The developers of the open game engine nauengine, founded by the company VK, announced the transfer of the project to the community. Technical support of the engine will now be provided by the school of video game ITMO, and expert support will be given by the association a priori. The project’s repository has not been updated since the beta version was released in November, and this move signifies a shift from a commercial development model to a community-based approach.
According to comments from project representatives, further development of nauengine will rely on the community, with integration from the University of ITMO to aid in development and serve as a learning platform for students. VK will continue to support the engine based on its development needs. The director of the ITMO video game development school believes that the engine will benefit from community input compared to traditional commercial development. However, industry experts note that the NAU Engine has not gained significant traction compared to Unreal Engine and Unity.
Based on the architecture of nauengine, components from the Dagor Engine, developed by Gaijin Entertainment, have been utilized. The code from Dagor Engine has undergone modifications, such as using HLSL language instead of dshl, implementing physically correct rendering (PBR), and utilizing USD format for assets. The engine also integrates libraries for physical simulations, graphic interfaces, network interactions, sound management, input handling, and skeletal animation.
The engine utilizes the jolt library for physical processes, cocos2dx and Dear Imgui for graphic interfaces, gamenetworkingsockets