Halley
A lightweight, cross-platform game engine written in modern C++17, designed for high performance and easy long-term maintenance.
What is Halley?
Halley is a lightweight, cross-platform game engine written in modern C++17, designed for developing and shipping games on multiple platforms including PC, consoles, and mobile. It provides a high-performance entity-component-system architecture, modern graphics pipelines with shader support, and tools for fast iteration and long-term project maintenance.
Game developers and studios looking for a modern, code-first C++ engine to build cross-platform games with an emphasis on performance, maintainability, and rich tooling.
Developers choose Halley for its modern C++17 foundation, true entity-component-system design, and cross-platform capabilities without legacy baggage, offering a balance of performance, ease of use, and professional-grade tooling.
Overview
A lightweight game engine written in modern C++
Use Cases
Best For
- Developing 2D or 3D games with a modern C++ codebase
- Cross-platform game projects targeting PC and consoles
- Games requiring high-performance entity-component-system architecture
- Projects needing fast iteration with hot-reloading support
- Teams prioritizing long-term maintainability and scalability
- Integrating Lua scripting for gameplay logic
Not Ideal For
- Projects relying heavily on visual scripting or drag-and-drop interfaces without deep coding
- Teams with limited experience in modern C++17 or unwilling to manage complex build systems
- Games targeting legacy platforms like Windows XP or very old mobile devices
- Developers seeking a large ecosystem of pre-built assets and plugins
Pros & Cons
Pros
Built with contemporary C++ standards for high performance and maintainability, as emphasized in the design guidelines.
Uses a true entity-component-system where components store data and systems operate on families, tuned for optimal performance.
Targets Windows, macOS, Linux, and major consoles like Nintendo Switch, with experimental mobile ports, enabling wide deployment.
Includes hot-reloading capabilities to reduce development turnaround time, supporting rapid prototyping and debugging.
Provides an editor UI, command-line tools, and debugging aids, as listed in the modules, to streamline development workflows.
Cons
Requires CMake 3.10+, specific C++17 compilers, and managing dependencies like SDL and Freetype, which can be challenging for newcomers.
Mobile ports and Metal graphics support are labeled experimental, making them less reliable for production use on those platforms.
The samples project is outdated and removed, and documentation is via a wiki, which may not be comprehensive for all use cases.
Compared to giants like Unity or Unreal, Halley has a niche community, offering fewer third-party assets, plugins, and support resources.
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