Drowning | "𝘋𝘰𝘰𝘮-𝘕𝘶𝘬𝘦𝘮" | 𝘢𝘯 𝘶𝘯𝘥𝘦𝘳𝘸𝘢𝘵𝘦𝘳 𝘵𝘩𝘳𝘦𝘦-𝘥𝘪𝘮𝘦𝘯𝘴𝘪𝘰𝘯𝘢𝘭 𝘴𝘶𝘳𝘷𝘪𝘷𝘢𝘭-𝘨𝘢𝘮𝘦

Summary: This C project is about creating a 3D polygonal game with ray-casting technique, that utilizes no GPU. Just like the breakthrough shooter games in the 90s.

This was the final "core-studies project" of the game-graphics branch in HIVE Helsinki, A "42-style" coding school. The goal of the project is to create a first-person game in a "3D graphic representation". This would have to be achieved via a raycasting method. No computer hardware acceleration and no 3D library are allowed.

Everything in this project was coded from scratch by a group of three – in C language.

This game features:

• Real-time three-dimensional movement and view angles via keyboard and mouse.
• A feature-rich game stage, with a variety of environmental heights, nooks and un-even terrain.
• Fully original environmental textures, parsed internally from a HEX sprite graphics map.
• Collectible items, environmental events and details that are constantly shifting.
• An atmospheric setting and background music to support the moody story.
• A level-editor that allows the user to edit and adjust the game stage to their likings.

  ^{As of January 24th 2023, the work became a collaboration project with @Dofidog (Topi Paaso) and @UItsi (Timo Turto).}

Controls:

• W, A,S,D, moves and strafes the player underwater. Left Shift allows you to run.
  ^{The player slowly builds up speed and momentum when in motion, making stopping also more difficult.}
• Space lets you jump.
  ^{Being underwater, the jump has quite a bit of floaty momentum to it. See how far you can reach!}
• C makes the character crouch.
  ^{You can slightly adjust viewing angle with a crouch.}
• E picks up items.
  ^{The lake bottom is scattered with collectible items, such as oxygen flasks and harpoons for the player to find.}
• F turns on the lantern light.
  ^{It's imperative to use the light to see where you're stepping in the dark abyss. The light turns on after a flickering delay and especially illuminates the stone platforms particularly well. It may abruptly turn off due to an enemy impact, however! Stay vigilant!}
• F3 toggles Dev Mode.
  ^{Developer mode off color filters and overlay textures. Allows the user to swim upwards by tapping the jump key.}
• Esc quits the program.
  ^{Immediately quits and closes the software and frees all of its allocations.}

Making-of footage:

drowning.mov

  ^{In very early stages of development, we were still examining draw distancing, texture scaling and the conversion of the map file.}