sooooo i got kinda bored working on my comp entry and decided to mess around with Game Maker's 3D abilities once more. This time going for a minecraft-world-generation style. it only features grass, water, stone and trees right now. (outdated screenshot above lulz)

The window caption contains a lot of numbers, the first one being the FPS (limit is 40) and the second being the number of columns being drawn. this system originally used blocks like minecraft but it was far too slow in Game Maker to get a decent size render distance; so i instead generated columns instead. you can't notice the difference visually either. it made things incredibly faster.

People at the YYGF were arguing with me about using instances to draw the shapes, telling me it was much slower than using ds_grid, however i tested both methods and found that there was no difference at all (if using columns - and if using blocks, grids is much slower).

i concluded that the only thing that slows GM down at all is calling functions. the more functions your calling per-step, the slower it will be. killing all instances in a room and using ds_grids instead isn't any faster as you'll still need to call the drawing functions an equal amount of time.

anyway about the project itself: i don't have any real plans for this but i do have some ideas. it might even replace my current comp entry. if it does, it will use all the same concepts and ideas as my current entry just in 3D instead and with generating worlds (so i don't have to design any damn rooms - too lazy for that) but we'll see.