[.net] Engine Design

don't split engine into several modules unless you need to. you could consider using another dll for rendering if you would have multiple rendering systems to choose from etc..

I'll have to agree with silencer here ... don't do it unless you need to. In fact, I'll even go as far as to say that you should explicitly keep it all in one .dll and build your engine for the express purpose of building a game. The "engine" should contain no more functionality than what is required by the game you're building. And, for example, if your game will have networked multiplayer, all that code goes in the .Network namespace.

If and when you finish that game and start working on another game, only break out the pieces that you will not use in this game. So if your second game will not include network multiplayer, then you can break out the .Network namespace into its own .dll.

Taking that approach, you end up with only the modularity that you need :-)

Cool, thanks guys, I appreciate it.

Personally I'd suggest splitting up core components that do not require each other.

So say you had,

Engine, Networking, Physics and Scripting,

Make them all a seperate dll.

The immediate benefit is reduce compile times when you've wrapped paticular aspect of the engine, and the longer term beneift is how easy you can write support tools or even entirely new applications that only borrow the aspects of the engine you need.

In C# anyway. If it was C++ then i wouldn't split it up, but c# makes it so easy i see no reason not to.