lwar is a 2.5D multiplayer space shooting game; but first and foremost, it's a learning project.
It thus avoids the use of libraries except for SDL2 and some asset compilation tools. Everything is implemented by hand to maximize the learning experience. There is a lot of infrastructure code that is not at all necessary for this kind of small game. But when it was interesting to implement it anyway, I indeed implemented it.
Some notable learning highlights that are completely over the top:
- The network protocol is custom-built using only UDP, supporting both reliable and unreliable messaging. See also its specification.
- There is a C# to HLSL/GLSL cross compiler to avoid having to write each shader twice.
- For the game's UI, a partial reimplementation of .NET's WPF framework is used, including a custom XAML compiler. The game's UI can be visually designed using Visual Studio's WPF designer; its design time and runtime appearance are nearly identical.
- The game features a highly optimized CPU-based particle system written in C# that can animate millions of particles per second.
lwar's game client, 3D rendering, shaders, and the asset compilation pipeline are written C#, C++, .NET IL byte code, OpenGL 3, and Direct3D 11. The server is implemented in C, with an additional C# version.
The game can be compiled for Windows using Visual Studio 2022 and also runs on Linux using Mono.
In-game screenshot showing the player's ship shooting a laser in sun's orbit with Earth nearby.
Screenshot of the in-game console, listing available commands, with the sun in the background.
In-game particle viewer rendering almost 1 million particles in roughly 3ms of CPU and GPU time on a Ryzen 7 5800X and a GeForce 1060.
Screenshot of the in-game Join menu rendered with a partial reimplementation of WPF. It is quite obvious that the goal was to learn how WPF works, and not to implement a good looking UI itself.