The Carbon Game Engine Framework has been open sourced by Fenris Creations (previously known as CCP Games). The Carbon engine powers the incredibly popular long running MMO Eve Online (and Eve Frontier). The majority of the source code has been released under the MIT license, while the remaining portions are released under other permissive open source licenses that allow commercial usage.
Carbon is described as:
Carbon is the next-generation cross-platform game engine framework from Fenris Creations, used to build entire universes where tens of millions of players have experienced emotion invoking journeys through the vastness of space. Every line of code, every pixel, every beat shaped by Carbon pushes the boundaries of virtual worlds.
The engine is actually a collection of frameworks as follows:
Trinity (Rendering Engine): This graphics engine serves as the heart of Carbon’s aesthetics, transforming epic sci-fi scenes into stunning virtual worlds. It is engineered to handle large-scale visual rendering and deliver breathtaking cosmic vistas.
Core (Core Framework): This C++ foundation library provides essential low-level systems and platform-independent functionality for the engine. It standardizes how Carbon interacts directly with the underlying hardware and operating systems.
Scheduler: Developed as a Python extension, this component provides deterministic scheduling and channel messaging for Greenlet coroutines. It allows for predictable tasklet scheduling on vanilla CPython builds.
Spatial Audio Object Clustering: This Wwise plugin dynamically groups and manages spatial audio objects based on their physical proximity. It optimizes performance by reducing overall system audio object consumption in complex acoustic environments.
Resources: This module provides a dedicated suite of tools to manage, manipulate, and efficiently deliver resource files. It streamlines overall asset pipeline workflows for Carbon-based titles.
Destiny: Destiny handles the engine’s core physics and pathfinding simulations. Its high-scale efficiency has facilitated historic, Guinness World Record-breaking multiplayer PvP battles featuring thousands of concurrent players.
CarbonUI: This intuitive User Interface Framework is designed to guide players cleanly through complex gameplay systems. It enables developers to build dynamic interfaces that bring millions of players together across massive virtual worlds.
CarbonIO: Serving as the networking backbone, CarbonIO ensures reliable data transmission and synchronization across online games. It works continuously to maintain the connectivity and pulse of living, persistent universes.
CarbonAudio: This component provides the logic and rules necessary to handle dense and complicated soundscapes flawlessly. It guarantees deep, unbroken acoustic immersion even when thousands of players gather in a single massive scene.
Scripting: Carbon’s scripting system is built on the Python programming language, offering a flexible and highly stable development environment. It grants creators the freedom to rapidly build and iterate on robust in-game experiences.
Carbon is by no means a turn-key game engine like Unity, Unreal or Godot. Instead it is a collection of all of the bits that go together to make a game. Thankfully according to a GameIndustry.biz interview, they are working on a base test game project that should help people get up and started:
“The other, which will definitely change now, is we are seeing the need to create a test project. I don’t want to call it a game, but it’s an example game that is more for the testability and understanding the architecture and get started quickly in the engine. That’s another thing that’s changing a lot. We, as the core tech group, will have to create that test example, and that will become our test space, which will be our example project. Right now, when we make changes to the engine, we have to jump into Eve or Eve Frontier and try to test in those game examples. We don’t have our own simplified example to run through.”
Key Links
Carbon Interview on GameIndustry.biz
You can learn more about the Carbon game engine being open sourced, as well as the history of CCP Games and Fenris Creations in the video below.