Anatomy of a Texture

Last year I had to write code which converted texture data between gaming platforms. Going into it, I seriously underestimated the complexity of texture memory layouts.

I'm currently working on a team at 505 Games porting a custom PC game engine to consoles. One of the many challenges faced has been around texture conversion. I knew there were a lot of complexities and subtleties to it. I recognized most of them in isolation. But, it wasn't until I had to write working code which handled all these details in tandem that the full complexity really sank in. And so, I thought this would make for an interesting blog post!