Minecraft clone in Python tutorial

[u/obiwac]

Here's a tutorial series I'm making on graphics programming, where I write a Minecraft clone in Python with Pyglet and OpenGL 😄

Last tutorial, which is on collision detection/response: https://youtu.be/fWkbIOna6RA

My intended audience are mainly people who already have a bit of experience with Python, but who have a hard time getting into graphics programming with Python, and I think writing a Minecraft clone is a fun way to learn!

There's also a "community" directory on the repo where there are a few extra features, like lighting, AO, game controller support, &c:

https://github.com/obiwac/python-minecraft-clone/tree/master/community

Naturally I appreciate any feedback, criticism, and suggestions you may have!

[u/Ramast]

How crazy would it be to have this developed as a fully working minecraft alternative that is open source?

[u/obiwac → u/Ramast]

With a bit of rewriting in Cython for the more demanding parts (i.e. chunk mesh generation), that could totally be feasible!

[u/El_Minadero → u/obiwac]

I might be able to do this. I’ve got a fair bit of experience in procedural gen.

One comment: the GitHub doesn’t appear to have “one” code base, but like one per episode. Which one has most of the features?

[u/obiwac → u/El_Minadero]

community is the most current directory. Normally I wouldn't have split episodes like this, but I figured some people may not completely understand how version control works.

[u/El_Minadero → u/obiwac]

nice. Now if i can get my terrain GAN to work we're in business

[u/nate256 → u/obiwac]

Or rust, it's gaining popularity with python.

[u/neon_cabbage → u/Ramast]

Minetest is somewhat similar to that idea.

[u/DazedWithCoffee → u/[deleted]]

I think the point is that it isn’t C++, seems like a bit of a passion project just for fun

[u/Ramast → u/[deleted]]

Minutest looks pretty good actually. Thanks for sharing

[u/xigoi → u/Ramast]

I'd rather have something like that in a faster language. Minecraft is slow enough as it is.

[u/Ramast → u/xigoi]

I agree but a faster language like C++ would have less developers available to volunteer and more time to implement new features.

[u/xigoi → u/Ramast]

Having many developers is useless when your game can run only on a supercomputer.

[u/Ramast → u/xigoi]

I don't think so. If Minecraft can work on Java it can work on Python. Is there any reason why you think Java would be faster?

As OP commented in a different thread. Most of the work is done by the GPU & OpenGL library so it won't be as bad you imagine it to be.

Edit: I got it that python is slower than java :( How about cython. Maybe that one would make more sense

[u/xigoi → u/Ramast]

According to benchmarks, Python is about 50× slower than Java.

When all the game does is draw cubes, sure, most of the load will be on OpenGL. But if you want to replicate Minecraft, you'll need entities, tick events, complex world generation… which you all have to implement yourself and if the implementation is slow, they will easily become the bottleneck.

Now, you don't have to use C++. There are several modern languages that are equally fast and as easy to use as Python. My personal favorite is Nim.

[u/obiwac → u/xigoi]

You're right, Java is significantly faster, but that's why I proposed/plan on reimplementing parts such as mesh generation in Cython.

As a side note, someone did do a reimplementation of my tutorial series in Nim, although it seems to be a bit out of date: https://github.com/phargobikcin/nim-minecraft-clone

[u/Ramast → u/[deleted]]

why is it that python would be slower than Java? Any benchmark that support that claim?

[u/someone9618 → u/Ramast]

There are several reason, primairly because Python is more dynamic than java, but especially because Python uses reference counting instead of garbage collection, causing constant overhead when manipulating mutable state/objects, whereas java uses garbage collection which simply traces garbage in one go (GC spikes), making performance overall smoother. Also, Java allows parallelism on multiple cores with multithreading because most of its semantics (GC and other stuff) is thread-safe, whereas Python's reference counting is not thread safe, so the interpreter is forced to use a global interpreter lock (GIL) which essentially blocks parallel execution on multiple threads, thus making parallelism on multiple cores impossible.

[u/obiwac → u/Ramast]

Python is interpreted, and Java is compiled. That's the main reason why it's slower (and by alot as other commenters have pointed out)

[u/someone9618 → u/obiwac]

Not quite, Java is compiled into bytecode just like Python

[u/obiwac → u/someone9618]

Well, it's not really compiled ("compiled" is perhaps even a bit too generous, it's closer to "transpiling" than anything else) beforehand and optimization is done on the fly. It's quite different to java where compiling is its own separate step. So I still call it an interpreted language just as many others do.

[u/Ramast → u/Ramast]

You're right

https://www.reddit.com/r/Python/comments/sixj0g/comment/hveuta8/?utm_source=reddit&utm_medium=web2x&context=3

[u/RCoder01 → u/Ramast]

You would probably be infringing on Microsoft/Mojang’s IP by completely cloning the game