Building a Custom Game Engine from Scratch (C++ & DX12) - Day 4: First Frame Render, Command Lists & Synchronization

Development Programming & Scripting C++
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Hey everyone! :waving_hand:

Today marks Day 4 of my journey building TitanEngine completely from scratch using C++20 and native DirectX 12, with zero bloated third-party templates or high-level helper wrappers.

After setting up our device, command queue, and swap chain in the previous sessions, today we achieved a major milestone: rendering our very first frame and clearing the screen with pure hardware control!

Here is what was implemented today:

  • Command Allocator & List: Initialized and managed ID3D12CommandAllocator and ID3D12GraphicsCommandList to record and reset rendering commands frame by frame.

  • Manual Resource Barriers: Handled D3D12_RESOURCE_BARRIER states to transition our back buffers manually between PRESENT and RENDER_TARGET.

  • First Frame Clear: Bound our Render Target View using raw descriptor handle pointer arithmetic and cleared the screen with a custom engine background color.

  • Deterministic Synchronization: Implemented an ID3D12Fence alongside native Win32 Event handles (WaitForSingleObject) to completely prevent CPU-GPU race conditions.

You can check out the full step-by-step breakdown and code walkthrough in the latest video update here: :television: Watch Day 4 on YouTube: https://youtu.be/QbUPJpvIqFU

Feedback, architectural thoughts, or questions from fellow engine programmers are always welcome. Let’s keep building low-level! :rocket: