Minimalistic, open source library for making 3D games in C++

This library provides a sufficient level of game development functionalities for C++ developers to be able to build cross-platform games based on a single code-base. Keeping the codebase easy to master and minimising the amount of effort needed for maintenance is favoured over richness of features and the use of cutting edge methods and technologies.

First Little Games

These are games that were developed while the library was being put together for the first time.

More "Evolved" Titles

Gloom

An open source 3D shooter

Islet Hell

A flight simulator, once commercially released, now availale free of charge

Non-game project

Serial Model Renderer, used to test the 3D model reading and rendering functionality of the library

Features

3D models loaded from glTF (glb files), Wavefront (obj files) or from a native format
Other customised meshes and shapes
Texture mapping
Gouraud shading
Basic materials support (colour, transparency)
Shadow mapping
Image rendering
Font rendering
Sound (ogg and native files)
Collision detection
Frame-based animation (Wavefront)
Skeletal animation (glTF)

Limitations

Non-PNG images are not supported.
There are no scenes, just SceneObjects rendered in an infinite space.
The 3D model parsers are far from feature-complete but pretty robust nonetheless. The goal is not to be able to read a complete node structure from a gltf file for example, but to extract individual models and their animations, in order to use them in a game.

Supported platforms

Windows
Linux (Tested on Debian, Ubuntu, Fedora and Arch)

Discontinued support

At a time this library was also supporting MacOS, as well as Android and Apple mobile devices, and it would even run on Vulkan. All that has now been discontinued as I have decided at some point to no longer own a Macbook and to no longer publish games for mobile, as it was getting a little complicated maintaining my presence on the respective app stores (costs, new legislation).

In case you would like to use it, this is the last version supporting MacOS:

https://github.com/dimi309/small3d/releases/tag/1.8017.last.macos

Here is an article on the reasons for abandoning Vulkan:

https://www.gamedev.net/blogs/entry/2275791-abandoning-vulkan/

And here is the last commit before the Vulkan renderer got removed:

https://github.com/dimi309/small3d/releases/tag/1.8015.last.vulkan

Finally, this is the last version supporting mobile devices:

https://github.com/dimi309/small3d/releases/tag/1.8016.last.mobile

Tutorial

https://www.gamedev.net/tutorials/programming/engines-and-middleware/small3d-tutorial-r5655/

Building and deploying

Prerequisites

The following need to be installed, with the relevant environment variables and tools accessible via the command line:

Some compiler (e.g. gcc, Visual Studio, clang) with C++17 support recommended as a minimum.
7zip (only on Windows)
CMake

Deploying small3d

Run the build script which is suitable to your platform from the scripts directory (build-vs.bat, build-mingw.bat or build.sh).

Then, the unit tests are executed by running unittests binary from build/bin.

If any of this fails or you would simply like to restart the building procedure, the best way to clean the repository is by using git:

git clean -fdx

For building your own project, you need:

The header files from the build/include directory
The libraries from the build/lib directory
The shaders from build/shaders directory
The small3d/cmake directory if you will be using cmake

You can also deploy using conan. The conan package is provided in a separate repository.

A boilerplate project is also available. It provides a basic setup of a game loop with user inputs so that you start coding your game right away.

Referenced libraries

The following dependencies' source code repositories (not binaries) are distributed in this same repository (in the deps directory). They can be built by executing a single script (see "Building", above) and they can also be used directly in your application / game code.

glew
glfw
png
zlib
ogg
vorbis
portaudio
freetype
cereal