Vu

Vu (Virtual Universe) is a 3D engine based on the modern programming language Go (Golang). Vu is composed of packages, detailed in GoDoc, and briefly summarized below. More getting started and background information is available on the Wiki

Sub packages

• audio Positions and plays sounds in a 3D environment.
• audio/al OpenAL bindings. Links the audio layer and the sound hardware.
• device Links the application to native OS specific window and user events.
• load Asset loaders including models, textures, audio, shaders, and bitmapped fonts.
• math/lin Vector, matrix, quaternion, and transform linear math library.
• physics Repositions bodies based on simulated physics.
• render 3D drawing and graphics interface.
• render/gl Generated OpenGL bindings. Links rendering system to graphics hardware.
• render/gl/gen OpenGL binding generator.

Less essential, but potentially more fun packages are:

• eg Examples that both demonstrate and validate the vu engine.
• ai Behaviour Tree for autonomous units.
• grid Grid based random level generators. A-star and flow field pathfinding.
• synth Procedural generation utilities.
• tools/sdf Signed distance field converstion utility.

Installation

Ensure you have installed Go 1.6+:

go get -u github.com/gazed/vu

Now you can build and run examples:

cd $GOPATH/src/github.com/gazed/vu/eg
go build .
./eg

Build Dependencies

• OS X: Objective C and C compilers (clang) from Xcode command line tools.
• Windows: C compiler (gcc) from mingw64-bit.

Runtime Dependencies

• OpenGL version 3.3 or later.
• OpenAL 64-bit version 2.1.

Building on Windows

• Vu has been built and tested on Windows using gcc from mingw64-bit. Mingw64 was installed to c:/mingw64.
  • Put OpenAL on the gcc library path by copying OpenAL32.dll to c:/mingw64/x86_64-w64-mingw32/lib/OpenAL32.dll
• 64-bit OpenAL for Windows machines is available at http://openal.org/downloads. Running the OpenAL installer results in a c:/Windows/System32/OpenAL32.dll.
• Building with Cygwin has not been attempted. It may have special needs.

Games

• Bampf Open source reference game.
• Jewel of Kings A game available for purchase from MacOS, iOS, and Windows stores.

Limitations

The engine and its packages include the essentials by design. In particular:

• Vu is programmer centric. For example, there is no 3D asset editor. A working application is used as an editor replacement. Programmers create a working application with stub 3D assets. Artists and modellers then polish and finish the application by replacing the stub assets.
• Physics only handles boxes and spheres.
• The device layer interface provides only the absolute minimum from the underlying windowing system. OSX, iOS, and Windows 7+ are currently supported.
• Rendering supports standard OpenGL 3.3 and later. OpenGL extensions are not used.
• The Windows platform is sometimes limited by the availability of OpenGL and OpenAL. Generally OpenGL issues are fixed by downloading manufacturer's graphic card drivers. However older laptops with Intel graphics don't always have OpenGL drivers.