T w e n t y S i d e d

We’re here to work on shaders, but we can’t very well just start writing code without blathering on for a thousands words about random things. I mean, I can’t. How you program is your business.

Code re-use

I’ve written all this before. In Project Octant I made a block world.

I will say that to a certain extent “code re-use” is overrated. Not to say that it’s not incredibly important. It’s just not the end-all-be-all of software engineering. Sure, it’s nice to be able to make use of code you wrote in the past. But it’s also really nice to be able to write a more perfect version of something. Every time you attack a problem you understand it a little better, and every solution is just a little lighter and cleaner than the last. Yes, you can gradually improve something you’ve already written, but there’s nothing like a re-write to let you really fix structural problems.

I’ve discovered that re-writes aren’t nearly as expensive as they seem. They’re mentally daunting and often boring because it feels like busywork, but if you wrote the previous code and you’ve still got the structure rolling around inside your noggin, then re-writing isn’t that much worse than re-typing.

Of course, all of this is only true to a point. If I was working on some behemoth like the Crysis engine I wouldn’t be able to get away with re-writing. The job is too big, too interconnected, and it’s so complicated I’d never have the whole thing in my head at once anyway.

Still, I have to say that re-writes have a lot of good points. This new version of the cube-based world is shorter, cleaner, and clearer than my last attempt. And I’d be lying if I said that didn’t feel good.I guess re-writes are kind of decadent: The work of someone who is able to polish their code instead of being obliged to ship something useful.

And now…

A Brief History of Shadows

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Project Unearth Part 1: Shadow of the Occluder”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

So grass is lightweight but high poly and you need lots of it blah blah blah. Let’s make some.

The trick I want to try here is to just have the grass rise out of the ground as you approach. Which sounds ridiculous. Wouldn’t that just make it look like grass is magically growing all over the place? Wouldn’t all that motion attract your eye and be incredibly distracting? Wouldn’t it just be easier to have crap fade in?

If someone had suggested this trick to me I would have called them a moron and made them stay late to defrag all the hard drives in the office as punishment. But it works. It works so well that you’ve likely seen it happen without noticing it. It works so well that I looked at it for hundreds of hours before I noticed. Remember this little game?

Yeah. Skyrim. To be clear: I’ve got the draw distance turned down a bit, which makes it easier to show this off. Also, this might not be representative of the game proper, since I’m running a ridiculous number of mods. (My collection has grown since I compiled that list.) But this is enough to give you an idea of what I’m talking about. Let me zoom in on the center of the screen…

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Frontier Rebooted Part 7: What Have We Learned Today?”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.