Show HN: I made a 3D networked open world automation game with no game engine

10 weatherfused 4 6/9/2025, 4:52:51 PM store.steampowered.com ↗
Over the last 4 years I've been developing Skyformer, including making all the art. Technical features include:

- OpenGL for graphics, OpenAL for sound, GLFW for input

- Terrain rendered using techniques inspired by REDengine 3 with a custom terrain/world editor.

- Networking framework for co-op with TCP + custom binary protocol

- Immediate mode UI framework, SDF text rendering

- Cascaded shadow mapping with soft shadows.

- Weather simulation (with my own fake physics)

- Dynamic skydome

- Water based on Gerstner waves

- Swept-sphere collision detection and response

- Soft-particles / transparency

- God rays

- Grass rendering

- FXAA, SSAO, Bloom

- etc.

You can ask me anything and let me know if you have any feedback. Thanks!

Comments (4)

dustbunny · 1h ago
What resources did you use to do the cascaded shadow mapping and soft shadows?
weatherfused · 47m ago
Cascaded shadow mapping: https://www.ogldev.org/www/tutorial49/tutorial49.html

For soft shadows, I tried several different techniques but ended up settling on PCF because it has less visual artifacts than other methods. This site has it too: https://www.ogldev.org/www/tutorial42/tutorial42.html

mlhpdx · 3h ago
Do you use TCP for everything, and if so why not UDP?
weatherfused · 3h ago
TCP for everything for now with Nagle's algorithm disabled. Since the online aspect of this game is player-hosted servers for co-op with your friends (e.g. no PVP), it should be fine. I've heard even some MMOs like WoW used just TCP. In the future if I run into any problems, I can also easily replace it with a TCP-like UDP layer!