Dev Diary: Building a TileMap Engine with FSM and Pathfinding from Scratch

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A developer shared progress on a personal game engine project after completing Chapter 4 of Sanjay Madhav's game programming book. The chapter focused on finite state machines (FSM) and shortest-path algorithms, which the developer implemented visually in a custom 2D tilemap demo. The work spanned several days of iterative coding and debugging at home, resulting in a basic but functional screen output. The project currently runs in 2D, with 3D content beginning in the next chapter, and future plans include transitioning graphics from OpenGL to Vulkan. The developer's long-term goal is an HD-2D tycoon game inspired by Square Enix's visual style, though they acknowledge the road ahead is still very long.

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