Iron Log #14 - Animating Splitters

Hi everyone,

This week I released a small patch (v0.0.8) that included optimizations to loading save games and rendering items on belts. And all new graphics for the belt splitter, conveyor supports, and the workshop building.

In that update I managed to add a small but significant milestone of animating the belt splitter. (Look closely at the gears spinning on the left and top)

This animation is done using vertex animations in a material, which means it’s done entirely on the GPU. This is very important because it allows the game to render hundreds or thousands of these belt splitters using instanced static meshes and they can all animate with minimal impact on the CPU.

This animation is just the first step since the splitters are not yet instanced in the game there isn’t a huge benefit yet. However setting up the tooling and pipeline to allow this to work means it’ll be easier to animate other machines in the future.

Speaking of the future, I am going on holiday next week for the first half of July so you probably won’t hear from me until almost August. When I get back I’m going to continue on a large update to re-work the power system and add new mid-tier buildings.

As always, thanks for reading and head over to the discord to learn more https://discord.gg/xmmPeZHj4T