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"There was no documentation of any kind, because... games." - that hit SO CLOSE TO HOME, I died.

I love this channel because it just never explains things from absolute basics. It assumes you know enough to just learn a new thing. For me as a senior game programmer this is amazing as I don't need to have 5 minutes of explaining what arrays and hashes are, I can just learn something new I can apply, and for that I really rate this channel. It's like learning from someone at work rather than watching a tutorial.

Now I see why you write more reasonable code than most programmers: you were a game developer.

This channel is so underrated.

Playing prototype is one of my awesome gaming memories from childhood, absolutely loved it. Thanks for your work and the video is awesome too 🔥🙏

I’m not a game dev but I’ve randomly thought of this exact problem while taking a shower. Without a degree in mathematics, this seems like a very daunting task to do efficiently. Then I randomly get this video suggested by KZfaq which is great.

6:05 "Let's say you got a whole bunch of crap" Gets me everytime. 😂😅

Spatial partitioning has been haunting me lately. The deeper I go into the subject the worse performance I get back. I was about to go one step further into mathematic and data structure complexity and dropped it. I thought I was going crazy. Thanks.

when my guy states his frametime budget in cycles I know I'm in the right place

I was looking up how to grow hashish but I found this and now I'm a programmer

_cache misses galore_ I chuckled. I really appreciate your humor and writing :)

Aaah prototype, takes me back to simpler times taking turns playing with my brother on a rainy Sunday. My brother loves it more though, he played every sequel. :) Now I miss my brother, I think I'll give him a call, see how he's doing.

There are some beautiful methods using spherical hashing for doing more generalized nearest neighbor search. In the DB world, the real win of spatial hashes (and hierarchical versions or better sparse ensembles) is the raw speed of the popcnt(xor) distance function itself paired with arrays. There’s a lovely balance between array speed and gains from partitioning...the adaptive radix tree would be a nice “pure” example of this to share with your viewers. Wonderful content!

I've used this technique before, as the broad phase of a collision system. Came up with it from first principles. Seemed kind of obvious; didn't think I'd come up with something new. Now I know it has a name!

I also had to implement this in a number of scenarios where octrees and other structures were no a good fit. One of the applications was molecular dynamics - molecules are more or less equally distributed in space and doing different kinds of calculations on them using spatial grid was a ton faster (and yea, easier to implement). Another awesome feature is that this can be initialized and even ran in parallel

I love how you managed to jump through all the tree solutions I slowly fought to learn over the years and simplified it.

I've never touched javascript in my life but i still watched this video instead of studying.

100% agree regarding spatial grids being much better option for many games than Quad/Oct trees. It's a sign of an beginner/uninformed dev when a tutorial with a fixed size 2d game world jumps straight into quad trees, blissfully unaware of spatial grids. 'Quad tree' does sound much cooler/impressive though! Nice video too, but personally I think you should have just shown the classic optimized approach instead of a beginner version as it ends up less code and simpler to follow anyway, and faster of course which is the whole point. By 'classic approach' I mean a flat one dimensional array of lists, each array location/list representing a grid cell. Then each key (array index) is just Y * grid_width + X. X and Y are just quantized (divided by cell_size) from floating point position/bounds of your entity.

In one word : mastery. I must admit : I've just discovered this video and i've already seen it several times. The second part is at the same level. Thank you for this. Again !

I still play Prototype now and then. I very much enjoy it. Cheers!

Your channel is awesome! I've both implemented an octree and a quadtree and they shine when they store static entities. ie, the level and static objects. Use them on dynamic entities and the build times alone would be very slow. Also thrashes your cache. Spatial hash grids really do shine with dynamic entities.

This is crazy cool AND also super validating. Back when I had attempted to write an entire 2d game engine from scratch (in c# on the uwp using Win2d) i had implemented collision detection with a spacial hash. I had always wondered if I did the implementation correctly and now I know that I got the basics right!

this is so interesting. algorithmic efficiency is such a broad topic but you manage to make it so digestable. thank you!

yea people tend to forget or not consider that o(log n) types algorithms might be hundreds of times slower than o(n) types algorithm for small values of n due to all those things like cache misses and contigous memory. your fancy whatever-tree might be shit compared to a simple array if you have just 10k elements.

Underrated dev right here. Your explanations are so easy to follow.

This channel is a gold mine.

OMG, I have stumbled on your channel a couple of times when searched some information. Now I learned that you worked on Prototype - instant sub. The Prototype is a super rare game for me because I get bored of games and rarely complete them (time spent doesn't justify the amount of fun that's left), but I played prototype through two times and I'm sure I'll play it more at some point.

