MetalCaster

Metal Caster is my attempt to rethink game engine design for the Apple ecosystem from first principles.

Instead of building a general-purpose engine for every platform and every workflow, Metal Caster is intentionally opinionated: Swift + SwiftUI + Metal + ECS, Apple platforms only, and AI as a first-class interface to the engine.

The engine is open source and can be accessed through GitHub.

Why I Started This

Most engines optimize for flexibility and cross-platform scale.
Metal Caster optimizes for something else:

• Better defaults over endless configuration
• Deep Apple Silicon optimization over portability
• AI-native creation workflows over manual boilerplate
• Visual clarity and tool elegance over feature bloat

The core idea is simple:

Describe what you want -> AI builds it through engine tools -> refine visually in the editor.

I want the engine to feel like a precision instrument: focused, minimal, and fast.

Current Progress (March 2026)

Metal Caster is in an active pre-alpha / architecture-hardening stage, with a working vertical slice across core systems.

What is already working

• Modular engine foundation
  Swift Package-based architecture with dedicated modules for core ECS, rendering, scene, assets, input, physics, audio, AI, and math.

• Core ECS runtime

  • Entity/component/system model
  • Typed queries
  • Event bus
  • Engine tick/update loop

• Renderer and scene stack

  • Metal-based render pipeline and render-graph structure
  • Scene graph + built-in components (transform, camera, light, mesh, material, name)
  • Camera/lighting/mesh systems integrated into runtime/editor flows

• Editor application (macOS, SwiftUI)

  • Multi-panel workspace (scene, hierarchy, inspector, assets, agent discussion)
  • Scene operations (create, duplicate, delete, import, save)
  • Build and play workflows

• AI agent system integrated in-editor

  • 6 specialist agents (Scene, Render, Shader, Asset, Optimize, Analyze)
  • Multi-agent orchestrator for decomposing complex tasks
  • Tool-calling architecture with engine snapshots as context
  • Multi-provider support (OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini)

• Asset + build pipeline

  • Scene serialization and bundling (.mcbundle)
  • Shader collection and precompilation flow
  • SPM runtime project generation for Apple targets

• Shader tooling

  • Standalone Shader Canvas project for MSL iteration and experimentation

What is still in progress

• Advanced rendering features (PBR depth, GI, particles, etc.)
• Broader test coverage beyond core ECS
• Deeper USD collaboration workflows
• Production hardening for large scenes and long sessions

Ambition

Metal Caster is not trying to be the next “everything engine.”
Its ambition is more specific:

1. Become the best native engine experience on Apple platforms
   iOS, macOS, tvOS, and visionOS — with Metal-first performance and Swift-native ergonomics.

2. Make AI the primary creation interface
   Not a chat sidebar, but a real engine control layer that can inspect state, call tools, and build scenes/materials/systems safely.

3. Build a USD-native collaborative workflow
   Scene data as composable, version-friendly assets for real team workflows.

4. Stay open, inspectable, and performance-transparent
   Clean package boundaries, measurable runtime behavior, and APIs that both humans and agents can reason about.

If successful, Metal Caster should feel like the Leica of game engines: focused, deliberate, and uncompromising in its domain.

Project Status

Status: Active development
Focus right now: solidify foundations, improve rendering quality, expand AI tool depth, and strengthen reliability for daily use.