Wold

Wold is a homemade software-rendered 3D sandbox built from scratch.

Explore an endless procedural world of dark forests, empty fields, strange buildings and low-visibility landscapes, rendered at 320×240 in a dirty indexed palette.

The world generates and streams around you as you move, with terrain, biomes and structures continuing indefinitely. The same seed always produces the same world, so places can be revisited and explored again.

There are no enemies, quests or objectives. wold is being built as a sandbox: a place to wander, explore, customize and eventually share with other players.

Alpha

This is the first public build.

Right now, wold is mostly about exploration and the underlying world systems. You can walk, look around, jump, climb ladders, open doors and explore generated terrain and buildings.

Current environments range from dense coniferous, deciduous and mixed forests to forest edges, grassy plains and rocky open terrain.

Buildings already generate throughout the world and can be entered, although most interiors are still empty.

Expect bugs, unfinished systems, missing content and save compatibility breaks between versions.

Built from scratch

wold does not use an existing game engine.

Rendering, procedural generation, world streaming, collision and movement are custom-built in C++. Rendering is done entirely on the CPU at a native resolution of 320×240.

It is full 3D rather than a 2.5D engine: the world supports vertical geometry, multiple floors and spaces above and below each other.

The deliberately limited resolution, short view distance, black fog and dusty olive, brown and grey palette give the world its bleak, low-tech appearance.

Built to be modded

Game content lives in external resource files rather than being buried inside the executable.

Models can already be described in simple text files, dropped into the resource folder and loaded directly by the game. The same resource-driven approach is used for structures, biomes and other world content.

There is no separate modding toolkit and no compilation step.

The idea is simple: if you want something different in the world, you should be able to change the files, add your own content and let the game pick it up.

Planned

• Larger generated structures, including cities, tunnels and other large connected spaces
• Online multiplayer and shared exploration
• More biomes, structures and environmental variety
• More ways to create and customize worlds

Controls

WASD — move
Mouse — look
Space — jump
LMB — melee
E — use / open doors

Platform: Windows

Feedback and bug reports are welcome.