cloudxtreme/voxeling

Creative mode WebGL voxel game. Runs in Chrome, with multiplayer functionality and very few dependencies

voxeling

Inspired by voxel-engine and voxel.js, this is a multiplayer sandbox (like Minecraft creative mode) implemented in WebGL with very few dependencies. Very much a work in progress.

Demo: https://voxeling.greaterscope.com (Google Chrome and Firefox 46+)

Project blog: https://blog.alanszlosek.com/tags/voxeling/

Preferred texture set:

• http://bdcraft.net/purebdcraft-minetest

Past textures provided by:

• https://github.com/deathcap/ProgrammerArt
• https://github.com/phionabrie

Player skins from:

• https://github.com/maxogden/voxel-client
• https://github.com/deathcap/avatar

Gameplay Features

• Multiplayer, with maxogden, substack and viking skins
• Block creation and destruction (batch operations via click-and-drag)
• Jumping and flying
• First-person, over-shoulder, third person camera views (these need some love, though)
• Building materials and material picker dialog
• Gamepad support (80% complete)
• Adjustable draw distance (change it according to your GPU speed and memory)
• World state is saved to files or mysql (install mysql npm module)

What I'm working on

• Optimizations, always and forever
• Point light sources and shadow mapping

Technical Features

• Client and Server (ported bits from my voxel-client and voxel-server forks)
• Simple physics engine for player movements
• My own "horizonal merge" meshing algorithm
• Sample world generators
• Websocket connection for chat messages, player positions, world changes
• Chunk data is fetched via AJAX and gzipped
• Object pool to reduce memory allocations and garbage-collection pauses
• voxel-highlight replacement
• Uses hashlru for minimizing trips to the file-system or database for frequently requested chunks
• Relatively flat architecture means it's easy to get a WebGL handle and the inverse camera matrix for drawing
• All IO and chunk meshing is done in a web worker, which keeps the framerate very high
• Directional lighting
• Day and night cycle (still needs some love)

See it in action in the demo (Google Chrome or Firefox): https://voxeling.greaterscope.com

Or follow the installation instructions below to run it locally.

Installation

In terminal 1:

# git clone the repo into voxeling folder
cd /path/to/voxeling
# Download textures from http://bdcraft.net/purebdcraft-minetest (256x256 version)
# Extract to www/testbdcraft

# Generate combined texture file (cuts down on WebGL bindTexture calls)
# You'll need PHP with gd/imagemagick. Once I get node version working, you won't need PHP
cd scripts
# This generates www/textures.png and texture-offsets.js
php textures.php

npm install

# create folder for world chunks
mkdir -p chunks/your-world

# copy the default config and customize
cp config-example.js config.js
vim config.js

# generate web-worker JavaScript
./scripts/worker.sh

# start server
./scripts/server.sh

In terminal 2:

cd /path/to/voxeling
# start the client
./scripts/client.sh

Now, point your browser to http://127.0.0.1:9966. Read the introduction for controls and keybindings. Enjoy!

Contributing

See the CONTRIBUTING file

License

MIT License