Dagon 1.0.0

The first stable version of the Dagon game engine, written entirely in D, was recently released. The project has been in development since 2016 and has since acquired a significant set of features, including realistic 3D rendering with PBR materials, scene loading in glTF 2.0, skeletal animation, rigid body physics, audio and video playback, and an ImGUI-based user interface. Dagon renders graphics using OpenGL 4.3 and runs on Windows and Linux. The project code is distributed under the Boost license. Currently, it is the only actively developed 3D engine written in D that delivers state-of-the-art graphics.

The project began as a refactoring and development of the DGL framework by the same author, Timur Gafarov, aka gecko0307. The name "Dagon" alludes to the literary mythology of H.P. Lovecraft and follows the tradition in the language community of emphasizing the letter "D" in project names. The engine's author is an artist and programmer, a professional game developer.

"I'm passionate about everything related to computer graphics, primarily real-time rendering. I've been involved in indie game development since 2005. I currently develop custom advertising games and interactive experiences. I switched to the D language in the early 2010s and immediately realized it was exactly what I needed for hobby projects: compilation to machine code, convenient syntax, modularity, and powerful metaprogramming tools. Writing in D is a pleasure, especially since it has bindings to all the libraries necessary for game development."

Dagon was mentioned at FOSDEM '24, a European conference on free software, in the report "The D Programming Language for Modern Open Source Development." It was noted as a significant project of interest to graphics developers. The development was also covered in the Russian-language edition of the American magazine PC Magazine as part of a feature on modern game development. Information for this article was provided by many Russian developers, but unfortunately, it is no longer available online due to PC Magazine's departure from Russia.

Dagon is being developed primarily by Timur himself, with contributions from the D community. The 1.0 release culminates the extensive work on the engine that has been done in recent years. Specifically, in 2026, the popular Jolt Physics engine was integrated, a built-in texture compressor was added, new post-processing filters were implemented, and numerous bug fixes were introduced. To demonstrate the capabilities of Dagon 1.0, a playable tech demo, Ruins of Hell, is being developed, featuring a full implementation of first-person shooter mechanics.

Also worth mentioning as examples of engine use are sacengine, a free implementation of the classic strategy game Sacrifice, and DagoBan, a game in the popular puzzle genre Sokoban with a built-in level editor.

Dagon's future development plans include switching to Vulkan and SDL3, implementing photorealistic rendering, and supporting new technologies, including HDR displays and VR devices.

Engine website: https://gecko0307.github.io/dagon

Dagon repository on GitHub: https://github.com/gecko0307/dagon