Zignite: Cross-Platform Graphics Engine

Overview

Zignite is a modern graphics engine built with the Zig programming language, designed for cross-platform development with native performance and WebAssembly compatibility. This project leverages Zig's memory safety and performance characteristics to create a robust foundation for interactive applications, games, and visualization tools.

Goals

• Build a lightweight, high-performance graphics engine using modern APIs
• Explore Zig's compile-time features and manual memory management capabilities
• Create seamless cross-platform deployment (native + WebAssembly)
• Integrate immediate-mode GUI capabilities with Dear ImGui and Dear ImPlot
• Provide a clean, type-safe API for graphics programming \

Architecture

Zignite is built around modern graphics APIs and cross-platform libraries:
• WebGPU Backend – Cross-platform graphics API for native and web targets
• GLFW Integration – Window management, input handling, and context creation
• Dear ImGui – Immediate-mode GUI system for developer tools and interfaces
• Dear ImPlot – Advanced plotting library for data visualization and analysis
• Engine Core – Unified rendering loop and resource management
• Emscripten Support – WebAssembly compilation for browser deployment

Features

• Cross-platform rendering with WebGPU (native + web)
• Memory-efficient implementation with Zig's allocator system
• Integrated Dear ImGui for rapid UI development
• Integrated Dear ImPlot for advanced plotting and data visualization
• WebAssembly compilation for browser deployment
• Type-safe graphics API bindings
• Minimal dependencies and fast compilation times

Running Examples

The project includes several examples demonstrating engine capabilities:

Web/WASM Examples

To build and run examples in the browser using WebAssembly:

# Run the simple ImGui example
zig build run-simple_imgui -Dtarget=wasm32-emscripten

# The example will automatically open in Chrome browser

Available Examples

• simple_imgui - Basic ImGui integration with rendering loop

• simple_implot - Basic ImPlot integration with rendering loop

Prerequisites

• Zig compiler (latest stable version)
• Emscripten SDK (automatically handled by the build system)
• Chrome browser (for running web examples)

The build system will automatically download and configure Emscripten if it's not already installed.

Learning Outcomes

This project provides hands-on experience with:
• Zig's comptime features and build system
• Manual memory management with custom allocators
• Cross-platform graphics programming with WebGPU
• C interoperability and binding generation with ImGui/ImPlot
• WebAssembly deployment strategies
• Modern graphics pipeline architecture

Project Status

🚧 Active Development – Core engine functionality is implemented with WebGPU + ImGui + ImPlot integration. WebAssembly deployment is supported via Emscripten.