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Asked: 2026-05-15T09:59:02+00:00

I am working on a project where the game world is irregularly shaped (Think

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I am working on a project where the game world is irregularly shaped (Think of the shape of a lake). this shape has a grid with coordinates placed over it. The game world is only on the inside of the shape. (Once again, think Lake)

How can I efficiently represent the game world? I know that many worlds are basically square, and work well in a 2 or 3 dimension array. I feel like if I use an array that is square, then I am basically wasting space, and increasing the amount of time that I need to iterate through the array. However, I am not sure how a jagged array would work here either.

Example shape of gameworld

X
XX
 XX   X XX
 XXX XXX
  XXXXXXX
XXXXXXXX
 XXXXX XX
   XX   X
  X

Edit:
The game world will most likely need each valid location stepped through. So I would a method that makes it easy to do so.

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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    There’s computational overhead and complexity associated with sparse representations, so unless the bounding area is much larger than your actual world, it’s probably most efficient to simply accept the ‘wasted’ space. You’re essentially trading off additional memory usage for faster access to world contents. More importantly, the ‘wasted-space’ implementation is easier to understand and maintain, which is always preferable until the point where a more complex implementation is required. If you don’t have good evidence that it’s required, then it’s much better to keep it simple.

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