Polymer

In-development Minecraft client using C++ and Vulkan.

It can only connect to offline Java servers at the moment, but online mode is planned. There's currently no physics, but there's a spectator-like camera for looking around.

It uses the original assets that are downloaded from the resources server.
The downloaded assets will be stored in %appdata%/Polymer/ on Windows and ~/.polymer/ on Linux.

Screenshots

Running

Main development is done on Windows. It can run on Linux, but not tested much.

• Requires blocks-1.20.1.json that is generated from running Minecraft with a certain flag or from the polymer release page.
• Requires compiled shaders. Get them from the release page or read the building section below if manually building.
• Requires an internet connection on first launch so it can download the necessary assets.

Running the exe will connect to localhost with the username 'polymer'. The server must be configured to be in offline mode.

You can specify the username and server ip by command line.
polymer.exe -u username -s 127.0.0.1:25565

Currently only a spectator camera is implemented for flying around and rendering the world. By default, you will be in the survival gamemode on the server. If you want chunks to load as you move, you need to put yourself in spectator gamemode. You can do this in the server terminal or in game with the command /gamemode spectator.

Building

The project is configured to use vcpkg as a dependency manager, so follow the directions below.

Requirements

• C++ compiler (tested with MSVC 2022 and Clang)
• CMake

Windows

• Open terminal in polymer folder.
• git submodule update --init
• cmake -B build -S . --preset msvc
• MSVC: Open the generated build/polymer.sln and build in x64 Release mode.
• The final executable will be in the build/Release folder.

Compiling the shaders requires glslc, which can be obtained from Vulkan SDK.

• Compile the shaders with compile_shaders.bat. VULKAN_SDK needs to be set in your environment variables.

Linux

Linux uses GLFW for managing the window. Install it with your package manager.

• sudo apt-get install libglfw3 libglfw3-dev
• Open terminal in polymer folder.
• git submodule update --init
• cmake -B build -S .
• cd build && make
• The final executable will be in the build/bin folder.

Compiling the shaders requires glslangValidator.

• sudo apt-get install glslang-tools
• Compile the shaders with compile_shaders.sh.