It's absolutely wild what a good teacher you are. This should not be so simple to understand or appreciate

This Tutorial format is awesome. 👍

I'd love to see the numbers for a perfected version where you either do distance checks on the first set of results to discard those that are too far away or crank up the dimensions so that a cell is only like 1% of a client's width. Because in most, you need to have accurate results, e.g. when dodging abilities

I randomly stumbled upon your chanel and I have to say that I really like your videos! I just started uni for CS and I can't say that I know much of data structures (at least not the more advance one), but still your video was comprehensible enough and learned a lot! Keep up the good work!!! :D P.S. Prototype what a series... they where some of my first games, love them! :D

Prototype was neat! It had a tonne of really fun and inventive combat / stealth / movement mechanics, and I remember it running very efficiently on my old PC, in contrast to most comparable open-world games of the time. Thanks so much for all your explanatory videos! I'm not a gamedev but lots of visual and spatial math stuff meant for games is really broadly useful, especially for UI dev/design. You're very good at explaining things!

really informative video, this helps massive with game development, it's also awesome that you worked on prototype, it was a fun game.

That was brilliant. Thank you for your contribution. Please do continue this excellent content.

Prototype was a good game and technically impressive at the time. Good job!

The best content on Game Dev. Thank you!

man i loved playing prototype, i even played prototype 2, i really hoped prototype 3 would come too. Such a legendary game.

Really well explained and really interesting! I'll keep an eye on your channel!

I was given a take home project to implement a K-d tree for a raytracing algorithm. I studied up on the structure, and understood how to create one. The issue was how to implement the tree in a raytracing algorithm. This was a year ago, but I'd still be happy with a video explanation. I couldn't find any sources or hints on how to go about doing such a thing.

Played Prototype game when I was 11. Thanks for a great childhood!

I really do like your videos Simon, so relaxing and easy to learn. thank you so much. If I can get by project off the ground and be financially supported, by sure days I'll buy you two coffee's. thank you again "tip of the hat to you" SimonDev

This tutorial format is really really good, thank you. Prototype was one of my favorite games growing up. I could say with confidence now that It also contributed to my education lol

Thank you for making this, I enjoyed watching it!

Wow! Prototype was an amazing game, I also remember it running really smoothly, much smoother then some games made currently

I played Prototype last year. What surprised me was how much fun the mechanics were. A true banger.

Wow, amazing content, I work in the game industry as well and this is golden. Thank you very much for this!

This guy is a legend I really love him These are the programming languages I would like to learn JavaScript and C++

Literally bought prototype 3 days ago, and I’m still having a blast on it in 2022

The video's you make are true treasures. Thank you very much! (Now im trying to implement this aaaaaaaaaaaaaand yeah idk how to use it)

Never would’ve guessed one of the games you worked on was Prototype! That game really resonated with me

Fascinating!

that was very easy to build and works great, thanks!

I love these videos!! I’m not a game dev but these are well explained and really fascinating. Keep it up! By the way, have you considered using TypeScript? I love the simplicity and speed of raw JS but I find having types a must have these days.

You made this video when I need this solution and I didn't find it till 2 years after having to make my own workaround. 😭 I'll have to see if this is faster than my method. Thx man

Prototype was a great game. I loved playing it. Although I also enjoyed number 2 I was really disappointed in how they made the player from the first game the antagonist of the second whom you had to kill.

It's awesome to learn about these optimization techniques in js, especially in three. Thank you for taking the time to both demonstrate implementation and teach through your experiences. I have been wanting to build silly little game engines and I feel like you've already helped me think about better avenues to start from. Do you have a Discord? I feel like that is a fun way to share stuff and create a community around it. Also this is likely a longshot, but have you played around with making things audio reactive? One of my end goals is to create audio reactive landscapes, and I have a general idea of how to do things naively, but I fear that my super basic knowledge of buffers would end up blowing up people's devices.

Omg prototype was my favourite game, subbing just for that lmao

Considering you already culled out all very far objects, you can run the proper radius check on the returned result for a more precise selection, absolute win

This is absurdly useful. Thank you.

Thanks! for the great Stuff. Really appreciate it.

Came across your channel today and have had a scout around and have to say this is a great site, really surprised at the low subscriptions. Maybe the old adage (1980's) build it and they will come, - from the profit Kevin, you know the days when Pontius was a pilot and bows and arrows were on the secret list ? LOL anyway do keep them coming you have a great style : )

This actually looks remarkably similar to something I put together 12 years ago on a personal project, while working as an intern. Just about the same time Prototype was released, actually. [edit]I actually took it just a step further, having the objects look through every cell they were being added to and then throw any matches into a searchable list.

Nice video! Looking forward for the next ones. Just out of curiosity: did you ever work on dual contouring? I'm looking for a good tutorial on this subject (google did already point out good resources, but still...)

Very interesting, many thanks!

Man, it's surreal who you find on youtube. I played the crap out of Prototype growing up, lol

this is amazing again! I actually maxed out Prototype back then.

Thanks for the content, it's very interesting 😊

A little optimization tip, so long as you're not subculling Huge meshes, it's almost always a Heck of a lot faster to use sphere radius bounds for bound testing than AABB boxes. As in an order of magnitude faster especially if you don't know how to ensure the box test will cache hit. Simply do distance squared tests.

My favorite code channel

Awesome! Thank you so much for sharing!

Declaring everything within a function as const when possible is genius. Why haven't I thought of this?

