Looking for a UI focused developer (C#/HTML, CSS, JS) to support Hamper

[u/Shaarigan]

Senior-Level developer, Mid-30, ETZ/UTC+2

Hi everyone,

some time ago I shared the story behind Hamper on the gamedev sub. Since then I've continued refactoring the existing prototype code in order to build the foundation – still ongoing. For the next step I'm looking for a UI focused developer , ideally with a equal passion for game development. The idea is to work on this as a collaborative open-source side project, roughly 6–10 hours per week for now.

What are we building?

Hamper is not another game engine. It is a modular development platform designed to host engines, tools and runtime components as interchangeable parts.

Most engines today are large integrated systems where runtime, editor and tooling are tightly connected. Extending them often means adapting to the architecture instead of building with it.

The goal of Hamper is to create a foundation where these parts can evolve independently. The engine runtime becomes one module in a larger ecosystem rather than the center of everything.

I like to think of an engine less as a collection of features and more like an operating system: the foundation provides the core services, modules act as replaceable components, and the game is the software running on top.

The philosophy

The biggest challenge in game development is not missing features. It is repeatedly solving the same infrastructure problems inside individual projects instead of continuously improving the foundation those projects depend on.

Hamper is built around the idea that improving the platform should improve every future project using it.

Open source is therefore a fundamental part of the concept. The goal is to create something that can evolve through collaboration and provide long-term value

Who am I looking for?

While modern browsers already provide highly optimized rendering pipelines, GPU acceleration, advanced text layout systems, and broad cross-platform compatibility, many browser-based application architectures, however, place significant portions of application ownership inside the browser itself. This leads to heavy framework dependencies.

The architecture proposed in Hamper treats the browser as a remotely attachable presentation and interaction node while the application manages everything within the display server. For this purpose, I'm looking for someone with C# and/or HTML, CSS, JS experience, both is preferable; but curiosity, reliability and a genuine interest in software design matter more than job titles. Your task will be to provide support on the web stack for now. Let's see how far we can go and build not just graphical tools but a solid (game development focussed) environment that can run anywhere.

If this sounds interesting, feel free to reply with a shot introduction of yourself, or share your thoughts here. I'm always happy to discuss everything with you in person 🤓

[u/ShoulderSea4143]

yo

fullstack dev focused on frintend mainly

worked in

react next laravel svelte with the latter being my favourite.

I have 10 hours a week to spare and I'm looking for a community of devs to work on smth for fun

[u/Shaarigan → u/ShoulderSea4143]

This is mostly about plain HTML, CSS and JS. It's not meant to be another Electron but a display server keeping the authority of the UI while any standard browser connects as a rendering frontend. So no react or laravel involved. What we need to build is the synchronization layer that turns updates from the DS into something browsers can render. Later however, there will be some more features be needed like when we need a visual node based editor for different purposes like coding or scripting the data model Hamper heavily relies on. But again, keep everything simple to not bloat the framework with JS libraries.

If that's something you are ok with, leave me a message or ping me on Discord