SOOB Engine

A small FPS engine targeting everything from Windows 98 (Pentium 4, SDL 1.2, fixed-function OpenGL) through modern Linux and Windows. Bullet Physics, OpenAL Soft, header-only modules, no shaders.

The name is an acronym for the four foundation libraries the engine is built on: SDL + OpenGL + OpenAL + Bullet. (Working title was SDLFun — the binaries and the in-tree level still carry that name.)

Depends on SOOB-Core

The 2D / audio / scripting core lives in a sibling repo, goph-R/SOOB-Core, and is shared with goph-R/Find5. Before building, clone it next to this one:

Win98/
├── SOOB-Engine/   ← this repo
├── SOOB-Core/     ← clone alongside
└── Find5/         ← optional, shares the same engine

git clone git@github.com:goph-R/SOOB-Core.git

Build scripts add -I../SOOB-Core/ so #include "script.h" etc. resolve into the shared engine. Engine-side Lua modules (e.g. engine.scene) are copied next to the .exe at build time. SDLFun itself owns only the 3D-specific code (Bullet wrapper, obj_loader.h, iqm.h, entity.h, physics.h, nav.h, flashlight.h, game.h, console.h).

Building

See CLAUDE.md for the full build matrix and toolchain details.

Quick reference:

• Linux: make (needs libsdl1.2-dev, libopenal-dev) → sdlfun
• Windows 98 / Dev-C++: build.bat → SDLFun.exe
• Windows 10 / portable MinGW: build_win10.bat → SDLFun_w10.exe
• CMake: mkdir build && cd build && cmake .. && make

Menu + scripting

The main menu, options screen, and confirm dialogs are written in Lua on top of SOOB-Core's engine.scene scene-stack module — see scripts/main.lua and scripts/menu.lua. The C side keeps AppState + a one-shot pendingAction; menu code calls app_new_game() / app_continue() / app_quit() bindings (declared in app_ext.h) to drive game-state transitions.

The same pattern is intended for in-game mini-games (PIN-code panels, hacking puzzles, terminal interfaces): each becomes a Lua module that returns a scene factory, pushed on top of the 3D game while the simulation pauses. Architecture sketch in docs/add-mini-game.md.

Controls

Boot lands on the Lua main menu. Up/Down + Enter (or mouse) navigate the CONTINUE / NEW GAME / OPTIONS / EXIT buttons. The exit dialog uses Left/Right + Enter / Esc.

In-game: WASD move, mouse look, Space jump, F flashlight, Left-click fire, backtick (`) drops down the dev console (Lua REPL), Esc back to menu.

CLI flags: -w <width>, -h <height>, -fullscreen.

Credits and licensing

Code

The engine source code (everything under the repo except vendor/, vendor_win10/, and the assets called out below) is open source. Licenses for bundled third-party libraries:

Library	License	Usage
SDL 1.2	LGPL 2.1	dynamically linked (SDL.dll)
OpenAL Soft	LGPL 2.1	dynamically linked (OpenAL32.dll)
Bullet Physics	zlib	compiled from vendored source

Assets

All art, level, and texture assets in this repository are © Dynart, all rights reserved. This includes, but is not limited to:

• assets/levels/test_level.obj and its bakes (diffuse.bmp, lightmap.bmp)
• Everything under assets/models/ and assets/textures/ except the exceptions below
• Everything under raw/ (Blender sources, GIMP sources, reference photos)

The following assets are not original and are bundled under their own terms:

• assets/models/mrfixit.iqm, assets/textures/Head.tga, assets/textures/Body.tga — from Lee Salzman's IQM sample pack. See the original IQM distribution for licensing.
• assets/fonts/orbitron*.fnt + assets/fonts/orbitron*.tga — BMFont bakes of Orbitron by Matt McInerney, licensed under the SIL Open Font License 1.1.