Agenda
Built from Scratch: The Engine Behind 'World of Tanks: HEAT'
Bronislav Sviglo (Engine Director, Wargaming)
Pass Type:
Festival Pass, Game Changer Pass -
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Track:
Programming
Audience Level:
Advanced
Format:
Lecture
Vault Recording: TBD
Audience Level: Advanced
This session shows how Wargaming built its new engine from scratch. World of Tanks: HEAT is the pilot project — it shipped day-one on PC, Steam Deck, PlayStation 5 (including PS5 Pro), and Xbox Series X|S, and the same engine will power the company's future titles. The session walks through the engine's three pillars: what each one gave the team, and what it cost. First, a small core: everything else, including the game itself, is a plugin. One codebase covers client, editor, and dedicated server; gameplay is modern C++, no scripting. Second, ECS is the skeleton of the whole engine: 1000+ systems, from physics to UI, run in one auto-parallel frame graph. There is no classic render thread: rendering is ECS too. Third, the editor is the king: part of the core, fully WYSIWYG, built on ECS and ImGui, extended by plugins. Every edit goes through one universal command system, with a whole set of features built on top of it.
Takeaway
Proven by HEAT: with only essentials in the core, games extend the engine through plugins, not through the engine team; ECS can be the skeleton of the whole engine, not just gameplay; an editor in the same codebase, built on ECS and ImGui, makes WYSIWYG a consequence, not a feature.
Intended Audience
Engine, gameplay and tools programmers of mid-level seniority and above; tech leads, tech directors and CTOs evaluating in-house engine development; and anyone curious how a game engine gets built from scratch.