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Dragonblocks Alpha

A multiplayer voxelgame for POSIX systems. It has been ported to Linux, Windows, FreeBSD and OpenBSD, but may work on other systems.

Head to https://dragonblocks.lizzy.rs for snapshot and release builds.

Invocation

# on posix
./dragonblocks-server "<address>:<port>"
./dragonblocks-client "<player name>" "<address>:<port>"

# on windows
dragonblocks-server.exe "<address>:<port>"
dragonblocks-client.exe "<player name>" "<address>:<port>"

or alternatively:

# on posix
./dragonblocks.sh singleplayer singleplayer_world

# on windows
singleplayer.bat

Controls

Keyboard and mouse

Input Action
W Move forward
A Move left
S Move backward
D Move right
Mouse Move camera
Space Jump
Left Click Use left hand
Right Click Use right hand
Arrow Down Open action menu
Arrow Keys Navigate in menus (inventory, action menu)
Enter Select in menus
Space Fly up
Left Shift Fly down
I Open / close inventory
F Toggle flight
C Toggle collision
T Toggle timelapse
F2 Take screenshot
F3 Toggle debug info
F11 Toggle fullscreen
ESC Pause / unpause game

Controller

Input Action
Left stick Move player
Right Stick Move camera
Left Stick Press Jump
ZL Use left hand
ZR Use right hand
D-Pad Down Open action menu
D-Pad Navigate in menus (inventory, action menu)
A Select in menus
L Fly up
R Fly down
Y Open / close inventory
Minus Take screenshot
B Pause / unpause game

Only the Nintendo Switch Pro Controller has been tested so far. Improvements are welcome!

System Requirements

You need a system conforming to the C23 and POSIX 2024 standards. Other systems may be supported as well. The minimum OpenGL version is 3.3 core. A PC with at least 4 CPU cores is recommended, but not necessarily required.

Current Features

  • Multiplayer, Animated player model, Nametags
  • Mountains, snow, temperature and humidity, dynamic grass color, oceans and beaches, vulcanos, boulders
  • Physics
  • Mipmapping, Antialiasing, Face Culling, Frustum Culling, Diffuse Lighting, Skybox, Fog
  • Taking screenshots
  • Daylight cycle
  • Saving terrain, player positions and other data to a SQLite3 database
  • Multithreaded terrain generation, mesh generation and networking
  • Handlers for SIGINT und SIGTERM (just Ctrl+C to shut down the server)
  • Log levels: error, warning, access, action, info, verbose
  • Loading assets such as textures, models, schematics, shaders and fonts from files
  • Inventory
  • Tools, Breaking blocks
  • First-class controller support

Usage

Server

The server currently stores the world database (world.sqlite) in the current working directory, and it will stay like that. If you want to have multiple worlds, just run the DragonblocksServer process from different directories. It's up to you how you organize the world folders, which is an advantage since the program really just "does one thing well" without having to search your system for share directories or maintaining a world list (like Minetest does).

Client / Singleplayer

The Dragonblocks client itself does not and will not have a Main menu. It goes against the already mentioned UNIX philosophy to have a binary that does multiple things at once. For now, there is a singleplayer script that launches a server and a client, and in the future a launcher will be added that is used to do all the stuff that users nowadays don't want to do themselves, like showing you a list of worlds and launching the server in the correct directory, as well as updating the game and managing game versions for you. It's gonna do the ugly ~/.program_name, but you wont't have to use it if you don't want to.

Modding

Dragonblocks Alpha does not and will most likely never have a modding API. If anything, a Lua plugin API will be added. It would be possible to have a native modding API for a C project (as demonstrated by dungeon_game), but it would remove simplicity and, most importantly, remove optimisation possibilities. The way you are meant to mod dragonblocks is by simply forking it on github and modifiying the game directly. To use multiple mods together, just git merge them. If there are conflicts, the mods would likely not be compatible anyway.

Project Goals

The name "Dragonblocks Alpha" does not have anything to do with the game being in early development (which it is tho), it's just the game's name.

What Dragonblocks Alpha aims to achieve

  • A voxelgame inspired by Minecraft and Veloren, with the techical side being inspired by Minetest
  • Exciting and feature-rich gameplay with the focus on exploring and adventuring, while still being a sandbox and not too bloated
  • A simple structure and invocation syntax
  • Portability between PCs running POSIX systems (focus: Linux, BSD, MacOS, Windows MinGW)
  • Good performance on low-end PCs

What Dragonblocks Alpha does not aim to achieve

  • A fixed story or lore
  • Cloning Minecraft behavior
  • Replacement for Minecraft and / or Minetest
  • An engine