Introduction

Lumina is a modern C++ game engine built on Vulkan. It pairs a data-driven editor with C# scripting, a sparse-set entity component system, a reflection system, and a forward+ renderer. It is built for learning real engine architecture and for prototyping on a clean, modular codebase.

This section takes you from a fresh clone to the editor running with your first project loaded.

What you will do

1. Build the engine from source.
2. Run the editor and create a project from its project browser.
3. Launch the editor with your project loaded.

Supported platforms

Lumina builds and runs on 64-bit Windows and 64-bit Linux. There are no macOS builds. Both platforms are built from the same sources by the same build tool, and every entry-point script has a counterpart on the other: Setup.bat and Setup.sh, LuminaBuild.bat and LuminaBuild.sh.

The differences that matter are the compiler, and what the IDE story looks like. Windows generates a Visual Studio solution; Linux generates a compile_commands.json for clangd-based tooling, because nothing there can open a .sln.

Every platform

Requirement	Details
.NET	The .NET 10 SDK (x64), required to build the C# scripting layer
GPU	A GPU and driver supporting Vulkan 1.4 and mesh shaders (VK_EXT_mesh_shader)
Git	Any recent version

The GPU requirement is a hard floor, not a recommendation: the renderer draws all geometry through mesh shaders and is rejected at startup on a device that cannot run them. That means NVIDIA Turing (GTX 16 / RTX 20) or newer, AMD RDNA2 (RX 6000) or newer, or Intel Arc.

Windows

Requirement	Details
OS	Windows 10 (1803 or newer) or Windows 11, 64-bit
IDE	Visual Studio 2026 (18.0 or newer) with the MSVC v143 toolset

Visual Studio 2026 is required

The C# scripting layer targets .NET 10, which only Visual Studio 2026 (MSBuild 18.0+) can build. VS 2022 fails with NETSDK1209. Setup.bat checks for both the .NET 10 SDK and a new-enough Visual Studio and tells you what is missing.

Linux

Requirement	Details
Distribution	Any 64-bit distribution
Compiler	GCC 13 or newer, or Clang against a libstdc++ that new. Built and tested with GCC 13-15.
Window system	X11 development packages, which GLFW links directly. Wayland sessions work through XWayland.
Vulkan	The loader (libvulkan1) and your vendor’s driver, at run time only

Note

The compiler floor is <format>, which landed in libstdc++ 13. The Vulkan packages are a run-time requirement rather than a build one: the Vulkan headers are vendored and entry points are resolved with dlopen, so a machine with no driver still compiles a working editor it cannot launch. Setup.sh checks all of it, including whether any installed GPU actually reports VK_EXT_mesh_shader.

Note

JetBrains Rider works on both platforms, but is not required. On Windows the project templates ship Rider run configurations next to the Visual Studio ones, and there is a Rider plugin that adds build actions and reflection macro highlighting.

Caution

Lumina is under active development, so APIs change. If you hit a build issue these docs do not cover, ask on Discord or open an issue.

Ready? Continue to Installation.