Open Source C Game Engines for Windows

Aleph One is the open source continuation of Bungie's Marathon 2 FPS game engine. Aleph One plays Marathon, Marathon 2, Marathon Infinity, and 3rd-party content on a wide array of platforms, with (optional) OpenGL rendering, Internet play, Lua scripting, and more.

ioquake3 is a free and open source first-person shooter engine derived from the Quake 3: Arena and Quake 3: Team Arena source code, maintained as a modern baseline engine for new games and classic mods. It is designed to let players run Quake 3, its expansion Team Arena, and community mods on contemporary systems while also serving as a solid base for new projects. The engine modernizes the original codebase with a CMake build system, an SDL2 backend for cross-platform windowing and input, and OpenAL sound for better audio quality and multi-speaker setups. It adds numerous quality-of-life improvements such as VoIP support, AVI demo capture, improved console completion and history, and optional Ogg Vorbis support. ioquake3 also improves portability and maintainability by supporting x86_64 on Linux, MinGW builds on Windows, and various other operating systems, and even provides web support via Emscripten.

ReBOOM is a direct port of BOOM 2.02 to SDL2 aiming to be as close to the original as possible while adding Quality of Life features to it, such as always on stats. ReBOOM is demo compatible with BOOM 2.02. Please note, that this is essentially BOOM 2.02 compatible, it is NOT compatible with many wads 'claiming' to be Boom-compatible. Many of these modern Boom wads are in-fact only PRBoom-compatible and are not classed as Boom-compatible by myself or by historical Boom. It is pure fantasy. ReBOOM was primarily developed for GNU/Linux systems.

NakedHexen is an ultra conservative source port aiming to be nearly identical to DOS in every way possible. No uncapped framerates, no dehacked, no extended menus or enemies, no window mode, only DOS Hexen ported to SDL2. Note: CD Music is NOT supported here.

Euphoria is a 2 Game Engine and Development kit for aspiring game designers who are interested in getting their feet wet in the world of game design and programming. Some features of the engine are: - 2D levels and basic rasterized rendering - Simple animations and timer systems - A complete embedded Lua 5.1 scripting environment for level scripting - A drag and drop level designer - Support for all standard Windows Media Player compatible media types - Background Music - Sound Effects - Simple object collision detection - Pseudo 3D for making simulated 3D with 2D graphics - Scriptable Menus, buttons, etc - Custom Lua file manipulation libraries and script engine binding - Cut scene videos - Open Source What Euphoria is NOT: - A professional game design engine (maybe someday) - Bug free - Size Efficient (textures are stored as bitmaps - 3D - Covered Under Warranty - A Game, this is a Kit to BUILD a game

NakedHeretic is an ultra conservative source port aiming to be identical to the DOS original in nearly every way. No window modes, no extra resolutions, no uncapped framerates. Just DOS Heretic, ported to SDL2.

Permafrost Engine is an OpenGL 3.3 real-time strategy (RTS) game engine written in C, designed to capture the feel of classic RTS titles while incorporating modern rendering and AI techniques. It uses a programmable pipeline with features like skeletal animation with GPU skinning, Phong lighting, bump mapping, terrain texture splatting, water rendering with reflection and refraction, and skyboxes. The engine is tailored specifically for large-scale RTS gameplay, supporting huge maps, efficient batched rendering, hierarchical flow-field pathfinding, formation movement, boids-style steering behaviors, and GPU-accelerated crowd simulation. It integrates tightly with Python 2.7 for scripting, exposing engine internals to Python and even allowing serialization and restoration of the entire Python interpreter state for robust save/load systems.

qbism Super8 is an open source 3D game engine with advanced yet intentionally retro 8-bit graphics for a crunchy pixelated look. The source code is forked from Makaqu Quake with enhancements from other Quake projects. The goal is to expand capabilities of authentic software-rendering without sacrificing performance. Features ———— Real 8-bit software graphics Plays most modern epic Quake maps that require enhanced engine limits and extensions. Colored static and dynamic lights. Scorch marks (stainmaps), fog, transparent water and particles, and skyboxes. Unique indexed colored lighting that doesn’t slow down the engine. Plays nice with weird laptop screen resolutions and Windows XP/ Vista/ 7. Record demos directly to xvid, mp4, divx, or other avi-compatible formats. Start and stop demo recording any time during a game. Start and stop video recording any time during a game or demo. Fisheye mode! [Optimize me!] Mothballed project: QBismFusion = enhanced QFus

Sprinkled Doom is a fork of the latest Chocolate Doom with an emphasis on slight modernisation, allowing for Widescreen and enhancements such as Always Gibbing enemies. It is also a strong limit-removing source port with support for Hexen map formats and additional node support as well as several fixes for effects such as infinite ocean. Sprinkled Doom does not fix any bugs that appear in vanilla Doom. It is the only vanilla compatible Doom source port that retains the original look and feel while being Limit Removing. Sprinkled Doom is a Doom Only source port, unlike Chocolate Doom, this does not provide updates for Heretic, Hexen or Strife.

Terra Tenebrae is a free (as freedom) multi-Players RPG game engine based on client/server technology. The assets used are in licenses CC0, CC-by, CC-by-sa or GPL.

WFIRE is a low-level game engine which provides a portable library allowing for writing video games for multiple classic targets. Originally written for a game called the Crypts of Eldor, WFIRE aims to provide compatibility with a number of constrained environments, such as DOS and the Amiga. It also aims for "new-retro" computers such as the Commander X16 and the Neon816. Of course, modern operating environments such as Windows NT and GNU/Linux are also planned. WFIRE is meant to reduce the effort of writing your own game engine by providing a common framework for functions such as rendering, sound output, and display management.

A Simple Top Down Game Engine for Linux and Windows obs: in development pre-alpha stage, not fully playable

qengine is a cross-platform retro game engine. It is aimed at nostalgic game developers that miss simple times and enjoy creating games like it's 1997. The software renderer provides the aesthetic that we all love and the engine limitations exist to make your creativity shine. The engine is a fork of the Quake II codebase that focuses on serving as a base for standalone games. Unlike other ports, it does not aim at being compatible with mods or the base Quake II game. In fact, many features were removed to reduce the complexity of the codebase and make the process of creating new games on top of the engine easier and faster. Removal of overly specific gameplay code, such as enemies and weapons. Merge of modules into a single package. No more DLLs, just a single executable for client and another for server. qengine stands on the shoulders of giants from the Quake II community. The code is built upon Yamagi Quake II, which itself contains code from other amazing projects.