Main Page
From neoGFX
neoGFX Cross-Platform GPU-Oriented C++ Application/Game Framework -- Coming Soon
Introduction
neoGFX is a cross-platform GPU-oriented C++ application/game framework. neoGFX is open source with its public repository hosted on GitHub. As of May 2018 version 1.0 of neoGFX is about 80% complete; on release of version 1.0 the intention is that neoGFX will be dual licensed (licensable with GPLv3 or a commercial licence).
Features (when version 1.0 released):
- clean modern C++ design including full exception safety supporting various widget allocation patterns (stack, member variable or free store);
- use of standard non-proprietary C++ data types including using standard string classes (UTF-8 encoding) and containers from the C++ standard library;
- simple, easy to use multi-threaded event system (an improvement over traditional signals and slots);
- no baggage: neoGFX primarily contains only the GUI and graphics related functionality needed for creating apps and games;
- full library of widgets and layout managers specifiable in an RJSON (Relaxed JSON) derived declarative UI description language drag/drop editable using the included design tool, neoGFX Design Studio;
- CSS3 style sheet support with support for custom skins;
- scripting engine, neos, that will be able to support a wide range of scripting languages (on release: neoscript, JavaScript and Lua);
- sub-pixel text rendering;
- simple window style for specifying that a window is "nested" rather than being a separate native desktop window;
- "text_edit" widget supports multiple fonts, text colours (with optional gradient effects), colour emojis and rendering text in columns;
- GPU shader rendered CSS3 compliant gradients with optional gaussian smoothing;
- MVC (model-view-controller) related classes supporting robust and fast app design;
- optional MDI support utilizing "nested" windows;
- 2D (initially) game support: sprites and 2D physics;
- flexible asset management: texture images (e.g PNGs) can be stored in .zip archives which can be optionally embedded inside the program binary accessible using simple URLs;
- support for OpenGL, DirectX and Vulkan.
Initial design goals will be:
- for the API to be as clean and easy to use as possible;
- no reliance on macro-based code generation used by certain other GUI libraries;
- to be as fast as possible (after all this is C++) with compiled binaries having as small a memory footprint as possible with no huge redistributables;
- 3rd party dependencies include: Boost, SDL, FreeType and HarfBuzz.
The plan is for v1.0 supported platforms to be Windows (desktop) and Linux (desktop) followed later with OS X, iOS and Android support.
Roadmap:
Version | ETA | Features |
---|---|---|
v0.99 | Spring 2020 | Windows OpenGL; widget library feature complete; UI design tool |
v1.00 | Summer 2020 | Linux OpenGL; scripting engine |
v1.10 | Winter 2020 | Vulkan; Android support; physics engine |
v1.20 | Summer 2021 | macOS support |
Recent screenshot (May 2018):