Programming ⁽¹⁸⁾

The performance of what we write here will have a large impact on the overall algorithm. When I first got Dragon4 up and running, I was using a very C++ friendly public-domain big integer class that I found online. After everything was functional, I rewrote my own big integer code specifically tuned to the task at hand and performance increased over one hundred fold. That's not to say this is as optimized as possible, but it should be fast enough for production use.

I've worked on third-person camera systems for numerous games and I often need a method for smoothing camera motion as the player moves through the world. The player’s motion may create sharp, discontinuous changes in direction, speed or even position. The camera, however, should:

1. Avoid discontinuities in motion. Accelerate and decelerate as needed rather than snap to a new velocity.
2. Never let the player outrun the camera. The farther away he gets, the faster the camera needs to move.
3. Move exactly the same with respect to time regardless of frame rate.

To solve this problem, I often simulate the camera with a set of damped springs.