, Button, Image, ProgressBar, Panel
[ ]	Layout — stack, anchor, split, inset helpers
[ ]	Screen stack — UIScreenStack for menu navigation
[ ]	UI render pass — orthographic, no depth test, alpha blend
[ ]	Input routing — UI consumes mouse before game

Text Rendering

Status	Feature
[ ]	MSDF SDF font atlas (msdf-atlas-gen, offline)
[ ]	FontManager — atlas load, glyph metric pool
[ ]	UTF-8 text layout — word wrap, kerning, tab stops
[ ]	Localization — CSV string tables, hot-swap language
[-]	CJK / large atlas support
[-]	Right-to-left text

---

Scripting and Game Logic

Status	Feature
[ ]	C++ DLL hot-reload — ZGame_* C ABI, Actor factory pattern
[ ]	Engine version check — rebuild detection at load time
[ ]	System re-registration on reload — BeginRebuild / Commit cycle
[-]	Lua 5.4 scripting — LuaScriptComponent, per-entity coroutine
[-]	Behavior tree — flat node array, no virtual dispatch

Save System

Status	Feature
[ ]	Binary slot-based save (ZSavFile, FNV-32 checksum)
[ ]	GameSaveData — typed key-value store (int/float/bool/string/blob)
[ ]	Atomic write — temp + rename, corruption-safe
[ ]	Platform save directories (Windows AppData, XDG, macOS Library)
[ ]	Steam Cloud sync
[ ]	Settings save — separate file, not slot-based

---

Platform and Distribution

Status	Feature
[x]	Windows (GLFW + Vulkan)
[x]	macOS (GLFW + MoltenVK)
[x]	Linux (GLFW + Vulkan)
[ ]	Steam SDK integration — init, overlay, achievements, cloud saves
[ ]	CPack packaging — NSIS/ZIP (Windows), AppImage (Linux), DMG (macOS)
[ ]	CI/CD pipeline — GitHub Actions, 3 OS x 3 build types
[ ]	Crash handler — minidump (Windows), signal + backtrace (Linux/macOS)
[-]	Console platforms (long-term)

Panzerfaust — Project Launcher

Panzerfaust is the .NET/Avalonia project manager. Users open it before the editor. It scaffolds project structure, writes projectConfig.json, and launches Obelisk.

Status	Feature
[x]	Project creation — scaffolds directory structure + projectConfig.json
[x]	Project list with open / delete
[x]	Launches Obelisk with --projectConfigFile + --launchEditor flags
[x]	Cross-platform (.NET 8, Avalonia, Windows / macOS / Linux)
[ ]	Project templates — Blank, 2D, 3D, Multiplayer starter
[ ]	Engine version selector — pick which ZEngine version to open project with
[ ]	Recent projects list with last-opened timestamp
[ ]	Project import — point at existing projectConfig.json
[ ]	Plugin marketplace browser — browse / install plugins before opening editor

---

Editor (Tetragrama)

Status	Feature
[x]	Scene hierarchy view
[x]	Asset browser
[x]	Transform gizmos
[x]	Shader editor with hot-reload
[ ]	Asset thumbnail generation
[ ]	In-editor physics visualization
[ ]	Component inspector with reflection (component-reflection.md)
[ ]	Entity selection — hierarchy click + viewport raycast (editor-entity-selection.md)
[ ]	Play / Pause / Stop — scene snapshot, system registration switching (editor-play-mode.md)
[ ]	Undo / Redo — command pattern, 8 command types, merge window (editor-undo-redo.md)
[-]	Profiler overlay
[-]	Console / debug command panel