🎯 Key Takeaways for quick navigation: 00:00 🎮 Introduction to Spatial Hash Grids - Introduction to the problem spatial hash grids solve in game development. - Brief mention of what will be covered, including coding it up. 01:11 🐌 The Naive Solution - Explanation of the naive approach to finding objects in the vicinity. - Discusses why this method is inefficient, resulting in O(n^2) time complexity. 02:08 🌳 Tree Structures as Alternatives - Introduction to tree-like data structures (Quad Trees, KD Trees, etc.) as alternatives. - Discusses the benefits and drawbacks of these structures. 03:19 🛠️ Industry Experience and Lesson - Shares a personal story from the speaker's game development career. Emphasizes the importance of easy-to-maintain solutions through the story. 05:41 🎯 The Core of Spatial Hash Grids - Introduces the core concept of spatial hash grids. - Explains how they work and what problem they solve in game development. 07:05 👨‍💻 Coding the Spatial Hash Grid (Part 1) - Walks through the code to create a basic spatial hash grid. - Explains function definitions, parameters, and basic operations. 10:36 🛠️ Calculating Cell Indices - Details the calculations required for converting positions to cell indices. - Clarifies the math involved in these calculations. 13:25 👨‍💻 Coding the Spatial Hash Grid (Part 2) - Continues the coding walkthrough, focusing on the 'find nearby' function. - Explains how the function works and what each piece of code does. 15:17 🔄 Updating and Deleting Clients - Discusses the update and delete operations for the spatial hash grid. - Explains the code responsible for these operations. 16:27 📊 Performance Metrics - Compares the performance of the spatial hash grid against the naive solution. - Shows the timing metrics for various operations. 18:32 🚀 Optimized Version and Future Plans - Introduces an optimized version of the spatial hash grid. - Discusses future tutorials and performance improvements. 19:00 📢 Conclusion and Further Resources - Wraps up the tutorial and mentions the code will be available on GitHub. - Invites feedback and discusses future content. Made with HARPA AI

Wow, thank you so much for sharing your coding wisdom!

Thanks for sharing this!

I needed to hear that story. Went down a deep rabbit hole of spatial trees recently and its sobering to hear that a simpler system worked for well for something in the real world that shipped.

ah shit, now I have to look at all your other videos... I DONT HAVE TIME FOR THIS GREAT CONTENT!!

OMG this guy made prototype!! Hero!

Yes! I played Prototype and it was very cool!

fantastic video, thanks

My game with 10,000 simultaneously moving colliding entities is running faster now using a spatial hash grid than it was using rbush (a popular rtree implementation). Went from 30 fps to 80 fps.

Nice video, it works!

Did you work on Wolf 2009?? I was a QA tester on it. Even though they switched from Id Tech 4 to Unreal 3, so many of the graphics, ideas, the viel, etc. were transferred over from Wolverine and then Wolfenstein. Really good gameplay tropes that were becoming signature to Raven, having being able to be a FPS and a RPG with magic system being common methodologies they were trying out. It's a shame those didn't catch on or stay. It's also a shame that Raven had a really good streak but the public didn't care too much. There should have been a Wolfenstein sequel.

Just thought about Prototype like a month ago because it was very fun

Great tutorial!

amazing tutorials, thank you!

So you worked on the prototype of prototype!? I loved that game!

I do actually know of a library that has Quadtrees that's for C++/C, and has a Java port: ODE. It also has a spatial hash space. (my game currently uses the simple, naive version though, as I have a total of 5 objects)

My gosh man, your skills are top tier, in code and organization. I learned from LaMothe, then years of dinking around. I need to up my math and algorithms to keep up as naturally as you express these things. I can understand it, but I'm taking a bit of time to stop and look. The bounds and points aren't too difficult, but how to organize it just rolls off your tongue without even stopping to think or any visible editing. I'm definitely not there in my career. Your OOP skills though... those are top-notch. People aren't taught how to do OOP. They tell you how terrible it is then write poor samples or point to terrible code. If you teach anywhere...

Loved Prototype. Great game

great videos!

I was been so naive. Thank you Sir.

Great content ... Thank you!

Prototype IS dope! I bought the prototype 1 and 2 two pack for ps4 so my kid could enjoy it as well. Got lost in the shuffle, people missed it, it was a great IP!!

Loved the video, hate the brace formatting, after 35+ years in games dev, 10+ assembler only the rest c and c++ I just cannot abide the braces on anything other than matching columns. It is just easier to follow, period.

absolutely great. I came here cause because I searched for a solution for a simalar problem^^.

Just amazing 👏

I just decided on this very thing... Keep it maintainable, keep it EASY for the brain to follow and predict. Make your systems so obvious, they document themselves.

Do you need to generate key for the cells? Isn't it enough to use two indices, like grid[x][y] ?

I'd like to note that such problems are prime candidates for porting into a compute shader format where a naive solution would hit these numbers alone, with the optimized version as a compute shader it would take microseconds not milliseconds. If you can accept the results being 1-3 frames late that is. (Usually fixable by having a conservative estimate if you're not relying on perfect accuracy which this technique already drops)