2015/10/14

DISCLAIMER: These notes are from the defunct k8 project which precedes SquirrelJME. The notes for SquirrelJME start on 2016/02/26! The k8 project was effectively a Java SE 8 operating system and as such all of the notes are in the context of that scope. That project is no longer my goal as SquirrelJME is the spiritual successor to it.

02:19

Found this nice animation, looks like a moving staircase. I have different animations to choose a color depending on the block type and I stumbled upon this one, so I will need to figure out what something to give to it.

12:00

I can calculate the face offset coordinates using the face direction code I have written.

12:11

Or I can just use precalculated coordinates. I have a tissue box next to me so I can quickly determine the values visually rather than mathematically. I suppose this is cheating however.

12:27

It is possible to simulate a Z buffer sort of using the framebuffer graphics. I just have to use a byte based mode say grayscale.

13:20

However Z buffers could potentially be slow because of the per pixel stuff going on. That is also a ton of array bound checks.

13:29

I can determine which areas of a chunk are visible by using the mapping stuff and a simple set of flags for each block in a chunk which indicate the faces which are visible from that block. The flood fill algorithm can calculate that information as needed. This requires recalculation whenever a block is changed however, but for chunks which are static (such as those consisting entirely of air or terrain the player walks over to ignore) then it only has to be calculated once.

14:45

Believe I need to change the way the loop is called, because with the locking and such, the game becomes very sluggish. I could most likely split the framebuffer and a few other things out so that they are controlled by the main loop rather than having the code rely on Swing doing things. Then this way it will hopefully be a smooth experience rather than missing locks and such. If I remove all of the locks I will have the game run only in a single thread with swing stuff in other threads.

19:39

After changing the render stuff but before removing the synchronization stuff, the frame time is rather horrible.