Engine
DigitalHeaven.Engine is a standalone game engine written in C#. It shares the DigitalHeaven
repository but is its own runtime: not a mod, not built on Unity, and independent of the pallet
toolchain documented elsewhere on this site — though it reads the same compiled .pallet files that
DigitalHeaven.Unity does.
One executable is the whole engine. It opens a window and plays; with a flag it becomes a dedicated server, a remote client, an offscreen camera, a benchmark harness or a sidecar renderer for another game. Everything on the pages below is that one binary wearing a different hat.
Start here
Section titled “Start here” Architecture The stack, the projects inside it, build identity, and why each dependency was picked.
Input & controls Keyboard, mouse and gamepad bindings, and the look-scaling preferences.
Hot reload Three reload paths, what each can replace, and why a tuning number is a preference.
Playing and hosting
Section titled “Playing and hosting” Sessions Connecting, the loading box, a map changing underneath you, disconnecting, and chat.
Running a server The listen server a client carries, remote operation, preference verbs and autoexec.
Replicated world settings Gravity of the rules: time scale, coyote time, buoyancy, player scale, the world's look.
Netcode The tick clock, interpolation, the snapshot model every replicated entity rides, and hits.
Content
Section titled “Content”What a world is made of, and how the engine reads it at runtime. The file formats themselves are documented under Definition Types.
Runtime assets Reading a compiled pallet, spawning an object, and giving it a body.
Surfaces The fourteen surface kinds, what each one sounds like underfoot, and how slick it is.
Water Eleven presets, murk, optics, buoyancy, swimming and the view from below.
Player avatars Wearing a .dh-avatar, carrying it to everyone who draws you, and the placeholder box.
Audio The device-less mixer, spatialization, the movement-feel layer and volume controls.
Editing
Section titled “Editing” Level editor The editor state inside a running session: docking, gizmos, the inspector and the asset browser.
Scene manipulation The scene.* and material.* console commands that change a world while it runs.
Rendering
Section titled “Rendering”How a frame is put together. Lighting, shadows, skies and lightmaps are properties of the content that carries them, and are documented with it: see Material for the shading and shadow model, and Map for skies, lightmaps and irradiance volumes.
Camera & view effects Field of view, Panini, sharpening, ambient occlusion, antialiasing, motion blur and view punch.
Renderer textures Descriptor pools, residency across map loads, the texture budget and mipmapping.
Porting from Unity Which built-in-pipeline conversions are correct, and which Unity features have no equivalent.
Multiplayer content delivery
Section titled “Multiplayer content delivery” Map replication Advert, hash-skip and chunked transfer — how a client gets a map it has never seen.
Demos Server-side recording of per-tick input, and headless replay through the real tick.
Tooling
Section titled “Tooling” Offscreen rendering Shooting a map's authored cameras to PNG with no window, server or simulation.
Benchmarking Timing the renderer over a scripted flythrough of a graduated procedural load.
Debug overlays The client.debug.* family — the corner HUD and the world-anchored gizmos.
Platforms and internals
Section titled “Platforms and internals” Mobile The iOS host: lifecycle, touchscreen controls, building it, and the on-device probes.
VR Turning a running client into a stereo client with one key press.
Halcyon UI The retained-mode, code-first UI system every surface the engine draws goes through.
Coordinate precision The per-World coordinate contract, and what a world-scale profile would cost.
What each page answers
Section titled “What each page answers”| Page | The question it answers |
|---|---|
| Architecture | What is in the box, and why it is made of these parts |
| Input & controls | Which key does what, and what can be tuned |
| Hot reload | I changed a number — do I have to relaunch |
| Sessions | What happens between a connect and a world I can walk in |
| Running a server | How do I host one, and what can I change while it runs |
| Replicated world settings | Which rules does the server own, and how do I set them |
| Netcode | How does my input become everyone’s picture of the world |
| Runtime assets | Where does content come from at runtime, and how do I spawn it |
| Surfaces | What is this floor made of, and what does the engine do about it |
| Water | Why is this pond green, and what happens when I swim into it |
| Player avatars | How do I wear a model, and how does everyone else see it |
| Audio | What makes noise, and where is it coming from |
| Level editor | How do I move something and keep the change |
| Scene manipulation | How do I change a world from the console without recompiling |
| Camera & view effects | Why does the view look like that, and which knob owns it |
| Renderer textures | Why is this texture blurry, sharp, or missing |
| Porting from Unity | My Unity scene arrived wrong — which conversion did I miss |
| Map replication | How does a stranger’s client get the map I am running |
| Demos | How do I record a session and watch it back exactly |
| Offscreen rendering | How do I get a picture out of a map with no window |
| Benchmarking | What did that graphics change cost me |
| Debug overlays | What is the engine doing right now, drawn on top of it |
| Mobile | What does the engine do on a phone |
| VR | What happens in a headset, and what does not |
| Halcyon UI | How is every screen in the engine built |
| Coordinate precision | How far from the origin can a world go |