Optimization is a funny word in software development. It seems to mean so many things which don’t overlap. The announcement hit that the newest annual modern warshooter, Black Ops Cold War will take 255GB on some systems. As a result, I’ll describe some approaches to optimizing diskspace that I’ve taken as an self-educated, uninformed, and frankly insane individual.
Unfortunately work and other things has slowed project gains, so instead lets cover implementation and design. This is the first of multiple to cover chunk implementation. A chunk, in the context of the Coalstar Engine, is the storage associated with a single dimensional slice. See? Simple.
I suppose that the term “creating a world” could mean different things. In some ways, the immediate thought is on brain storming. Creating a (sometimes) cohesive collection of locations, usually filled with groups of individuals which move and react much as people in the real world. Creating a world could also be more tactile, implementing or modeling simulated versions of those locations and people. The third way is the least (I feel) discussed, but the most important. Filling the mind of the audience enough that they themself propogate further ideas and take partial ownership of it.
Perhaps it is purely my cultural upbringing, but I percieve the fundamental building blocks of the universe as like sand. Countless, coarse, rough, but still oh so foundational. It is easy to see an endless expanse of sand as lifeless and inhospitable. To us, as living creatures it may as well be. Put it can be given shape and form.
Often I seem to return to the legendary creature, The Phoenix. Much like the Orobouros, the phoenix is a representation of the philosophical concept of rebirth.