4J Studios, renowned for its development of various console editions of Minecraft, has recently made headlines with the announcement of its innovative technology, Rixels, designed for their upcoming game, Reforj. This new approach significantly reduces texture memory requirements by an impressive 98%, addressing a common challenge faced by game developers today.
Reducing memory requirements with Rixels for Reforj
In a conversation with GamesIndustry.biz, Chris van der Kuyl, chairman of 4J Studios, elaborated on the genesis of Rixels. The team initially utilized 512×512 normal textures, which, as the game expanded, posed a substantial risk of exhausting available memory space. “As [the game] got bigger and bigger, we realized that we were going to run ourselves into a wall with space,” he explained.
Traditionally, these 512×512 pixel grids in Reforj would consume around 4MB of memory. With the introduction of Rixels, this requirement plummets to just 72KB, marking a remarkable reduction of 98.2%. Reforj promises to go beyond the conventional block-building mechanics of Minecraft, enabling players to carve and sculpt into smoother shapes, thereby enhancing the creative experience.
“Generally, when you get these block building games, or voxel-based games, they start to get performance restrictive quite early. So we asked ourselves, could we build an engine that gave you persistent 60-frames-per-second in this kind of game? It may be a geeky thing to say, but for a player it would transform their experience.”
Chris van der Kuyl, Chairman of 4J Studios
Van der Kuyl described the technology as “deceptively simple,” expressing initial surprise that no one had previously tackled the problem in the same way. As a result, 4J Studios has applied for a patent to protect their unique solution. The substantial memory savings not only promise to prevent performance dips but also open the door for potential applications in other fields.
“Because we genuinely have invented something brand new, if someone came to us and said, ‘Wow, we could use this in a graphic design tool,’ we’d love to license it and see it used elsewhere,” van der Kuyl noted. While he acknowledged that the technology might be less critical for photorealistic games, its versatility could lead to exciting developments in various mediums.
