Building a game engine has completely changed the way I think about debugging software.
For a long time, my workflow was simple: Open the code editor, add breakpoints everywhere, inspect variables, and hope I could eventually find the root cause of the problem.
That worked when the engine was smaller.
But as the Untold Engine grew more complex — with rendering systems, tile streaming, texture mip streaming, and XR features — I realized I was debugging blind.
So I started building diagnostic and instrumentation systems directly into the engine.
In this video, I walk through:
- Engine performance instrumentation
- Render target debugging
- Tile streaming visualizers
- Texture mip streaming debuggers
- Rendering diagnostics for SSAO, SMAA, G-Buffers, and more
- How these tools changed my development workflow
I also talk about the biggest realization I’ve had as an engineer over the past few years:
Modern debugging is less about staring at code… and more about building tooling that gives you visibility into what your application is actually doing.
The Untold Engine is a Swift + Metal renderer and engine focused on XR, streaming, and real-time rendering for Apple platforms.
Untold Engine: https://github.com/untoldengine/UntoldEngine
If you enjoy engine development, rendering architecture, XR rendering, or graphics programming, consider subscribing.
