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ZigCraft Wiki

Welcome to the ZigCraft documentation wiki - a voxel engine built with Zig and Vulkan.

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Overview

ZigCraft is a high-performance voxel engine featuring:

• Vulkan-based rendering with a clean RHI abstraction
• Procedural world generation with 21 biomes
• Dynamic lighting with sky and block light propagation
• Cascaded shadow maps for realistic shadows
• Multithreaded chunk processing via job system
• LOD system for extreme render distances
• Immediate-mode UI system

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Quick Links

Game Content

Page	Description
Block Types	Complete reference of all 40 block types
Biomes	All 21 biomes with climate parameters

Engine Systems

Page	Description
Architecture	System overview and module organization
Engine Core	Window, time, logging, job system
Rendering	RHI, camera, shadows, render graph
World System	Chunks, meshing, LOD
World Generation	Terrain, caves, decorations
Math Library	Vec3, Mat4, AABB, Frustum, Ray
Input System	Keyboard and mouse handling
UI System	Menus, fonts, widgets
Game Systems	Player, inventory, controls

Development

Page	Description
Contributing	Code style and development workflow

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Project Structure

src/
├── engine/               # Core engine systems
│   ├── core/             # Window, time, logging, job system
│   ├── graphics/         # RHI, camera, shadows, textures
│   ├── math/             # Vec3, Mat4, AABB, Frustum
│   ├── physics/          # Collision detection
│   ├── input/            # Input handling
│   └── ui/               # Immediate-mode UI
│
├── world/                # Voxel world
│   ├── worldgen/         # Terrain generation
│   ├── chunk.zig         # Chunk data structure
│   ├── chunk_mesh.zig    # Greedy meshing
│   └── world.zig         # World manager
│
└── game/                 # Game logic
    ├── app.zig           # Main application
    ├── player.zig        # Player controller
    ├── inventory.zig     # Item storage
    └── ui/               # Game UI

libs/                     # Local dependencies
├── zig-math/             # Math library
└── zig-noise/            # Noise functions

assets/shaders/vulkan/    # SPIR-V shaders

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Getting Started

Prerequisites

The project uses Nix for dependency management. All commands must be wrapped:

nix develop --command <command>

Build Commands

# Build
nix develop --command zig build

# Run
nix develop --command zig build run

# Test
nix develop --command zig build test

# Release build
nix develop --command zig build -Doptimize=ReleaseFast

# Format code
nix develop --command zig fmt src/

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Features

Rendering

• Vulkan backend with RHI abstraction
• Cascaded shadow maps (3 cascades)
• Procedural sky with day/night cycle
• Volumetric clouds
• MSAA anti-aliasing (1x-8x)
• Anisotropic filtering (up to 16x)

World

• 16x256x16 chunk size
• Greedy mesh optimization
• Multi-level LOD (up to 160 chunks)
• 40 block types across 21 biomes
• Worm caves and large caverns
• Ore generation

Gameplay

• Physics-based player movement
• Creative and survival modes
• 36-slot inventory system
• Block breaking and placing
• World map overlay

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Controls

Key	Action
W/A/S/D	Movement
SPACE	Jump / Fly up
SHIFT	Fly down
ESC	Pause menu
I	Open inventory
M	Open map
1-9	Select hotbar slot
Left Click	Break block
Right Click	Place block

See Game Systems for full controls reference.

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_{Last updated: January 2026}