01 — 03
Camera transform & projection
Yaw, pitch, translation into view space, then a perspective divide. The result is a flat 2D coordinate per vertex.
Python · pygame-ce · MIT
No engine. Just Python. And math.
VEXPOLY is a first-person arena shooter written in a single Python file.
The camera, the clipper, the lighting, the fog — all written by hand,
then handed to pygame.draw.polygon.
$ git clone https://github.com/dranimalis/vexpoly.git
$ cd vexpoly
$ python3 -m venv .venv && source .venv/bin/activate
$ pip install -r requirements.txt
$ python vexpoly.py
Python 3.9+ · pygame-ce 2.5 recommended · everything else ships in the repo
0
lines of Python
0
max polygons / frame
0
target framerate
0
render libraries used
Renderer
A 3D pipeline
written in Python.
Camera transform. Near-plane clipping. Perspective projection. Backface culling. Directional lighting. Distance fog. Depth sorting. A per-frame polygon budget. All of it runs in Python, per frame.
live preview
drag to orbit
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Pipeline
Camera. Clip. Sort. Draw.
Every frame runs through the same eight stages. No shortcuts, no corners cut, no graphics API.
04
Near-plane clipping
Polygons that cross the camera plane get cut before they can flip inside out.
05
Backface & frustum culling
Anything pointing away from the camera, or outside the view, is dropped before lighting runs.
06
Directional lighting
One fixed light vector, one dot product per face. Cheap, consistent, readable.
07
Distance fog
Camera-space depth drives a fade toward the sky colour, so far geometry melts into the horizon.
08
Depth sort & draw
Faces are sorted back-to-front by average camera-space depth, then handed to pygame.draw.polygon one by one.
Themes
Five looks.
One engine.
Each theme swaps the sky gradient, fog colour, light direction, colour grade, and the entire texture set. Not just a tint. Tap one — it repaints this page and the live demo above.
Controls
Keyboard and mouse.
That's the whole scheme.
Q
W
E
cycle
A
S
D
move
Space
jump
Shift
sprint
R
F
Esc
reload / free / pause
- MoveWASD
- SprintShift
- JumpSpace
- FireLMB
- ReloadR
- Weapons123
- CycleQE
- PauseEsc
- FullscreenF11
- Release mouseF
Updates
Latest from VEXPOLY
- 2026.10.13 Release v3.4.1 — fog curve rewritten, 12% fewer draw calls per frame
- 2026.09.28 Renderer Near-plane clipping now runs on the quad, not the triangle
- 2026.09.02 Themes Toxic retextured end to end, plus a new light direction
- 2026.08.11 Perf Polygon budget raised to 2600 faces per frame on desktop
- 2026.07.19 Release v3.4.0 — new arena, three weapons, sprint and jump rework
Support
No ads. No telemetry.
No network calls.
VEXPOLY talks to nothing. If you want to chip in, there's a page for that. A star or a bug report helps just as much.