OpenEdits

A 2D game block building inspired by Everybody Edits. Code structure inspired by Luanti/Minetest practices.

The project direction can be found in doc/DIRECTION.md.

Gameplay

Account management

• Any specified username is automatically converted to uppercase.
• GUESTxxx usernames are treated as temporary.
  • Registration is nethier needed nor possible.
• The account registration is rate limited by IP address.

Hotkeys

• W/A/S/D or arrow keys: move player
• Space: Jump
• LMB: Place the selected block
• RMB or Shift+LMB: Block eraser
• RMB + Ctrl: Select clicked block including params
• Mouse scroll: Zoom in/out
  • Warning: Rendering performs pretty badly. Do not scroll out too far.
• 1-9: Hotbar block selector
  • Use RMB to drag & drop a block from the selector into the hotbar
• / or T or Enter: Open chat box
  • Enter: Submit
  • ESC: Cancel and close
  • Tab: Nickname autocompletion
  • Up/Down: Previous chat message / empty chat message
• E: Toggle block selector
• G: Toggle god mode
• M: Toggle minimap
• F1: Toggle debug information
• Ctrl + F: Search worlds (lobby only)

Chat commands

• See /help and /help COMMAND (in-game)

Permission/player flag examples:

• /fset FOOBAR tmp-edit-draw temporary edit access (until rejoin)
• /fset FOOBAR godmode persistent god mode access (after the world is saved)
• /fdel FOOBAR owner removes all persistent access except for "banned"
• /ffilter lists all players with any specified flags

Command line arguments

• --version outputs the current game version
• --unittest runs the included tests to sanity check
• --decompress FILEPATH decompresses an EELVL file (for development purposes)
• --server starts a server-only instance without GUI
• --setpass USERNAME PASSWORD|@FILE
  • Changes the password of the specified player.
• --setrole USERNAME ROLE
  • ROLE can be one of: normal, moderator, admin.
  • Can be executed while a server is already running.
• --go USERNAME PASSWORD|@FILE [WORLD_ID]
  • Starts a local server and joins the world ID (if provided)
• --is-up ADDRESS
  • Checks whether the server is online. Exit code 0 when online.

World import/export

• *.eelvl files in worlds/imports/ are listed by the server as playable read-only worlds
  • Helpful level archive: https://archive.offlinee.com/
• Clients may use .export FILENAME to export the current world to worlds/exports/
• See worlds/README.txt for further information

Development

Environment variables

• OE_DEBUG=+foo,-bar,+all override the default log levels
  • + prefix: verbose logging
  • - prefix: ignore anything below error level
  • all: Changes all loggers
  • Specific log level overrides take priority over all.
  • OE_DEBUG=? lists the available loggers

Lua API (This game can be modded!)

• API reference: lua_api.md
• Entry point: assets/scripts/main.lua

Downloads

Linux

1. Extract the archive to any location
2. Run OpenEdits
3. In case of issues: run with gdb. Debug symbols are included.

Windows

1. Extract the archive to any location
2. Run the executable
3. In case of issues: use a debugger such as x64dbg or gdb (in mingw-w64)

Compiling

Dependencies

• CMake (cmake-gui recommended for desktops)
• Irrlicht-Mt : GUI/rendering library
• enet : networking library
• LuaJIT : server-defined scripts
• SQLite3 : auth & world saving
• Threads (pthread?)
• zlib: world compression (including EELVL import/export)
• OpenAL-soft: sound (for GUI builds only)

Dependency tree:

OpenEdits
├── enet
├── irrlicht-mt (server)
├── irrlicht-mt (client)
│   ├── libjpeg
│   ├── libpng
│   │   └── zlib
│   └── zlib
├── lua(jit)
├── openal-soft (client, optional)
├── sqlite3
└── zlib

Debian/Ubuntu:

# For all builds
sudo apt install libenet-dev libluajit-5.1-dev libsqlite3-dev zlib1g-dev
# Client builds only
sudo apt install libjpeg-dev libpng-dev libopenal-dev

Windows:

• C99 standard library is required. msvcrt uses C89, thus MinGW or Clang are recommended over MSVC.

Project compiling:

cmake -S . -B build
cd build
make -j

Headless server compiling

1. Install the minimal required libraries
2. Put the IrrlichtMt headers (include directory) somewhere
3. cmake -S . -B build -DBUILD_CLIENT=0 -DIRRLICHTMT_BUILD_DIR="/path/to/irrlicht/include/"
4. cd build -> build make -j -> start ./OpenEdits-server

Distributing (simplified)

cd build
make install
bash ../misc/pack.sh

Licenses

Code: LGPL 2.1+

Imported code

• minimp3 (CC 0), used in GUI builds only
• SHA3IUF (MIT)
• FindENet.cmake (GPL 2)
• FindLuaJIT.cmake (LGPL 2.1+)

Fonts

DejaVu Sans bitmaps (Bitstream Vera license, extended MIT)

• Converted with https://github.com/kahrl/irrtum

Images

Images that are not listed below were created by SmallJoker (CC BY 4.0).

Unfortunately, iconfinder.com ceased to exist in November 2025.

DailyYouth (CC BY 3.0)

• icon_chat.png

IconMarket (CC BY 4.0)

• icon_minimap.png (desaturated)

ZUMMACO (CC BY 3.0)

• ìcon_leave.png

Microsoft Fluent Emoji (MIT)

• icon_copy.png (modified)

Sounds

Sounds that are not listed below were created by SmallJoker (CC BY 4.0).

Piotr Barcz (CC 0)

• piano_c4.mp3