Block Builder is the latest addition to the CBeebies Get Creative app. It’s an open-ended creative environment where pre-schoolers can learn to navigate and build in a 3D world, using a huge variety of blocks and special blocks based on their favourite CBeebies shows like Hey Duggee! and Mr Tumble.
The app was developed using ES6. A number of JavaScript libraries were utilised including ThreeJS for 3D rendering and PixiJS to handle the app’s 2D user interface.
Significant effort was put into ensuring Block Builder would run on a wide range of mobile hardware including lower end devices. Being a 3D game meant that much of the focus was on minimising the number of GPU draw calls per frame. I architected the app in such a way that each scene’s 3D geometry was batched together where possible. This also meant that game artwork had to be squeezed onto as few texture atlases as possible to ensure that the batched geometry could find all the appropriate materials on a single texture atlas.
Get Creative is available for iOS on the App Store and Android devices via Google Play.
