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Welcome to Rawframe

By Rawframe Team
announcement introduction

A New Kind of Sandbox

Rawframe is an open-world sandbox engine built from the ground up for one purpose: letting communities create everything. Think of it as the ultimate modding platform — a place where the base game is intentionally empty, and modders fill it with life.

No pre-built storyline. No locked-down mechanics. Just a powerful, moddable engine that runs on PC, Android, and iOS.

How It Works

Every piece of gameplay in Rawframe comes from mods. A mod is a folder containing a mod.json manifest and Luau scripts. When a server loads a mod, its scripts run in an isolated VM — if one mod crashes, the others keep running.

Players connect to servers, and each server chooses which mods to run. One server might run a zombie survival gamemode. Another might run a racing game. A third might be a creative sandbox. The engine provides the foundation; the community builds the rest.

What Makes Rawframe Different

  • 583+ Lua API functions — spawn entities, apply physics, play sounds, send network messages, manage teams, handle weapons, build UI — all from Luau scripts
  • Cross-platform — the same mods work on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and iOS
  • Per-mod VM isolation — each mod runs in its own sandboxed Lua state with crash protection and clean hot-reload
  • Server-authoritative architecture — clients send input, servers run logic, no easy cheating
  • Rawframe Studio — a full visual editor for building scenes, sculpting terrain, debugging scripts, and packaging mods

The Tech Stack

Under the hood, Rawframe is a C++20 engine built with battle-tested technology:

  • Cross-platform windowing and input
  • Multi-backend rendering (Vulkan, Metal, DirectX, OpenGL ES)
  • High-performance Entity Component System
  • Full 3D physics simulation
  • Luau for mod scripting (a fast, safe, sandboxed Lua variant)
  • Lightweight UDP networking

Getting Started

Ready to dive in? Here’s how:

  1. Download Rawframe from the download page
  2. Join a server — browse the server list and connect to a community server
  3. Create your first mod — check out our 5-minute tutorial to write your first Luau script
  4. Read the docs — the full API documentation covers every function

We’re building Rawframe in the open, and we want your feedback. Join our community on Discord and help shape the future of moddable gaming.

Welcome aboard.

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