Show HN: Fio: 3D World editor/game engine – inspired by Radiant and Hammer

https://github.com/ViciousSquid/Fio
A liminal brush-based CSG editor and game engine with unified (forward) renderer inspired by Radiant and Worldcraft/Hammer

Compact and lightweight (target: Snapdragon 8CX, OpenGL 3.3)

Real-time lighting with stencil shadows without the need for pre-baked compilation

Comments

voidfuncMar 26, 2026, 11:37 PM
Ugh this makes me nostalgic for the days of Q3-era game map making and custom servers. I used to get lost in the various games Radiant variants as a teen building DM and CTF maps for my clans server.
HauntingPinMar 27, 2026, 8:32 AM
Did you end up going into game dev or just generally software development? I'm always jealous of the people who grew up making maps or game mods, I wish I'd been more motivated when I was younger to do stuff like that.
voidfuncMar 27, 2026, 3:35 PM
Software dev. Game dev never really appealed to me. I kind of have an artsy streak inside of me and map making always felt like additive sculpture which is probably why it appealed.
samivMar 27, 2026, 8:37 AM
Good luck to you. Having worked in this space for around 10 years I can say it's nearly impossible to arouse anyone's interest since the market is so totally saturated.

For a new engine to take on it needs do something else nobody else is doing so that it's got that elusive USP.

Getting visibility, SEO hacking etc is more important than the product itself.

LarsDu88Mar 27, 2026, 4:09 AM
Does this use BSPs for draw optimization?
xyzsparetimexyzMar 27, 2026, 11:52 AM
Nobody uses BSPs for draw optimization. We have culling and depth buffer techniques for that now
vicioussquidMar 27, 2026, 1:14 PM
Nope, all done real-time using Frustum culling.

`Baking` of lightmaps is supported but not currently necessary

tinesMar 26, 2026, 10:39 PM
Looks awesome. Anything been made with this?
vicioussquidMar 26, 2026, 11:31 PM
Other than the 14 examples included, not yet; this is brand new and I am reaching out to the community to create some stuff with it, extend it with angled brushes, new entity types, etc

Thanks so much for your interest.