Ex-Blizzard Developer Builds New Kun-Zhi Game Engine Using AI

Former Blizzard employee Mark Kern claims to have developed a new game engine entirely through artificial intelligence. The developer spent six months using artificial intelligence to replace Unreal Engine for the game Em-8er. According to the developer, the new framework is called the Kun-Zhi Engine, which is named after the Tibetan word for the ground of all that the world springs from. Kern states that the project is developing significantly faster than previous work done with Unreal Engine because the framework was built to be completely artificial intelligence first rather than having features tacked on later.

The custom engine is written mostly in C and Elixir on top of Vulkan. Corporate partners supporting the project include Razer and AMD. The developer noted that artificial intelligence suites used in rotation include Codex, Grok, Claude, and Astra. The developer also emphasized that this approach requires technical knowledge despite the slang term used to describe the workflow, noting that understanding game architecture and guiding the output is necessary for production readiness.

Recent updates for the project showcase several operational features. These additions include an advanced character animation system, world collision meshes, an artificial intelligence assisted Blender animation exporter, character outfits with swapping capabilities, physics-driven character effects, fully networked client and server player capsules, and pilotable vehicles. The engine will eventually be released to the public, starting with backers first, while corporate sponsorships remain available.