Question

I am trying to flatten 3D array into 1D array for “chunk” system in my game. It’s a 3D-block game and basically I want the chunk system to be almost identical to Minecraft’s system (however, this isn’t Minecraft clone by any measure). In my previous 2D-games I have accessed the flattened array with following algorithm:

Tiles[x + y * WIDTH]

However, this obviously doesn’t work with 3D since it’s missing the Z-axis. I have no idea how to implement this sort of algorithm in 3D-space. Width, height and depth are all constants (and width is just as large as height).

Is it just x + y*WIDTH + Z*DEPTH ? I am pretty bad with math and I am just beginning 3D-programming so I am pretty lost 😐

PS. The reason for this is that I am looping and getting stuff by index from it quite a lot. I know that 1D arrays are faster than multi-dimensional arrays (for reasons I cant remember 😛 ). Even though this may not be necessary, I want as good performance as possible 🙂

Answer 1

The algorithm is mostly the same. If you have a 3D array Original[HEIGHT, WIDTH, DEPTH] then you could turn it into Flat[HEIGHT * WIDTH * DEPTH] by

Flat[x + WIDTH * (y + DEPTH * z)] = Original[x, y, z]

As an aside, you should prefer arrays of arrays over multi-dimensional arrays in .NET. The performance differences are significant