D2 log 016 – Texture atlas inspector

To improve rendering performance the game builds a texture atlas from all the images. This process is quick enough to be done at load time. I wanted to have a clear idea about the atlas layout. Xcode does have some support for viewing OpenGL textures but it’s been crashing on me almost every time I used that feature. So I did what I usually do when a 3rd party tool fails me: I built my own inspection tool to look at the OpenGL textures directly in-game.

Even in its initial simple form it has already helped fix a few issues.

I’m planning to extend it with zoom & pan and a way to track usage of the individual images in the atlas.