Install in minutes
Install from Steam, run setup once. It registers the engine root, associates .femproj files, puts the tools on your PATH and creates a Ferrite Hub shortcut. Uninstall removes only what it installed.
Ferrite SDK is the binary distribution of the Ferrite game engine. Install it from Steam, run setup, and start a project in Schematic visual scripting or C#. The same editor, networking and renderer that power Ferrite’s own games, with no compiler toolchain to set up.
The SDK is the complete Ferrite toolset as a ready-to-run install, distributed through Steam. It ships prebuilt tools, the engine runtime, compiled shaders for both renderers, the managed host, templates and docs. Projects you make with it are plain folders you can zip, copy and version.
Install from Steam, run setup once. It registers the engine root, associates .femproj files, puts the tools on your PATH and creates a Ferrite Hub shortcut. Uninstall removes only what it installed.
Schematic projects need no compiler at all. C# projects need only the .NET 10 SDK from Microsoft. Both can live in the same project and both reach the same engine API.
Package Project cooks content, stages the runtime and writes a standalone game folder plus an optional zip. Your game ships without a project DLL and without the SDK.
Every project runs on a fixed-tick, server-authoritative simulation. Host or join LAN sessions from your game with prediction and replication handled by the engine.
The SDK carries its own build tool and records every binary with a hash receipt. Move the folder, re-run setup, keep working. Project files never store machine paths.
Ferrite Hub shows detected engine roots, versions, tool and shader status and copyable repair commands. It never runs repairs behind your back.
Schematic is Ferrite's visual scripting system. Create a Schematic Class from Actor, Pawn, Character, First Person Character, Third Person Character or Game Mode, add components, wire a graph, press Play. Graphs compile to bytecode and run inside the engine's VM.
using Ferrite.Managed;
[FeClass(SchematicType = true, Schematicable = true)]
public sealed class EngineHum : Actor
{
AudioSample? clip;
AudioVoice? voice;
protected override void OnStart()
{
var loaded = World.Audio.TryLoad("audio/engine_hum");
if (!loaded.Succeeded) return;
clip = loaded.Value;
var playing = World.Audio.TryPlay2D(clip, new(Loop: true, Gain: .25f));
if (playing.Succeeded) voice = playing.Value;
}
protected override void OnUpdate(double seconds)
{
if (voice is not null) _ = voice.SetPitch(1.1f);
}
protected override void OnStop()
{
voice?.Dispose();
clip?.Dispose();
}
}
C# classes marked Schematicable appear in the Schematic parent picker, so designers can extend programmer-written classes in graphs. Press Build C# Classes in the editor, then Play. Actors, Game Modes, UI widgets, audio and LAN sessions are all reachable from managed code.
Five executables, all prebuilt in Release. Every tool is project-aware and works from a .femproj.
| Executable | Role | What it does for you |
|---|---|---|
| FerriteHub | Project browser | Create projects from templates, open recent ones, choose the registered engine, launch the editor or the game. Hosts the Setup & Readiness page. |
| FerriteEditor | Level editor | Native Level authoring with drag-drop placement and snapping, Schematic Class editor, node-based material editor, Widget editor for UI, content browser with glTF import, world settings, post-process volumes, multi-viewport, embedded Play-In-Editor including multiplayer PIE, and transactional Package Project. |
| ferrite | Command line | new, generate, build, run, open, package. Script the same workflow from a terminal or CI. |
| FerriteCooker | Asset cooker | Cooks content for production and writes a PackageReceipt.json with every staged file. |
| FerriteLauncher | Game launcher | The executable your packaged game runs as. Loads the engine runtime, your cooked content and your managed assemblies. |
All five templates are pure Schematic or C# + Schematic projects. They open, play and package out of the box.
A Level, a Player Start and a Game Mode. The smallest possible project for learning the editor.
The same skeleton with a managed project already generated and a C# GameMode to extend.
First person character with camera, weapon, health and interaction components on a beach level.
Third person variant with a spring arm camera and the same gameplay components.
Hub lists your recent projects alongside the templates. Projects are plain folders, so they version cleanly in git.
The SDK ships the production engine runtime as prebuilt binaries. You get the renderer, physics, audio and networking that the engine's own games are built on.
Every setting below is a project or level value you can edit in the editor, not a constant in native code. Each feature has a path for the lowest quality tier.
Bake lightmaps and light probe volumes in the editor, blend GI sets at runtime, and light moving objects from probes. Pick a lighting mode per project or per level: Static, Time of Day or Runtime.
A time-of-day atmosphere profile drives the sun, sky, fog, exposure and clouds from one lookup, so lighting always matches what you see. Height fog is lit by the sky.
Cascaded sun shadows with a static cache, PCSS on Ultra, a far cascade, contact shadows, and shadows for spot and point lights. Sphere and tube lights are supported.
Ground-truth ambient occlusion with bent normals and temporal accumulation, plus Hi-Z screen-space reflections blended with cubemap captures and the sky.
Histogram auto exposure in EV100 with metering and per-volume control, selectable display transform, grading LUTs, and HDR10 output on desktop.
Mobile, Low, Medium, High and Ultra select shader permutations and budgets, from phones up to desktop. Set the default in the project and change it at runtime with r_quality_tier.
Textures stream by wanted mip against a real video-memory budget, with per-asset cook settings and per-platform formats. Tune it in the editor's graphics settings.
Features land on DirectX 12 and Vulkan first, with parity checked by tests that render on the real backends. Metal follows and is being verified on macOS.
Captured from the SDK templates running on the same runtime you get in the box. Every one of these is a Schematic or C# project with no native code.
Ferrite SDK will launch on Steam in Early Access. Updates, templates and documentation will ship through Steam as the engine evolves. Follow the store page to get notified the day it goes live.
The SDK is built from an explicit allowlist. Every binary is recorded with a SHA-256 receipt, and every third-party notice is included. It contains no engine source, headers, libraries or debug symbols.
| Ferrite SDK | |
|---|---|
| Schematic projects | Yes |
| C# projects | Yes |
| Editor, Hub, CLI, Cooker | Yes |
| AI Tools panel: one-click MCP setup for Claude Code, Codex, OpenCode | Yes |
| Package to standalone build | Yes |
| DX12, Vulkan and Metal | Yes |
| Windows, macOS, Linux · x64 and ARM64 | Yes |
| Prebuilt engine runtime | Yes |
| Third-party licence notices | Yes |
| Needs a C++ toolchain | No |
| Needs engine source | No |
Ferrite ships only as this SDK. The engine runtime is prebuilt and closed; all gameplay is written in Schematic or C# against the documented API, and everything a finished game needs is in the box.
Windows, macOS or Linux on an x64 or ARM64 machine with a DirectX 12, Vulkan or Metal capable GPU. C# projects also need the .NET 10 SDK.
# 1. install Ferrite SDK from your Steam library
# 2. run setup once from the install folder
...\steamapps\common\Ferrite SDK\install
# 3. (C# only) install the .NET 10 SDK from Microsoft
# 4. open Ferrite Hub and create a project
Setup registers the Steam install folder as your engine root. Steam keeps the tools, runtime and templates up to date.
ferrite new MyGame --template CrabBeachFPS --path D:\Projects
ferrite open D:\Projects\MyGame\MyGame.femproj
# in the editor: edit, press Play, then Package Project.
# output lands in Saved/StagedBuilds/<Platform>/Release/MyGame/
# with the game executable, cooked content and an archive
ferrite package D:\Projects\MyGame\MyGame.femproj
Packaging is transactional. A failed cook, copy or validation step leaves your previous build untouched.