Overview

Saturn is a modern, cross-platform game engine written in C++23. It targets native platforms and the web, and is built from the ground up with a strong emphasis on clarity, correctness, and long-term design.

At a surface level, Saturn aims to be a capable engine for games, simulations, and interactive tools. At a deeper level, it exists for a more fundamental reason: to understand how such systems are built, and to make that understanding transferable to others.

This is not an engine created to compete with existing industry giants. It is an engine created to learn, to experiment, and to grow into something solid over time.

A Learning Path, Not Just a Codebase

Saturn is a long-term project designed as a structured learning journey through:

Systems programming
Engine architecture
Modern graphics APIs (Vulkan and WebGPU)
Memory management and data-oriented design
Tooling, editors, and asset pipelines
Cross-platform constraints and trade-offs

Rather than wrapping large pre-existing frameworks, Saturn takes a bottom-up approach. Core systems are implemented deliberately, often with extra care taken to make design intent explicit—even when that means slower development or more verbose code.

The engine is built to answer why things are done, not just how.

Programmers as Users

Saturn treats programmers as first-class users.

APIs, conventions, and documentation are designed to be:

Explicit rather than magical
Predictable rather than clever
Discoverable rather than implicit

The documentation is not an afterthought. It is part of the engine’s design surface and is written with the assumption that readers may be:

Learning engine development
Exploring unfamiliar systems
Studying real-world architectural trade-offs

In this sense, Saturn aims to function not only as an engine, but also as a learning resource and reference for others walking a similar path.

Long-Term Vision

While Saturn is currently developed by a single maintainer, it is designed with longevity in mind. Systems are structured to scale in complexity, contributors, and scope without collapsing under their own weight.

The goal is not rapid feature accumulation, but a coherent foundation that can support ambitious ideas over time.