forgotten-lib

forgotten-lib is a refreshed header-only C++17 game-server foundation library (formerly fakengine).

Think of it as picking up an old toolbox and cleaning it—not as a pitch for greenfield work. The fixed-size containers, object pools, TCP/epoll networking, and heartbeat main loop from an earlier era have been brought up to build cleanly on modern 64-bit Linux and Windows (MinGW-w64). If you were starting an MMO today, you probably would not write the whole server stack in pure C++ from scratch. This project keeps that past toolkit usable; it does not claim to be the modern default.

APIs still use the historical f* prefix (farray / fpool / fengine …). Here f means the forgotten family—not another “engine” brand.

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What it is / is not

Is

• 100% header-only (CMake INTERFACE target, include and go)
• Fixed-capacity containers and object pools (few runtime heap allocations, less jitter)
• Cross-platform non-blocking TCP, epoll / select, connections and I/O buffers
• Heartbeat main loop, logging, ini, shared memory, and other server-side odds and ends

Is not

• A full game engine or turnkey MMO framework (no scene/AOI, persistence, or multi-process story)
• A recommendation for how to build new game servers today

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Quick start

CMake (recommended)

After the GitHub rename, the clone directory is usually forgotten-lib. The header tree is still named fakengine/ for include compatibility:

add_subdirectory(forgotten-lib)   # or wherever you placed this repo
# if you kept the old folder name: add_subdirectory(fakengine)

add_executable(my_game_server main.cpp)
target_link_libraries(my_game_server PRIVATE fengine)

Direct includes

Add the header directory to your include path, then:

#include "fakengine.h"

int main()
{
    fengine engine("hello");

    farray<int, 1024> arr;
    arr.push_back(42);

    fstring<uint8_t, 128> msg = "hello, forgotten-lib";
    printf("%s\n", (const char *)msg.c_str());
    return 0;
}

Requires C++17. Link pthread, dl, and rt on Linux; ws2_32 on Windows. Optional system zlib.

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Module overview

fakengine/                       # legacy directory name; APIs use f*
├── fakengine.h / fengine.h      # umbrella include and runtime bootstrap
│
├── Containers & strings
│   ├── farray / flist / fstack / fpool
│   ├── fhashmap / fhashset
│   ├── circle_buffer / fkeybuffer
│   └── fstring
│
├── Networking
│   ├── tcpsocket / epollor
│   ├── socket_container / socket_link
│   ├── netmsg / proxymsg / fproxyclient
│   └── netserver / neteventprocessor
│
├── Memory
│   ├── calloc / sharemm
│   ├── normal_allocator / readonly_allocator
│   └── allocator            # STL allocator adapter over the engine heaps
│
├── Misc
│   ├── fclock / ftime       # chrono-based clocks
│   ├── inifile / cmdparser / flog
│   ├── fmd5 / fsha1 / fcrc32 / faes / fdes
│   ├── ftrie / dimension/*
│   └── fprofile / fhook / fptrace

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Tools

Path	Purpose
tools/cmdcontroller	Send commands into a running process
tools/shmclean	Clean leftover shared-memory segments
tools/fproxy	Simple network proxy
tools/gencfg / genmsg / genstat	Go codegen tools (go build in each directory)
tools/wireshark	Wireshark plugin sources for a private protocol

cd tools/genstat && go build -o genstat .
cd ../gencfg  && go build -o gencfg .
cd ../genmsg  && go build -o genmsg .

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Build & test

• Compiler: GCC 9+ / Clang 10+ / MinGW-w64 (x86-64), C++17
• CMake 3.16+; optional GoogleTest and zlib

./build.sh              # Debug + tests
./build.sh release      # Release + tests

# or
cmake -B build -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Release
cmake --build build -j$(nproc)
ctest --test-dir build --output-on-failure

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CI

GitHub Actions (.github/workflows/ci.yml):

• Linux GCC: Debug / Release
• Windows MinGW-w64: Debug / Release

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Naming

Name	Meaning
forgotten-lib	Public project / repository name
f* APIs	Historical prefix; f ≈ forgotten
fakengine/, fengine	Legacy directory, CMake target, and class names—left as-is to avoid a pointless mass rename; can be cleaned up later