Making my 1970's-style renderer multi-threaded
18 days ago
- #Dart
- #Flutter
- #Game Development
- The article discusses a niche Flutter use case involving a retro 3D renderer for a game with a 1970s sci-fi aesthetic combined with modern military UI.
- The author created a software 3D renderer from scratch to have complete control over the visual output, leveraging Dart's low-level drawing APIs like Canvas.drawVertices.
- To optimize performance, the author used TypedData (e.g., Float32List) for memory-efficient triangle rendering, avoiding frequent memory allocations and garbage collection.
- As the game's complexity grew, the author moved the 3D renderer to a separate thread using Dart's isolate-based concurrency model to reduce CPU load on the main thread.
- The author utilized Dart's FFI (Foreign Function Interface) to share mutable memory across isolates, enabling efficient data transfer without copying large buffers.
- The implementation involved a worker isolate handling rendering tasks and communicating with the main isolate via messages, significantly improving performance.
- The author reflects on the limitations of current AI in coding, noting its usefulness for boilerplate and documentation but not as a reliable independent coding agent.
- The article concludes by acknowledging the trade-offs of using Flutter and Dart for game development, emphasizing the project's personal suitability rather than general applicability.