My Raycasting Engine

This project aims to implement a Wolfenstein 3D-type raycasting engine. I'm developing it using C, with the Raylib framework.

It also features an implementation of linked lists, hashmaps and a mostly working TOML parser for the map files.

Capabilites

• Loading a map from a map file (see the map file section).
• Exploring a map using a 2D or 3D view.
• Texture-mapped and colored walls.
• Transparent walls.
• Custom wall types.
• Colored floor and ceiling

Future plans

• Ground and ceiling/sky textures
• Transparent tile back drawing
• Arraylist implementation

Controls

• Movement: WASD.
• Rotate camera: Left and Right arrow keys.
• Switch 2D and 3D view: G.
• Reload map: R.
• Quit: Q.

Building

There is at least one Linux and Windows build available in the releases tab, but you can follow the guide here for doing it yourself.

Linux

1. Clone this repository (git clone git@github.com:Apmds/raycaster.git) and change directory to the project root (cd raycaster/)

2. Build:

cd build
./premake5 gmake2
cd ..
make

The executable file is in bin/Debug/, named raycaster.

Windows

I don't know how to compile using Visual Studio and I haven't searched for it, so these instructions apply to those that use w64devkit. If you really want to use Visual Studio, you can follow the quickstart projects instructions for it.

1. Clone this repository (git clone https://github.com/Apmds/raycaster.git).

2. Build: Using w64devkit:

cd /path/to/raycaster/
cd build
./premake5.exe gmake2
cd ..
make

The executable file is in bin/Debug/, named raycaster.

MacOS

If I get a build of it using MacOS, I'll detail the process here.

Running

Execute raycaster <mapfile> while in the same directory as the resources folder. The resources folder contains example maps to test the raycaster.

Map files

The map files have the .map extension and their syntax is a subset of TOML, so the terminology lines up.

Each map is made up of a 2D grid of tiles. The tile coordinates start at 0 in the top left corner, with x growing from left to right and y growing from top to bottom. By default, each tile is a GROUND tile.

Currently, the map files define:

• Map dimensions (grid width and height).
• Tile size (in pixels).
• Setting floor and ceiling colors.
• Defining tile types.
• What type a tile has at some coordinates.

Structure

The raycaster looks for the following tables to successfully load a map into memory:

• MapSettings: Where the map variables are set.
• TileDefinition: Where the tile types are defined.
• TilePlacing: Where the tiles are placed in the map.

Some parameters have a color type, which is an RGB(A) array.

MapSettings

• mapSize: [width : int, height : int] map dimensions.
• tileSize: an integer defining the pixel size of each tile.
• ceilingColor: the color of the ceiling.
• groundColor: the color of the ground.

TileDefinition

To define a tile, follow this syntax:

<TILE_NAME> : {surface: <string|color>, transparent (optional): <bool>}

A tile's surface is either a string with the texture name or a color, in case of a solid color tile. If transparent is set to true, the walls behind this tile will also be rendered.

TilePlacing

• Tiles: An array containing the tile placement information, which follows this template:[<tileX : int>, <tileY : int>, <tileName : string>]

Screenshots

Credits

This project was setup using this quickstart project.

For guidance on development, I've been using the concepts described on Lode's Computer Graphics Tutorial.