I’ve been planning and writing code for a new game I’m temporarily titling “DwarfCraft”. Much like my other dozen projects, this one is mainly to teach myself about different technologies and algorithms. This time around, I went ahead and created a 19-page white paper on the game itself as a way to demonstrate my ability to design games. This paper is a far cry from anything that could actually be produced, but I think is a great starting point!

Along with this paper, I’ve been reviewing my old Cubism code that I wrote a few years ago and wanted to see if I could try again but solve the big hurdles I hit the first time through: memory usage and low frames per second. My current approach is to use an Octree data structure to represent my game geometry. This allows me to only allocate data that is actually needed for the game rather than the entire world. Data that represents empty space simply isn’t allocated, which dramatically reduces overall memory usage. Using XCode’s memory observer and leaks detection tools, I was able to prove that large worlds (i.e. 512 x 512 x 512 descrete cubes at one or two bytes per cube) barely takes more than 10 MB. Also, to help improve the FPS, I’ve started learning about VBO (Vertex Buffer Objects) instead of using the slow immediate-mode approach. I explain in much more detail in my video:

DwarfCraft White Paper

 If you’re interested in this project, make sure to contact me!