https://matrix.to/#/#wgpu-mc:matrix.org
WebGPU is a new web specification designed to provide modern graphics and compute capabilities in an API. It is in its very early stages in web browsers, but has had a very promising cycle of development. It's inspired by Metal & Vulkan's render pipelines, and is able to efficiently provide lower level access to graphics hardware, in a modern and (relatively) easy to use API.
wgpu is the name of a crate which implements this specification, and it is written in Rust, allowing safe and blazing-fast
use of the WebGPU standard, which makes it a prime candidate for a replacement of Blaze3D.
wgpu-mc is eventually meant to be a full replacement to the standard, official renderer "Blaze3D". It will be used as a Fabric mod, which will disable the original OpenGL code and interface with wgpu-mc, using the native Java interface.
The project is currently under active development (I'm solo at the moment though) and it's close to getting a proper proof-of-concept working. The demo renderer works independently of the game, but does showcase that the engine works. The main task is getting it to work with the game.
Engine
- Load blockmodels
- Generate a texture atlas of the textures
- Convert the block models into a mesh
- Generate chunk meshes
- Skybox*
*shader not written yet
Gameplay
- Disable Blaze3d
- Upload basic chunk data to wgpu-mc
Entity rendering
- Render entity models
- Animations
Java Interface
- Interface with the Fabric mod to use wgpu-mc
Shaders
- Have built in shaders that mimic the original Minecraft style, and also built-in more advanced shaders
- Ability to use custom shaders
Pie in the sky
- Use https://github.com/birbe/jvm to run Minecraft in the browser