Mini-Minecraft

Overview

As the final project for CIS 460 (Interactive Computer Graphics), my team and I were tasked with building a miniature (and simplified) version of Minecraft. Although the game seems simple in terms of graphics and pixels, rendering each of the components (not to mention combining them in an efficient manner) was no easy task. Through this project, we learned a lot about how OpenGL works and how real-Minecraft takes advantage of small details to greatly optimize the effiency and rendering of the game.

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Features Broken Down By Milestone

Milestone 1

Link to Milestone 1 Video Here

• Procedurally Generated Terrain (rolling hills, mountain caps, etc.)

  • Implemented by William Goeller
  • Procedural terrain was generated using Noise Functions.
  • Procedural terrain uses an array of numbers 0-255 placed in a random order.
  • It is essentially used as a seed for the terrain generation.

• Efficient Terrain Rendering and Chunking

  • Implemented by Stephen Lee
  • Efficient terrain rendering algorithm implemented by only considering VBO data for external faces
  • Shader program setup for interleaved VBO
  • Zone edge detection to create new zones before the player would enter them, and efficient rendering of only chunks close to the player
  • Most issues encountered related to setting up VBO data correctly to send to the shader and edge cases for rendering new zones and updating existing ones.

• Game Engine and Player Physics

  • Implemented by Jeffrey Xiao
  • Player physics were implemented by running a switch case over all key inputs and rotating the camera each time the mouse was moved. Cursor is centered in game window.
  • Terrain collision and adding/removing blocks used a grid marching algorithm to determine collisions in a specified ray direction.
  • Most of the time was spent debugging the terrain collision approach. Although the grid marching algorithm was implemented correctly, I was struggling balancing the offsets and signs of the ray directions.

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Milestone 2

Link to Milestone 2 Video Here

• L-System Rivers

  • Implemented by Stephen Lee
  • Grammar system for recursively expanding river branches that get thinner with recursion depth
  • A set of general river segment shapes (straight, curve left, curve right, squiggle) for grammar segments randomly selected and generated
  • Post-process shading and player physics changes when in LAVA or WATER blocks
  • Generally runs pretty slowly, we've included macros in mygl.cpp to allow for river placement to be toggleable

• Texturing and Texture Animation

  • Implemented by Jeffrey Xiao
  • Texturing implemented by making use of a sampler2D within the fragment shader
  • Animation of LAVA and WATER blocks were implemented by transitioning between two blocks relative to u_Time
  • Opaque and transparent blocks were separated, each of whicch contained its own interleaved VBO data
  • Most issues were with texture rendering across chunks and back-face culling issues. This was resolved by reordering my vertices and drawing them in counter-clockwise order.

• Multithreaded Terrain Generation

  • Implemented by William Goeller
  • Uses the QThreadPool and QThread classes for multitreading.
  • Also uses the Mutex class in the C++ standard library to ensure no two threads edit the collection at the same time.

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Milestone 3

Link to Milestone 3 Video Here

• Caves

  • Implemented by Stephen Lee
  • Two noise noise functions for generating Perlin noise for the roof and floor of the cave
  • Separate height fields used as basis for generating stalactites and stalagmites, and transformed to give the appearance of spires
  • Ore block texturing and placement throughout the cave system, so go find the cave for some diamonds :)
  • Most of my time was spent playing around with the noise functions to make my cave look realistic

• Inventory and Onscreen GUI

  • Implemented by Jeffrey Xiao
  • Inventory and GUI can be toggled on or off with the I key
  • Inventory is repeatedly updated when a block is added/removed from the inventory (broken/placed in the world)
  • Inventory displays values for count of each block
  • Note: number displayed handles 1 and 2 digit values
  • Most of the time was spent debugging the VBO's created and checking whether the correct information was passed to the shaders

• Crafting System

  • Implemented by William Goeller
  • Press the i key to open up the crafting screen.
  • Select a block from inventory using number keys
  • Select which slot in the crafting grid you want the block to go using the following keys in this grid layout:

  T  Y  U
  G  H  J
  B  N  M
  

  • To actually move the block into the crafting grid, press p.
  • To remove a block from the grid and put it back into the inventory, press o once you have hilighted which one you want removed.
  • Once you are done setting up the grid in the order that you like, press c to craft the block and it will be put into your inventory.
  • You can view the possible recipes in the constructor of crafting.cpp. The first 9 blocks represent the recipe as if the three rows were put into a 1D array one after another. The last block represents what the recipe will create once crafted.

• Sound

  • Implemented by Jeffrey Xiao
  • Footsteps, background (Minecraft theme song), water, and lava sounds were added.
  • Note: because of the nature of the QSound and QSoundEffect libraries, there may be a slight delay in building the project and whenever the player breaks/places blocks.