| Description: | This library helps render large-scale “voxel” worlds for games, in this case,
one with blocks that can have textures and that can also be a few shapes other
than cubes.
Video introduction:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2vnTtiLrV1w
Minecraft-viewer sample app (not very simple though):
http://github.com/nothings/stb/tree/master/tests/caveview
It works by creating triangle meshes. The library includes
- converter from dense 3D arrays of block info to vertex mesh
- vertex & fragment shaders for the vertex mesh
- assistance in setting up shader state
For portability, none of the library code actually accesses the 3D graphics
API. (At the moment, it’s not actually portable since the shaders are GLSL
only, but patches are welcome.)
You have to do all the caching and tracking of vertex buffers yourself.
However, you could also try making a game with a small enough world that it’s
fully loaded rather than streaming. Currently the preferred vertex format is 20
bytes per quad. There are designs to allow much more compact formats with a
slight reduction in shader features, but no roadmap for actually implementing
them. |
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