Features

Desktop (Linux, Windows, macOS, FreeBSD). Just install the engine, compiler (like FPC) and run the application.

Mobile (Android, iOS) with numerous Android services and iOS services to integrate with platform-specific features.

Web. Using the FPC WebAssembly target and WebGL for rendering. You can distribute your application by just including it as part of your webpage. Any modern web browser, desktop or mobile, supports it.

Console (Nintendo Switch).

Raspberry Pi and Pine64 devices (it’s just a Linux on Arm (32-bit) or Aarch64 (64-bit) CPU).

Coming soon (roadmap):

The engine code is portable and in principle "just works" on any operating system and CPU supported by FPC or Delphi.

With templates for new projects — empty, 3D, 2D. They showcase nicely engine possibilities and were designed as a good starting point for your applications.

Allows to easily build the project for all platforms.

With file browser, with preview for data (3D models, images, sound files).

With easy way to execute code editor (Visual Studio Code, Lazarus, Delphi or anything else you like) to edit your code.

Designs are (de)serialized to JSON. Any component can be (de)serialized, along with it published properties.

Designs can refer to each other using TCastleTransformDesign or TCastleDesign, to use them like prefabs from other engines. See components to reuse a design in other designs.

You can define custom project-specific components available in the editor.

Flexible hierarchy of transformations and scenes that you can design in the editor or control from Pascal code using a powerful OOP API.

Powerful TCastleScene to load and render a lot of model formats, like glTF, X3D, sprite sheets.

Other visible objects like TCastleBox, TCastleSphere, TCastleText, TCastleImageTransform. Great also for quick prototyping 3D and 2D worlds.

Flexible camera support, with multiple camera possible, attaching children to camera and placing camera as child of other objects, like bones.

Easy navigation components if you want to allow user to navigate in 3D or 2D worlds in a standard fashion. These include typical 2D and 3D navigation methods (like TCastleWalkNavigation, TCastleExamineNavigation, TCastle2DNavigation) as well as 3rd-person navigation with avatar (TCastleThirdPersonNavigation).

Each transformation can be enhanced with behaviors (descendants of TCastleBehavior), like TCastleBillboard, TCastleSoundSource. It is easy and encouraged to create behaviors required for your specific game, see Behaviors in the manual.

TCastleTransformReference to efficiently reference the same transformation multiple times. Great e.g. to instantiate thousands of trees.

Lights using components TCastlePointLight, TCastleDirectionalLight, TCastleSpotLight. See lighting in manual.

Components to visualize terrains (TCastleTerrain), and generate terrain data from smooth noise (TCastleTerrainNoise) or image (TCastleTerrainImage) or a combination of them (TCastleTerrainCombine). See the examples/terrain.

Our TCastleViewport is a 2D user interface control that you can naturally use multiple times, to observe the same or different 3D / 2D worlds from different cameras at the same time.

Shader effects to define effects using GLSL that enhance existing engine rendering. See many examples in examples/shaders/ subdirectory. You can write own effects easily using OpenGL Shading Language.

Bump mapping (normal maps) using basic, parallax, steep parallax with self-shadowing algorithms.

Animation blending/cross-fading (TCastleSceneCore.DefaultAnimationTransition, TPlayAnimationParameters.TransitionDuration).

Easy mirrors on flat surfaces.

Easy mirrors on curved surfaces (using generated cubemaps).

Physically-Based Rendering used by default for glTF and X3D 4.0 models using TPhysicalMaterialNode.

Alternative unlit shading also available, with glTF and X3D 4.0 models using TUnlitMaterialNode.

Alternative "classic" Phong shading is also available using TMaterialNode or GltfForcePhongMaterials.

Shadow maps (with auto-detection of limits, correct shadows from multiple light sources).

Shadow volumes (with z-fail / z-pass automatic detection, silhouette detection).

Screen effects (post-processing) API to define post-processing effects using shaders. See screen effects specification, you can add screen effects over any UI control: just place it as child of TCastleScreenEffects. See examples/screen_effects_demo/.

Color Space (Gamma Correction).

Easily design background (with sky/ground gradients, skybox), fog.

Multi-sampling (full-screen anti-aliasing), just set TCastleWindow.AntiAliasing.

Occlusion Culling can greatly speed-up rendering in certain cases.

Modern approach to OpenGL and OpenGLES usage:

Numerous image formats (like PNG, JPG, RGBE) supported thanks to the integration with Vampyre Imaging Library.

Full support for KTX and DDS that enable GPU texture compression, cubemaps and more.

Automatic texture compression and downscaling.

User interface library providing cross-platform UI controls that work on all platforms, like buttons, labels, images.

Their look can be adjusted to match the style of your game.

Your game is organized into views. Each view can have a design (created in editor) and an associated unit where you can handle various events, like a key press.

Automatic UI scaling to adjust to any screen resolution and aspect ratio with anchors.

