I challenged myself to see if I could create Minecraft in just one week... So lets go!
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xq3isov6mZ8
Note: I continued to edit after the 7 days, however the version seen in the video is found here https://github.com/Hopson97/MineCraft-One-Week-Challenge/tree/eb01640580cc5ad403f6a8b9fb58af37e2f03f0c
And the "optimized" version can be found here: https://github.com/Hopson97/MineCraft-One-Week-Challenge/tree/792df07e9780b444be5290fd05a3c8598aacafc8 (~1 week later version)
There also is a version of this game with very good graphics, and things like a day/night cycle. However, it was causing rendering issues for many people. This version can be found here: https://github.com/Hopson97/MineCraft-One-Week-Challenge/tree/aa50ad8077ef0e617a9cfc336bdb7db81c313017
This was made in a week, as a challenge for a video. There do exist other, more mature and developed Minecraft clones written in C++.
MineTest here: https://github.com/minetest/minetest
On November 2nd 2025, this project was updated to use SFML 3.0.0 and various changes were made to the codebase to accommodate this.
To see the commit prior to this change, see: https://github.com/Hopson97/MineCraft-One-Week-Challenge/tree/fead1af708dca0518a6161fbac4c2673393d5ae0
The easiest way to build is to use vcpkg and install dependencies through this:
vcpkg install sfml
vcpkg install imgui
vcpkg install glm
vcpkg integrate installThen open the Visual Studio project file to build and run.
Install Vcpkg and other required packages using your distribution's package manager:
git clone https://github.com/microsoft/vcpkg.git
cd vcpkg
./bootstrap-vcpkg.sh
# These are required to build some packages
sudo apt install cmake make autoconf libtool pkg-config
# The following are required for SFML
sudo apt install libx11-dev xorg-dev freeglut3-dev libudev-devEnsure paths are set correctly:
export VCPKG_ROOT=/path/to/vcpkg
export PATH=$VCPKG_ROOT:$PATHRECOMMENDED: Add the above lines to your .bashrc or .zshrc file:
echo 'export VCPKG_ROOT=/path/to/vcpkg' >> ~/.bashrc
echo 'export PATH=$VCPKG_ROOT:$PATH' >> ~/.bashrcTo build, at the root of the project:
vcpkg install # First time only
sh scripts/build.shTo run, at the root of the project:
sh scripts/run.shTo build and run in release mode, simply add the release suffix:
sh scripts/build.sh release
sh scripts/run.sh releaseEnd of day one commit: https://github.com/Hopson97/MineCraft-One-Week-Challenge/tree/44ace72573833796da05a97972be5765b05ce94f
The first day was spent setting up boilerplate code such as the game state/ game screen system, and the basic rendering engines, starting off with a mere quad.
The day was finished off by creating a first person camera.
End of day stats:
| Title | Data |
|---|---|
| Time programming Today | 3:21:51 |
| Lines of Code Today | 829 |
| Total Time programming | 3:21:51 |
| Total Lines of Code | 829 |
End of day two commit: https://github.com/Hopson97/MineCraft-One-Week-Challenge/tree/98055215f735335de80193221a30c0bb8586fba5
The second day was spent setting up the basic ChunkSection and various block classes.
I also worked out the coordinates for a cube, and thus created a cube renderer.
I finished up the day attempting to create a mesh builder for the chunk; however, this did not go well at all, and two had ended before I got it to work correctly.
End of day stats:
| Title | Data |
|---|---|
| Time programming Today | 4:16:07 |
| Lines of Code Today | 732 |
| Total Time programming | 7:37:58 |
| Total Lines of Code | 1561 |
End of day three commit: https://github.com/Hopson97/MineCraft-One-Week-Challenge/commit/78bd637581542576372d75cf7638f76381e933b4
To start the day off, I fixed the chunk drawing. Turns out I was telling OpenGL the indices were GL_UNSIGNED_BYTE, but they were actually GL_UNSIGNED_INT. This took 3 hours to work out...
Anyways, after this I got the game working with more chunks. I now have an area of 16x16 chunks, made out of chunk sections of 16x16x16 blocks.
To finish the day off, I got some naive block editing to work.
End of day stats:
| Title | Data |
|---|---|
| Time programming Today | 3:15:38 |
| Lines of Code Today | 410 |
| Total Time programming | 10:53:36 |
| Total Lines of Code | 1974 |
The first thing I did on day 4 was create a sky box using OpenGL cube maps.
After this, I started work on the world generation, eg adding height map and trees.
End of day stats:
| Title | Data |
|---|---|
| Time programming Today | 3:14:15 |
| Lines of Code Today | 523 |
| Total Time programming | 14:07:51 |
| Total Lines of Code | 2489 |
I started off the day by cleaning up some of the chunk code, and then proceeded to make the world infinite, but I felt it was not needed, so I simply went back to a fixed-sized world.
I then added an item system. My implementation probably was not great for this, but it was my first time at creating that sort of the thing.
Basically, when a player breaks a block, it gets added to their inventory. When they place a block, a block is placed.
| Title | Data |
|---|---|
| Time programming Today | 2:54:14 |
| Lines of Code Today | 560 |
| Total Time programming | 17:02:05 |
| Total Lines of Code | 3049 |
Mostly optimizations, such as view-frustum culling and making the mesh building faster.
Focus on improving how it looks, eg adding directional lighting
Also implemented concurrency :)