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Data-Driven Games (October 2026 update)

· 8 min read
raysplaceinspace
raysplaceinspace
Creator of Easel

Up until this point, Easel has been best at making procedurally-generated games where the game world is created by algorithms in the game code itself. The new data file import feature lets you author content in other software programs and import them into Easel! This allows you to make much bigger, richer games using the best tools for the job, importing the results back into Easel to turn them into a multiplayer game.

The great challenge of designing a data import system is that it needs to be flexible. There are many potential data sources whether they be map editors (like Tiled), sprite animation tools (like Spine) or spreadsheets (like Microsoft Excel), each with their own structure and format. But most of all, as all things we Easel, we want it to be simple. Keep reading to learn more about the design trade-offs we chose to make this feature simple yet powerful.

A Physics Engine with Incremental Rollback

· 9 min read
raysplaceinspace
raysplaceinspace
Creator of Easel

We want Easel to be powerful enough to make the kinds of games you would play for hours. Popular multiplayer games like Among Us let you walk around an entire spaceship, completing tasks and evading impostors. Unfortunately, up to this point, games of that scale were out of reach for Easel, because the off-the-shelf physics engine would have to snapshot and roll back the entire world to support Easel's predictive multiplayer architecture. It's too much to do every frame.

Until this point, you were required to keep your world small. But not anymore!

Easel's new custom-built physics engine only snapshots and rolls back the parts of the world that change. That big spaceship might have thousands of objects forming the walls, the control panels, the vents, and so on. However, each frame, a surprisingly few number of objects actually change - perhaps less than 30 per frame as the players walk around and interact with the world. A smart implementation keeps objects sleeping while they are offscreen.

With only 30 objects out of thousands needing to be snapshotted each frame, a factor of 30-50x fewer than before, multiplayer Easel games with large worlds suddenly becomes feasible. Release the feral hogs!