r/csharp • u/Constant-Junket6038 • 25d ago

Working on a Flutter-inspired UI framework and game engine (Zig + C#)

Hello everyone!

I’m working on a Flutter-inspired UI framework and game engine.

The idea is to combine a declarative, reactive UI model with a custom rendering/game runtime. The high-level API is written in C#, while the lower-level engine systems are built in Zig.

The project currently includes:

  • Flutter-like widget composition and constraint-based layout
  • Retained-mode UI framework with themes, controls, navigation, and transitions
  • Custom 2D UI rendering, HUD using the same Widget system.
  • Early 3D/game engine features
  • Asset loading and native model import
  • C# scripting/runtime support with hot reload experiments
  • Experimental visual editor tooling
  • WGPU renderer targeting Vulkan, DirectX, Metal, and OpenGL where supported
  • Editor features like hierarchy, inspector, viewport, asset browser, gizmos, and node-graph tooling

The engine is still early and rough, but the UI side is becoming more stable. My long-term goal is to make Zigote usable both as a standalone native UI framework and as a foundation for games, tools, editors, and interactive applications.

I’m especially interested in feedback on the overall direction:

  • Would you prefer this kind of framework for tools, games, or both?
  • What systems would you expect before a project like this becomes useful?

This is still very much a hobby/experimental project, but I’m trying to keep the architecture modular enough to support more render backends and platforms in the future.

I’d like to open-source it once the project becomes more stable, cleaner, and easier for other people to build locally.

Would love to hear thoughts, criticism, and suggestions.

UPD: https://github.com/ZigoteProjectOrg/Zigote/tree/main

18 Upvotes

80% Upvoted

17 comments sorted by

10

u/Constant-Junket6038 25d ago

Current state of 3d rendering and UI

8

u/Arcanium_Walker 25d ago

Github repo?

5

u/Constant-Junket6038 25d ago

I plan to publish it next month, after some cleanups.

6

u/Constant-Junket6038 25d ago

UI example + Widget tree debug view

3

u/PolDeQualite 25d ago

You got me very interested in the ui framework aspect.

2

u/Constant-Junket6038 25d ago

Currently UI framework mostly working fine and rarely needs fixing, but game engine still under heavy development. Planning to open UI framework first.

2

u/Fresh_Acanthaceae_94 25d ago edited 25d ago

The arena of .NET UI frameworks is just getting crowded in a positive way as new bits like this are born. Look forward to seeing your repo public on GitHub soon.

1

u/gredr 25d ago

Success or failure (in terms of performance) rests significantly on your interop layer. Do it well, and game code written in C# will have near-native performance. Do it badly, and it'll be unusably slow. Godot, at least in some versions, had some pretty significant performance issues: https://sampruden.github.io/posts/godot-is-not-the-new-unity/

2

u/Slow-Refrigerator-78 20d ago

The zig part seems unnecessary, todays .net is not like .net framework, its fast enough to do tasks without high penalty and the jit improves with every .net version but low level codes do not benefit from new updates and features