/glCraft

A basic minecraft clone made with OpenGL, written in C++

Primary LanguageC++

glCraft

A minecraft clone made with OpenGL, written in C++

I am learning computer graphics, and the basics of game development. I think that the best way to learn something is to use it to create a minecraft clone, so I made this, which is also my first C++ project. Making this was a great journey, I learnt a lot. I created the game entirely from scratch except the libraries, compilers, the operating system and other software that I used to make this.

Screenshots

  • Building and destroying blocks
    Building and destroying blocks
  • Ambient Occlusion
    Building and destroying blocks
  • Post-processing effects
    Post-processing effects
  • Procedural world generation
    Procedural world generation
  • Semi-transparent blocks
    Semi-transparent blocks
  • Order-Independent Transparency mode
    Order-Independent Transparency mode
  • The chunks are hollow on the inside
    The chunks are hollow on the inside

Building the project

  • How to build it in CLion

    • Clone the repository
    git clone --recursive https://github.com/Isti01/glCraft.git
    • Open it in CLion and press the green magic button.

  • How to build it using CMake

    • Clone the repository
    git clone --recursive https://github.com/Isti01/glCraft.git
    • Build the project the build_type can be either Release or Debug
    cd glCraft
mkdir build
cd build
cmake -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=<build_type> ..
cmake --build .
    • Run the game on Linux with an optional save to load:
    ./main <saved-world.glc>
    • Or on Windows with an optional save to load
    main.exe <saved-world.glc>

Features

  • Rendering

    • The chunks are hollow on the inside, so most of the blocks that are not visible are not sent to the GPU.
    • Each vertex in a chunk is only 4 bytes long to make the game as memory-efficient as possible (on the GPU side).
    • The game has animated textures and an animated skybox.
    • The game supports ambient occlusion, post-processing and semi-transparent textures, the chunk meshes are sorted before drawing.
    • The world rendering has order independent transparency rendering mode implemented from this paper.

  • Gameplay

    • The game has very basic, minecraft-like physics, with two movement modes:
      • One that is similar to spectator mode (the default).
      • One that is similar to the movement in survival.
    • The game has block placing, block picking and block breaking. - maybe the most essential feature
    • Implemented a basic UI to change the active block, load saves, and load custom textures for the world.
    • The world is generated procedurally using a seed, and loaded dynamically as the player moves across it.

  • Controls

    • Left Click to break a block
    • Middle Click to pick a block
    • Right Click to place a block
    • WASD to move around
    • Shift to descend when physics is off
    • Space to ascend when physics is off, or jump when physics is on
    • Ctrl to go faster
    • Esc to open the menu

Libraries that I used

  • FastNoiseLite - for terrain generation
  • GLAD - for loading OpenGL functions
  • glfw - for managing the window
  • glm - a great math library for working with OpenGL
  • imgui - for creating the amazing UI in the game
  • lodepng - for loading PNG textures