DEVLOG | May 4, 2026
Smoke puffs denser and optimize empty terrain depth spans
This was an implementation day: less about ceremony, more about tightening the shape of the thing until it behaved a little more like itself. 41 commits landed or were available locally. There was also a decent amount of local conversation around the work, but the useful part is the trail it leaves: questions asked, decisions narrowed, and a few assumptions made explicit. The center of gravity was issue, terrain, bundle, damage.
What moved
implementation moved through optimize depth raster spans, clip terrain to horizon spans, optimize fragmented sky rendering, optimize terrain horizon clipping, optimize empty terrain depth spans, add spawn pressure regression, make smoke puffs denser, and match original gun hit effects.
What I learned
The combat model is becoming less abstract. Hits need to be legible, not just registered, and the visible feedback has to stay tied to the underlying state instead of becoming decorative noise.
Source trail
- Local conversation signal: 84 working sessions.
- implementation 7dbbb4d: add headless dev auth flag
- implementation d45b5a0: optimize software render path
- implementation ad95c2c: batch render overlay lanes
- implementation a98b8f1: add render lane timings
- implementation 8785aef: time horizon render lane
- implementation 24c1b11: optimize horizon prepass
- implementation cb056eb: optimize horizon fill pass
- implementation ed937dd: optimize terrain and aircraft rendering
- implementation 688223a: optimize horizon sky rendering
- implementation 44d8648: toggle perf overlay with f key
- implementation df6aaa2: optimize depth raster spans
- implementation ac9451c: clip terrain to horizon spans
- implementation 50fa0d1: optimize fragmented sky rendering
- implementation 213c098: optimize terrain horizon clipping
- implementation 16ab2b2: optimize empty terrain depth spans
- implementation 23172d0: add spawn pressure regression
- implementation 3dcc9aa: make smoke puffs denser
- implementation 08310c7: match original gun hit effects
The research lane stays research, and the implementation lane stays implementation. This post is a narrative summary of local work, not a publication of raw originals.