1 000 000 000 000 cubes? No worries !

We needed it, here it is, the optimization update!

As soon as the GMTK Game jam ends, I will release an optimization patch for the game.

What changes in that patch?

Well, when releasing the game, I didn't think people would actualy tryhard it and reach high numbers of cubes. At this time, every cubes were individual entities in the game. Meaning that if you had 1 000 000 cubes, 1 000 000 actual static mesh components were present in your world. 
Now, if you have 1 000 000 cubes, only 15 are actualy in your world. Reducing RAM and VRAM usage by up to more than 99.9% without changing the actual shape of your cube.

How does it work? Well, every time you complete a cube by making 8 cubes of the same size, they are now combined into a bigger one (twice as big). This way, when you had 8 small cubes before, you now have 1 bigger cube etc...

Now, to come back to the 15 cubes I talked about earlier, let's do the maths.

1 000 000 =  1 × 8   ^   2   + 1 × 8   ^   3   +   4   ×   8   ^   4   +   6   ×   8   ^   5   +   3   ×   8   ^   6

So, 1 cube of size 2, 1 of size 3, 4 of size 4, 6 of size 5 and 3 of size 6. 

If you're confused about what I mean by size, the formula for the length of an edge of the cube is 2 ^ size. 
The basic cube has a size of 0. Meaning that its edges are 1 unit long. 

When you add 1 to the size, you double the edges length. 

In our example,

"3   ×   8   ^   6"

This means 3 cubes of size 6 (so 3 cubes with their edges of length 262 144).

I hope this is clear enough and that it will improve your gameplay experience ! The next patch will be related to the game UI and how it tells you the controls to improve clarity!

Lots of love, 

WaterMelon