Helion

A modern Doom engine written from the ground up with a focus on performance.

Helion uses static rendering with a state management system to reconcile dynamic map changes in Doom. In contrast to the typical BSP tree rendering that requires significant CPU processing, Helion is able to manage dynamic changes and optimially utilize the GPU resulting in dramatic performance increases.

Content creators have created maps that struggle to render at high framerates with even the latest and most expensive hardware. With Helion, Doom’s most complex maps are no longer stressful on modern GPUs and playable on old hardware that was previously impossible.

Minimum requirements are Windows 7 and an Open GL 3.3 capable GPU.

Full Benchmark Spreadsheet

Build Instructions

Windows

If using Visual Studio 2022+ or Rider, press Run and it will do everything.

Linux

Install dependencies first:

Debian/Ubuntu

sudo apt install dotnet-sdk-8.0 libfluidsynth-dev libopenal-dev

Fedora

sudo dnf install dotnet-sdk-8.0 fluidsynth-devel openal-devel

After installing dependencies, if you have an IDE that supports C# (like Rider), you can open Helion and build/run directly.

To make a release build:

Scripts/build.sh

Mac

None of the developers have a Mac to test.

You likely can follow the Linux instructions to build.

All platforms (advanced command-line options)

Once any platform-specific prerequisites are installed, you can build or publish using the dotnet commands available with the .NET SDK. By default, dotnet build will build an "any" binary that uses the installed version of the .NET runtime. However, you can also build versions with a prepackaged runtime for easy installation onto machines that do not have the .NET 8 runtime installed.

Note that it only makes sense to run the following from the /Client subdirectory, as this is the only one that actually builds an executable (and can therefore be published).

Common parameters: * -r <runtimeID>: Build an executable for the specific runtime. Tested choices include win-x64, win-x86, and linux-x64. * --self-contained=true: Includes support files for the specified runtime, so that you do not need to install the .NET runtime onto the machine where you’re going to run this (helps to make installs more portable) * -p:PublishSingleFile=true: Bundles all of the .NET dependencies into a single file, resulting in fewer files in the output directory. Can be combined with --self-contained=true. * -p:EnableCompressionInSingleFile=true: When combined with single-file publish, this will also compress the resulting executable file. This can result in a much smaller file size, but may result in the app taking longer to start.

Example (making a compressed, self-contained release build for Windows x64):

cd Client
dotnet publish -c Release -r win-x64 --self-contained=true -p:PublishSingleFile=true -p:EnableCompressionInSingleFile=true

In this example, the output from the build would end up in Client\bin\Release\net8.0\win-x64\publish.