Raycaster in C

I previously implemented a Wolfenstein 3D renderer from scratch in C++. I then moved my implementation over to Rust, and plan to finish the project in Rust.

This repo is a port of the basic raycasting code from that project over to plain vanilla C. The point of doing this was as a learning exercise to brush up on my knowledge of C. I had started a semester at school where I was taking a couple C-programming-heavy classes. I had experience with C++ and Rust, but very little in plain old C. Thus, porting the code over was a good refresher.

Demo

Raycaster_Demo.mp4

A Game of Simple Structs & Functions

My Wolfenstein clone started as a C++ project. C++ is quite the beast, allowing for as much abstraction as your heart desires. Thus, writing a game from scratch in C++ was a generally positive experience. In Rust, due to the borrowing rules and lifetimes, I encountered some of my C++ design patterns / code structure failing to satisfy the borrow checker, and thus had to learn the Rust ways of doing things.

In C, it's a game of simple structs and functions, i.e. a much more limited feature set compared to C++ and Rust. But despite this, I didn't have to change the original code/architecture much to get this simple raycaster working. However, if I choose to port over more of the project's code to C, I'll likely encounter more of a challange with the tile system, due to the lack of inheritance/polymorphism in C, as well as enemy movement between tiles.

However, I think it shouldn't be too much of a challenge; even though C's feature set is limited, it is so simple and clean that program designs/architectures are easy to come up with. Sure, you might have to write a bit more code compared with using the powerful abstraction features in C++ and Rust, but, you can certainly still accomplish what you're trying to, and, honestly, your code and design/architecture will probably be simpler and much easier to keep track of and maintain.

Build Instructions

Have cmake, ninja and SDL2 installed. Then, after cloning this repo, from the root of it, run the following:

cd build
cmake -GNinja ..
ninja
./c-raycaster