Hi, I’m the lead developer of the Brutal Framework

[rian.drake]

Hi everyone, my name is Rian, and I have been the lead developer of Brutal since before it had a name.

I am introducing myself today because last night I deleted Reddit and YouTube from my phone, so I don’t have any apps to procrastinate on anymore. We’ll see how long that lasts, but in the meantime, you might see me chime in on the KSA Discord from time to time.

First of all, thank you for your interest/support in KSA! While I can’t claim any direct credit for any work that’s gone into it so far, it’s been a uniquely rewarding experience to see the first project using Brutal go out into the world. That feeling has since multiplied after seeing all of the amazing mods that have been made for it already!

I still have no idea what patch conics is, or why they’re taking pork chops into space, but I can assure you from what I can hear in the office: it certainly sounds like they know what they’re doing!

I primarily use Macs at the office, so my experience with running KSA has mostly been limited to discord streams, Windows Remote Desktop, and the settings menu (I can at least get that far on Mac!). I’d love to help ship KSA natively on all platforms one day; but for now, please keep sharing your pictures/videos so I can at least experience it vicariously through you all

 

[SSDeveloper]

Hello, and thanks for your work! It's good to see more of the BRUTAL team around!

 

[beik]

Hello there!

I hear a lot about the Brutal, but I never really get what it is. Is there any similar existing project that compares to it? Do you see it evolving and being used in others studios?

And fingers crossed that Mac will be somehow supported in the future

 

[rian.drake]

Hello there!

I hear a lot about the Brutal, but I never really get what it is. Is there any similar existing project that compares to it? Do you see it evolving and being used in others studios?

And fingers crossed that Mac will be somehow supported in the future

Hi there, thanks for your question!

To answer it quickly: the closest thing to Brutal would probably be the NuGet ecosystem itself, or perhaps the Stride game engine.

That said, I think Brutal is something else. What we’re trying to achieve with Brutal is:

- We want to build a framework, not an engine, that curates a set of necessary APIs that are required to build a game. This allows us to focus on the quality of the foundation, and not waste time on the bells and whistles.

- The framework delivers the APIs as they were designed to be used, without abstraction, which maximizes the chance a developer is going to be able to find existing resources online (or in an LLM), rather than fight a new beast.

- The libraries we write are designed to get you as close to the metal as possible, without compromising on usability, and leveraging the latest C#/.NET features. This means that Brutal does not shy away from unsafe code, but we believe there are developers out there want to work with the real thing - not just a toy.

- The APIs we deliver are provided via NuGet packages that allow the developer to pick/choose the systems they want to use freely, update at will, or mix them with other packages in the NuGet ecosystem. This allows us to avoid an awkward two-stage release of a combined framework, and deliver updates to the developer as fast as possible.

- All of our packages are connected by a Core package that contains the essence of what we believe makes the APIs “click” together easily. The Core libraries (Math, Strings, Memory, etc.) are all focused on maximizing performance and minimizing garbage generation, and when used as the core types in each package allow for fluent usage and communication between them in code.

As for where we want to go next with Brutal:

- We have what we believe to be the core set of packages required to build a game. From here, we would either explore more niche packages, or build in redundancy such as having multiple Audio or Rendering packages for those who don’t want to use what we’ve got already.

- We will continue to develop tools and processes that aid in developing with the framework, such as unified logging and performance profiling. These are already possible without our help using existing tools; but we think there’s always room for improvement, or deeper integration in the framework.

- We will continue to iterate on our packages! We can do that through continuous profiling and benchmarking of our work, as well as receiving feedback from both developers and modders. Long term, it would be good to see how we could manage contributions from the community as well (but it would be best if we could employ them )

Brutal currently supports Windows, Linux, and Mac (silicon) - but I’m interested i expanding that in the future!

Hope that answers it for you!

 

[beik]

It answered a lot, now it makes more sense! I googled some of the names you wrote, and from the Stride Engine site, I found the Silk.net project that seems to share a similar philosophy, at least from the surface. Quite interesting to read about!

Not sure if now is the right time, but you should make a blog post about what you wrote above. I believe we see so often the name BRUTAL being cited as how KSA will overcome the Unity limitations, and it is so hard to actually learn more about it...

Anyway, thanks for the long explanation!

 

[Infinite_Spaces.]

All that stuff is utter black magic to me, but i love you for taking the time to learn it then sharing that expertise on this quirky yet important project. KSA seems rock solid so far considering how complex it must be under the hood, its smoothness is very re-assuring though, will be fun to see how it handles someone (maybe me) trying to make a space elevator or the like with it in the future.

Cant thank you enough, amazing work!

 

[Kiwi Shark]

You're effectively a wizard as far as I can tell. Always cool to see more technical jargon thrown around for those that can understand it though.

I primarily use Macs at the office

What model? Presumably a Studio? I have an M4 Pro mini myself.