Bevy
MIT / Apache-2.0The engine. The whole table is one ECS world running on Bevy.
Source & support →Every part wires into the next. Follow the brass and you build HexBench.
⬡ Built on Open Source
HexBench is fast because of other people's work.
I didn't write the engine, the renderer, or the netcode. They did, in Rust, and gave it away for free. Every one of them is below. Go look at what they built. Star it. Back it if you can.
Each repo has a star button, and most have a Sponsor button right at the top. That's the truest way to support these projects, and better than anything I could funnel for them.
These licenses cover the dependencies named below. HexBench itself remains proprietary and closed-source.
The Engine & Renderer
I didn't write a game engine. These people did, and gave it away.
↳ the benchtop
wgpu
MIT / Apache-2.0The GPU layer underneath. Speaks Vulkan, Metal, and DX12 so HexBench doesn't have to.
Source & support →Vello
Apache-2.0 / MITGPU vector rendering. The reason lines, fills, and tokens stay crisp at any zoom.
Source & support →egui + bevy_egui
MITThe in-app tooling and inspector. Immediate-mode, fast, no ceremony.
Source & support →ab_glyph
Apache-2.0Glyph rasterizing. Every letter you read on the table.
Source & support →image
MIT / Apache-2.0Loads and decodes every format your maps and tokens show up in.
Source & support →Multiplayer
Real-time, free-form, and in sync. This is the hard part, and I didn't solve it alone.
renet2
MIT / Apache-2.0The netcode. Reliable and unreliable channels that keep everyone at the table on the same board.
Source & support →postcard
MIT / Apache-2.0The wire format. Tiny, fast binary serialization for everything that crosses the network.
Source & support →The Living Rules
Game systems are scripts, not hardcode. So you can read them, fork them, and change them.
Rhai
MIT / Apache-2.0The scripting engine. Rules and systems run as scripts you can actually open and edit.
Source & support →Sound
Dice, ambience, the noise a table makes.
rodio
MIT / Apache-2.0Audio playback. Every sound at the table goes through it.
Source & support →Foundations
The quiet crates that hold everything else up. You never see them. Nothing works without them.
Tokio
MITThe async runtime under the server. Many connections at once, no sweat.
Source & support →Serde
MIT / Apache-2.0Serialization, everywhere. The backbone of saving and loading anything.
Source & support →chrono
MIT / Apache-2.0Time and dates, done right.
Source & support →bytemuck
Zlib / MIT / Apache-2.0Safe byte-level casting for the data that gets shipped to the GPU.
Source & support →fastrand
MIT / Apache-2.0Fast randomness. Dice rolls and the procedural bits.
Source & support →rfd
MITNative open and save dialogs, on every OS.
Source & support →rusty-leveldb
MITEmbedded key-value storage, pure Rust.
Source & support →Data
Where the heavier persistence lives.
SurrealDB
BSL 1.1 · source-availableThe database behind larger persistence. Source-available under BSL, and it turns into Apache-2.0 with time.
Source & support →This Website
Even the page you're reading is built the same way. Rust, no framework, no tracker.
Zola
MITThis whole site is a static Zola build. Rust in, plain HTML out. No JavaScript framework.
Source & support →Inter
SIL Open Font LicenseThe body typeface, by Rasmus Andersson. Self-hosted right here, no CDN, nobody watching you read this page.
Source & support →Cinzel
SIL Open Font LicenseThe display typeface on every heading, by Natanael Gama. Self-hosted too. Roman inscriptions, basically.
Source & support →About the AI part
Since it matters and people ask: I use AI to help me build HexBench, and players can use AI at their own tables if they want it. That's my call and theirs. It has nothing to do with the projects above. Crediting them here does not mean any of them endorse HexBench, me, or how I work. I build on what they made, and I'm not going to pretend otherwise.
About paying them back
When HexBench makes enough to live on, I want to send money back to these projects. I'm not going to promise a number I can't hit yet. The honest thing I can do right now is point you at them and tell you they're worth your stars and your support.
Almost all of this is MIT or Apache-2.0, the most permissive open source there is. One piece, SurrealDB, is source-available under the BSL. HexBench only embeds it to store its own data, which its license expressly allows, and it turns into Apache-2.0 in 2029. I flag it instead of lumping it in.
None of this is sponsored. Nobody paid for placement. This is just the truth about what HexBench runs on.