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Welcome to Rawframe

By Rawframe Team
announcement introduction

Build Games. Own Them.

Rawframe is a game creation platform built from the ground up for one purpose: letting anyone build and publish complete games. You create your game in a Place — a self-contained project with scripts, worlds, and content — and decide how the world plays it.

No pre-built storyline. No locked-down mechanics. And no middleman between you and your players: publish your game on your own servers, or export it and ship it as a standalone title.

How It Works

Every Rawframe game starts in a Place. You script gameplay in Luau, build worlds in Rawframe Studio, and pull models, scripts, sounds, and complete systems from the Asset Store instead of building everything from scratch.

When your game is ready, you have two paths:

  • Publish on Rawframe — run it on your own dedicated server (you host it, you own it), and players find it in the server browser. One server might run a zombie survival game. Another a racing game. A third a creative sandbox.
  • Export standalone — package your game as an independent title and publish it anywhere you like.

There's no persistent avatar following players between games — every game defines its own characters, rules, and identity.

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 games run on Windows, Linux, macOS, Android, and iOS
  • Sandboxed script isolation — your game and every Asset Store package run in their own Luau VMs 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 your game

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 game 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 — it's free
  2. Join a server — browse the server list and connect to a community game
  3. Create your first game — check out our 5-minute tutorial to build your first Place
  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 community-made games.

Welcome aboard.

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