First Steps

Before you begin

Requirements

Horizon Engine ships as a self-contained editor build. You only need a supported OS and a GPU with modern graphics-API support.

Step by step

Installation

1. Download a build

   Grab the latest package for your platform from the download section on the engine page.

   Downloads →

2. Unpack & run

   On Windows, extract the .zip and launch HorizonEditor.exe. On macOS, open the .dmg and drag the app into Applications.

3. Verify the install

   Launch the editor — you should land in the Project Hub. If the window opens and renders, you're ready to go.

Orientation

The Editor

The editor is organised around a few dockable panels. Knowing what each one does makes the rest of these docs easier to follow.

Muscle memory

Controls & Shortcuts

The viewport camera is Unity-style — if you've used another editor before, your hands already know most of this.

Hands on

Your First Project

Let's create a project, drop in a lit object and press play. From the Project Hub, choose New Project. You'll pick a template (Empty, Game, Simulation or Tool — the Game template seeds folders plus a sky and weather) and a scripting language for the whole project: HorizonCode (visual), Lua, Python or C++. The language is fixed after creation — details in the Project Hub guide. For a first project, the Game template with HorizonCode or Lua is a good default. Pick a folder and open it.

1 · Create an entity

Right-click the World Outliner and choose Create Entity. Entities start empty — select yours and use Add Component in the Details panel to give it a Mesh. Until you assign a mesh asset, the engine renders a built-in cube — perfect for a first scene.

2 · Light the scene

Create a second entity and add a Light component. In Details, switch its type to Directional and rotate it until the cube catches some shading.

3 · Peek at the scene file

Scenes are plain, human-readable JSON saved as .hescene. A trimmed-down scene with the cube and the light looks like this — a light type of 0 means directional:

{
  "version": "1.1",
  "entities": [
    {
      "name": "Cube",
      "components": {
        "transform": { "position": [0, 0, 0] },
        "mesh":      { "castsShadow": true }
      }
    },
    {
      "name": "Sun",
      "components": {
        "light": { "type": 0, "intensity": 3.0 }
      }
    }
  ]
}

4 · Press play

Hit the Play button in the toolbar. The viewport switches to runtime mode and the scene begins simulating.

Keep going

Next Steps