Powerful masks: manual, API reference, example.

All paths are expressed as URLs with some special CGE protocols, see URLs, loading (downloading) and saving resources.

Application data can be always accessed using URLs like castle-data:/xxx.

You can download URLs asynchronously using TCastleDownload.

Integration with Indy (example client-server in examples/network/tcp_connection).

Integration with mORMot 2 (example in our castle-and-mormot-collaborative-editing demo).

Integration with RNL (example in our not-quake demo).

Inspector available under F8 in any debug game shows FPS profile and much more. It allows to inspect the current properties of all components, to tweak them at run-time, and even to hot-reload assets at run-time.

Built-in simple profiler TCastleProfiler.

Built-in frame profiler TCastleFrameProfiler.

Built-in texture memory profiler TextureMemoryProfiler.

DynamicBatching is available to batch multiple shapes, to conserve draw calls.

Supports for various sound backends: OpenAL or FMOD, on multiple platforms.

Sound streaming is done, for efficient playback of music tracks.

WAV and OggVorbis file formats are supported with all sound backends.

Sound components TCastleSound and TCastleSoundSource can be designed and tested also in editor.

Automatic sound source management based on priorities.

Define rigid bodies and colliders on your objects. You can do it visually in the editor (and visualize colliders to make sure they make sense). Of course you can also set them up using code.

Allow gravity and collisions to automatically have an effect.

Test how physics behaves right inside the editor using "Physics Simulation" in editor.

React to collisions by registering events. Objects can also be "triggers" if you only want to detect when something enters their volume.

Set up joints that connect rigid bodies in some ways, e.g. to create a hinge.

Physics is fully useful in both 3D and 2D. Consult our examples (in examples/physics/) for demos.

Manually apply forces to affect rigid bodies using physics, e.g. to make a character jump, or cause an explosion.

Perform collision queries using physics, like "ray casts". Use e.g. Viewport.Items.PhysicsRayCast.

Organize objects in layers to limit what collides with what.

Using Kraft Physics Engine under the hood.

Deprecated: We also feature an older system with (for now) a few more ways to query collisions. Just set TCastleSceneCore.PreciseCollisions to true to make collision queries treat your scene as a precise mesh. Then use routines like Viewport.Items.WorldRayCast or Viewport.Items.WorldBoxCollision to query whether something collides.

Tiled maps (TMX files) can be loaded into TCastleTiledMap for an efficient 2D or 3D display in a viewport.

Viewport display means they can be combined with other scenes on top of it, like sprite sheets for units on the map.

We support various map types (orthogonal, isometric, hexagonal), layers (you control which layers are displayed), animations and more.

See the manual about Tiled map.

See examples/tiled/strategy_game_demo for a complete strategy game in CGE using Tiled maps.

Automatic packaging of data files for all platforms, exposing them through castle-data:/ URL.

All the reading, writing, searching in our engine accepts URLs. So you can use regular file-system (file:/), you can refer to files in your data (castle-data:/), you can refer to resources inside ZIP files, or even resources on the network (https:/…​). You can easily register your own URL protocols (schemes) to extend this system.

ZIP handling, supporting read and write, supporting all platforms and compilers, with optional URL protocol registration. See TCastleZip and news about ZIP.

Loading and saving components (our engine components or any other Pascal TComponent) to JSON files. The base unit to do this is CastleComponentSerialize, and there are many things build "on top" of it, like our editor, loading designs in views, reusing designs.

Cloning the components using TCastleComponentFactory, ComponentClone. See e.g. examples/space_shooter that uses a factory to spawn rockets and rocks.

Particle Emitter: Particle system for 3D and 2D that supports editing right inside CGE editor. Particles are calculated with GPU acceleration (transform feedback). By Trung Le (Kagamma).

Effekseer Integration: Integration with Effekseer, a full-featured open-source particle effect creation tool. Also by Trung Le (Kagamma).

We maintain a modern Object Pascal introduction book to learn the language and link to many more learning resources.

We support FPC and Delphi compilers, see Supported compilers and IDEs.

Pascal as a programming language is

The same programming language that is used to make the engine is used for your applications — this results in simplicity (it’s easy to contribute) and speed.

Fast execution. It’s a language that compiles to fast native code, while staying elegant and type-safe.

Fast compilation.

Native debugging. It’s just a native application using native debugger. Debugging is integral part of the Lazarus IDE.

Build tool can build, package, run your application and autogenerate compressed textures (and more).

You can build for any supported target platform. You may need to install cross-compiler (e.g. using fpcupdeluxe), some platforms may also require additional tools (see their docs like Android).

We can build ready applications, like APK / AAB for Android, IPA for iOS.

Docker image with CGE and prerequisites (FPC, Android build tools, texture processing tools) to easily build CGE applications.

Ready instructions to automatically build CGE projects using:

In short it means that you can create proprietary, closed-source, commercial applications with it without any issues.

See license for details.