{{{
    "planted": "10/31/2020",
    "repotted": "1/4/2026",
    "nobreak": "true"
}}}

* I'm going to be the first to start the genre of '[PooM](https://freds72.itch.io/poom)-clones', I think mine is coming along pretty nicely!
    #pico8

![](media/10_31_2020.gif)

* Behind the scenes! I'm doing a realtime traversal of the nodes, which gives me some advantages in clipping the drawing to minimize overdraw:
    #pico8 #putaflipinit

![](media/10_31_2020_2.gif)

* Something looks a little off here...
    Last post for today I promise
    #pico8

![](media/10_31_2020_3.gif)

* [@FSouchu](https://twitter.com/FSouchu)'s behind the scenes GIFs of PooM were invaluable in getting this far, especially the one about back-to-front rendering! If you haven't already, go follow him he's doing astonishing things.

*gardener's note: I was so proud of how well this worked. I had previously attempted a DooM style rendering engine in pico-8, but couldn't manage to properly adapt the algorithms in a performant manner. Interestingly, the big optimization is actually to stop optimizing--DooM keeps a pseudo-depth buffer to prevent overdraw, but that's mathematically expensive. Pixel splatting operations are cheap enough in pico-8 to make a traditional back-to-front "painter's algorithm" approach work far faster than being smart about overdraw.*