A message from the initiator of Axmol

A message from the initiator of Axmol (WIP)

As the initiator of the Axmol engine, I was recently asked by the community to share the story behind its creation. Although Axmol began as a fork of cocos2d-x-4.0 and remains closely tied to its legacy, its evolution is marked by personal growth, technical innovation, and the power of community collaboration.

2013 – The Early Days My journey in the game industry began in 2013 with cocos2d-x-2.x (Amazing, 10+ years ago), With no dedicated UI editor available, I developed a UI editor using c# win forms which would generate C++ code to directly. Despite the project's eventual failure and my subsequent move to another company, this experience laid the technical foundation for what was to come.

2014 – A Spark of Innovation In 2014, even though my company had shifted to its own in-house engine, I still kept a close eye on cocos2d-x developments, including the new cocosstudio editor. Finding its UI editing experience unsatisfactory, I resolved to create a better alternative. Thus, in October 2014, I started developing my own UI editor in spare time naming it x-studio365 to reflect continuous development and iteration. After many late nights, I released its first version on October 27, 2014, and continued to refine it over the following year, even as my career took me on new paths.

2015 – Facing New Challenges and Opportunities By 2015, after several interviews (and a few criticisms for not using Lua), I joined a startup as a technical partner. There, I led a small team from scratch to develop and launch game products using cocos2d-x-3.9 with Lua. Although the product was not ultimately successful, this period was pivotal. It led to the creation of my cross-platform network library yasio (now is a thredparty of Axmol), and allowed me to integrate Lua debugging into x-studio365—an improvement over existing tools like LuaStudio and the sluggish BabeLua. After nearly two years, I made the difficult decision to move on.

2017 – A Turning Point with Red Alert OL In 2017, I joined a company that would reshape my career by developing a game project naming Red Alert OL built on cocos2d-x, albeit using version 2.x with numerous custom modifications. I further enhanced the project by integrating my network library and continuing to advance x-studio365 (which, due to business pressures, saw its development split between work and personal time). When Red Alert OL launched successfully in 2018, x-studio365 became a commercial product under the new name "x-studio."

2019 – The Birth of Axmol
During 2017~2019, although our game project was based on cocos2d-x-2.x, I always paid attention to the updates and features of cocos2d-x on 3.x and the later release of cocos2d-x-4.0. Amidst a shifting focus by the official cocos team toward Cocos Creator, I resolved that if they stepped back, I would continue to maintain our engine, so I create a fork of cocos2d-x-4.0, Initially dubbed engine-v5 as a continuation of cocos2d-x-4.0 only a handful of contributors (including myself) were involved. I clearly remember the excitement of adding ASTC support and resolving the purple rendering issue in the simulator. Over time, the engine’s name evolved from engine-x to cocos-re, then ENGX, axis, axys, adxe, and finally, Axmol. After much community discussion, Axmol was cemented as the official name.

2023 – The Milestone Release of Axmol 1.0.0
After three years of intensive development and collaboration with many dedicated developers, Axmol 1.0.0 was finally released in 2023. This milestone upgrade brought significant enhancements:

• C++ Standard: Updated from C++11 to C++17.
• Platform Support: Added Windows x64 support and modernized GL loading via glad.
• Graphics Improvements: Expanded ASTC block size options, added ETC2 support, and integrated Google ANGLE as a GLES backend for broader Windows device compatibility.
• Extension Support: Included frameworks such as FairyGUI, Live2D, ImGui and more.
• Audio Unification: Standardized the audio library across platforms using OpenAL.
• CICD: Complete github actions for ci checks to ensure code quality.

Overall, about 170 modifications were implemented. Initially, I maintained the engine in an almost amateur capacity, never expecting the vast attention it would garner. As more developers joined and contributed persistently—three to five passionate contributors remain active today—the project not only thrived but also pushed past numerous challenges and moments of doubt.

Key Community Events:

• Oct 1, 2022: The engine was officially renamed to Axmol, a name it proudly retains today.
• Feb 10, 2023: codeandweb (Famous for TexturePacker) add some tutorials for Axmol: https://www.codeandweb.com/texturepacker/tutorials/axmol.
• Apr 23, 2023: The Axmol Discord community was created by iAndy_HD3.
• Jun 12, 2023: Spine official add Axmol as 3rd party runtime to it's main website: https://esotericsoftware.com/spine-runtimes#Axmol
• Sep 21, 2023: The Axmol Reddit community was created halx99(deal211) and mantained by @danialias and @halx99
• Dec 7, 2023: @danialias joined as the publicity committee member on a voluntary basis.
• Sep 28, 2023: Axmol was added to the runtime list of FairyGUI, see: https://github.com/axmolengine/axmol/discussions/1359
• Jan 5, 2024: At the community’s request, a sponsorship channel was launched, despite my initial hesitations.
• May 18, 2024: @iAndyHD3 Add axmol to awsome-cpp, see: https://github.com/fffaraz/awesome-cpp?tab=readme-ov-file#game-engine
• Jan 25, 2025: Scorewarrior Limited has become a new monthly platinum financial contributor to Axmol: $3000/month, No words can describe my excitement. This will be a huge assistant for the development of the axmol community.
• May 2, 2025: Axmol received sponsorships totaling US$10,000 across 66 transactions, all directed solely toward essential expenditures such as purchasing the domain (axmol.dev). I even began contemplating rewarding the top 10–20 code contributors, although the funds are currently managed by the Open Source Collective.
• Mar 16, 2025: Noticing that the Open Source Collective's platform imposed fees as high as 10% (resulting in a $432.30 loss on $3000 in donations), due to my experience in developing online payment for the x-studio software, I developed an alternative PayPal sponsorship channel (https://axmol.dev/donate/) with a much lower fee of only 4.43%. I sincerely hope that financial supporters will consider switching to this channel to maximize the impact of their contributions.

Now, the Axmol engine and its community have continued to grow steadily. New versions are released every one to two months, often featuring major functional updates and optimizations that enhance the engine’s capabilities.

Each phase of Axmol’s journey reflects the passion, resilience, and unwavering commitment of its community. I am deeply grateful for every contribution, and I look forward to the exciting developments that the future holds.

Abount x-studio

During the development of x-studio, I leveraged cocos2d-x as the UI rendering engine and implemented several engine-level modifications to enhance its capabilities. Up until Axmol's inception, x-studio consistently employed the latest versions of Axmol, even integrating the unreleased Axmol-3.0. In many ways, my experience with x-studio laid the groundwork for Axmol's early evolution. Due to time constraints, I now focus most of my spare time on maintaining the Axmol engine, which makes it challenging to work on both projects simultaneously. Nonetheless, continuing to develop x-studio and Axmol engines are what I really like to do.