Project Sandbox was a project I used to learn more about C++, OpenGL and their applications in game development. Everything was developed from scratch over the course of a summer using a handful of C++ game development libraries.

Find the source code here: https://github.com/RNSF/Project-Sandbox

Technical Features

Deferred Rendering

Deferred rendering is a rendering technique where the final image is rendered based on a collection of buffers storing key information such as the albedo, normal, position,  depth and stencil of each pixel. This optimizes the rendering process by reducing overdraw, while also allowing for a greater variety of custom effects, like the outlines on the trees.

Fluid Simulation

The project uses a GPU accelerated shallow water solver to simulate the ocean. In total a 512x512 grid of water columns is simulated in real time.

Hierarchical Pathfinding

This is an extension of the A* pathfinding algorithm, optimized for finding long distance paths on maps with lots of pathfinding nodes.It does this by creating higher abstracted, lower resolution graphs based on the original pathfinding graph. It uses the lower resolution graph to find a rough path, before refining the path to its proper resolution.

Integration with Jolt Physics Engine

The Jolt physics engine was integrated with the project to simulate various rigidbodies, such as logs and characters.

Other

Other technical features implemented included:

- Custom Immediate Mode GUI System

- World Generation

- World Save / Load

- Frustum Culling for Grass Entities