September 18, 2026

From colored squares to a sketchbook

The first version of the renderer was the obvious one for a falling sand game, every cell gets the color of its material with a bit of noise on top. It worked and it looked like every other falling sand game.

The first renderer, flat bands of orange soil and grey stone with pale blobs of sand — Where it started. Soil, a clay band, stone, and pockets of sand, air and gas.

I had a concept painting I liked a lot more than that (a page out of a naturalist's sketchbook, warm soil colors and dark ink lines), so I rewrote the drawing side to get closer to it. The game now only sends the shader which material is in each cell and the shader does the painting, it puts an ink line around anything that's been dug, blends the layers of soil into each other like a wash, and shades the inside of chambers. The fence, the trees and the house are painted strips behind the dirt and they change with the season.

The same kind of world drawn by the new renderer — The same generator, drawn the new way.

The simulation underneath didn't change at all, it's still the same grid of cells. I think this is the change that made it look like its own game.