Nova Game Engine

Nova is a community-focused, open-source game engine built in C++20. It is designed to capture the soul and aesthetic of the "classic" era of online building games (2007), while utilizing modern reflection and rendering techniques.

🌟 The Vision

Nova is born out of a desire to return to a simpler, community-driven platform, that ROBLOX used to be back in the day. We are here to preserve the aesthetics, but provide modern security, and modern tooling to support modern development.

🛠️ Tech Stack

• Language: C++20
• Rendering, input and window management: SDL3
• Scripting Luau and LuaBridge3
• License: GPL v3

⚖️ Legal & Asset Disclosures

Nova is an independent project and is not affiliated with, sponsored by, or endorsed by Roblox Corporation.

Legacy Assets: This project utilizes certain legacy textures, meshes, and sounds originally created by Roblox Corporation (c. 2007-2009). These assets are used under the principles of preservation and are the intellectual property of Roblox Corp. Nova is intended as a "clean-room" engine implementation; the source code is entirely original and licensed under the GPL v3.

🚀 Getting Started

Prerequisites

Install xmake:

# Linux/macOS
curl -fsSL https://xmake.io/shget.text | bash

# Windows (PowerShell)
Invoke-WebRequest -Uri "https://xmake.io/psget.text" -OutFile install.ps1; .\install.ps1

You also need a Vulkan-capable GPU and the Vulkan SDK (for glslc shader compiler).

Building

Configure and build in one step:

xmake f -m debug   # configure for debug mode
xmake              # build

Run the engine:

xmake run

Other useful commands:

xmake f -m release   # switch to release mode
xmake clean          # clean build artifacts
xmake install        # install to system (optional)

Contributing

We welcome all kinds of contributions, as long as you maintain the charm and aesthetics of 2007, and the code is safe and secure.