iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

I had the spontaneous idea to let active meshes follow paths and have colliders. The result: an elevator. I never planned to support any of this. I suspect this will be useful for quite a few other things, too. Paths can be edited directly in the game’s built-in mesh editor. #gamedev | #indiedev

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 17/08/2026

We have strange spike formations at home

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 13/08/2026

I finally added retractable landing gear to airplanes. For now, it happens automatically based on distance to the ground. Technically, the wheels are "active reference" meshes that the airplane system takes control over. #gamedev | #indiedev

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 09/08/2026

Quest markers are in, but there aren’t any quests yet. Targets are currently simple points with a radius, but they’re represented in three ways: on the minimap, as a screen-space indicator, and as a 3D marker in the world. A lot of steps just to tell the player where to go. #gamedev | #indiedev

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 05/08/2026

Reminds me of my construction sites 🥲

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 30/07/2026

Now with light switching. To keep chunk meshes such as buildings static, emission color and activation times are encoded in the vertex data and evaluated by the shader based on the time of day. #gamedev | #indiedev

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 28/07/2026

I could keep doing this forever. Quite literally, this world is infinite. #gamedev | #indiedev

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 26/07/2026

Originally, I wanted buildings to stay as static as possible, with referenced submeshes baked into them. Now I’ve added “active references”: With that, referenced meshes can become their own entities, allowing them to move, rotate, and light up independently. #gamedev | #indiedev

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 24/07/2026

Finally added a day night cycle to my city building game. #gamedev | #indiedev

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 22/07/2026

Cranes! I’m really enjoying this workflow: Create the meshes in the game’s built-in mesh editor, and then copy their IDs to reference them in code to do stuff. #gamedev | #indiedev

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 21/07/2026

My game (still) runs smooth on a 13 years old device #gamedev | #indiedev

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 20/07/2026

Cheap but effective night view

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

I hate that car, but the light bar looks neat

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 17/07/2026

Maybe, just maybe, I am using too many of those lights.

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 16/07/2026

When you slep a cheap light overlay on your scene and it just looks better. At this point I have various system whose sole purpose is to render a bunch of particle like effects with as few draw calls as possible.

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 14/07/2026

It's been a while. Here I added an effect radius preview. Technically I am using the same mechanism I use to mark objects without mesh rebuilding in general: Special marker meshes that get drawn only at certain pixels using stencil masks.

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 31/01/2026

First post of the year after a few stressful weeks at work. Added support for Kotlin objects (singletons): no lazy init yet, but the implementation was refreshingly straightforward. #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 05/01/2026

I just learnt that Valve used it in Half-Life and called it "Half Lambert"

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 02/01/2026

I tried similar things before but this one works exceptionally well while being extremely simple yet elegant. Also thanks for sprinkling in hermite splines, just to conclude that even math says it's a great solution.

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 30/12/2025

I considered doing it this way, but adding a separate function and calling it reliably behind the scene sounds like a major headache. So instead I added special instructions to the VM to communicate a bit mask of used default values to the function. They are only present before inlining.

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 29/12/2025

Taught my Kotlin scripting runtime to handle default parameters and named arguments. For simplicity, default evaluation lives in the function body and gets removed when inlined at the call site. #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 25/12/2025

Angular lerping done wrong in production

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 22/12/2025

Good question. I don't support default or named parameters nor `by` keyword yet so that may be a limitation. In terms of raw performance see the attached screenshot where I let it calculate prime numbers up to 1,000,000. My project is under 10k LOC.

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 21/12/2025

Added vararg support to my runtime. Fewer things broke than expected. #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 19/12/2025

Implemented a Vector3 inspired by libGDX in my Kotlin scripting runtime. Overriding equality just works - and later sharing the native host class should work seamlessly as well. #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 06/12/2025

I added thread support to my runtime. It’s mostly a wrapper around Kotlin’s threads - and of course I had to demonstrate it with the obligatory race-condition example. #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 03/12/2025

Sorry I had to use the most useless CS-class example ever to show off interfaces working. #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 30/11/2025

I discovered that adding new opcodes is sometimes easier if I introduce them through handwritten MiniKt assembly functions, so I can reuse the normal function resolution. The compiler inlines them anyway. #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 29/11/2025

Added generics for classes. It was painful. I wasn’t aware how much the compiler does for you. #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

Me: I won’t add many features to this tiny Kotlin scripting runtime. Also me: adds function-level generics. #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 28/11/2025

Something I like to use it for it resources where you call some sort of start() method and then must not forget to call a corresponding end() method. You can write that logic once in a function and never again forget to call end():

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

I would assume so, given that without the inline modifier you cannot use statements like return to return the outer function from within the lambda

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 27/11/2025

One of Kotlin’s wildest features: you can define control flow altering functions using lambda expressions with a special syntax. Thanks to aggressive inlining it’s basically free. #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 25/11/2025

Higher-order functions take other functions as arguments. The fun part: you must not inline the call unless the target is constant - otherwise you break semantics (and your VM). #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

I did the absolutely sane thing of letting the script run another script; Kotlin-ception achieved #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 23/11/2025

Got sidetracked and ended up writing a tiny raytracer for performance benchmarks. 😅 #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 22/11/2025

This is my first time implementing class inheritance via vtables (in my tiny Kotlin runtime). A::foo() vs B::foo() get resolved through vtables in the generated code if they cannot be resolved statically. Seeing it work correctly is more satisfying than it should be. #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

Imagine your embedded runtime throwing exceptions with real stack traces - and your IDE actually picking them up correctly so you can easily navigate there. 🤯 #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 20/11/2025

The journey continues. I’m still aiming for the point where I can take some random Kotlin code and execute it within Kotlin. Recent additions: - Explicit nullability - Safe calls - Extension functions #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 18/11/2025

You can inject functions into the embedded runtime. Doing this manually gives a clear separation and control over what the embedded code can do.

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

Though the custom println didn’t get inlined as the compiler decided it was too long to bother

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 17/11/2025

My embeddable Kotlin scripting language just got a new feature: classes. And if you look at the assembly, you can see the function calls getting inlined. #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 15/11/2025

Sometimes you get one of those insane ideas you know you’ll regret, but it’s just too intriguing. So… I’m building a compiler for a subset of Kotlin - something I can embed into Kotlin/JVM projects like Lua, but with static typing and better performance. #kotlin

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 06/11/2025

I added a tree cutter for your tree cutting needs. #gamedev | #indiedev

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 05/11/2025

Originally, terrain editing was click based. However, I noticed that clicking like a hundred times to make a hill is rather inconvenient. So now there's continuous terrain editing. #gamedev | #indiedev

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 03/11/2025

Experimenting with clipping based transparency. In contrast to actual alpha it doesn't require special sorting or separate draw calls. However, some GPUs - especially mobile ones - tend to dislike this type of rendering pretty much. It's also quite noticable on lower resolutions.

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ChunkDev 🦋 @chunkdev.bsky.social · 02/11/2025

What’s going on here? Why is everything…chrome? #future | #gamedev | #indiedev

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