Object Chunks is a plugin designed to optimize many scene-objects with performance-intensive components (such as complex particle effects, AI-behaviors, etc.) by dividing them into parts of the scene called chunks. This makes traditionally expensive operations, such as calculating distances, feasible, since they only need to be iterated over a relevant selection of objects.
The plugin consists of two central manager components: The Chunk Manager assigns objects to chunks and allows performance-optimized access to objects in specific chunks. The Chunk Loader, on the other hand, manages only a selection of “active” chunks, which can be defined by objects in the scene, and thus allows a distinction between active and inactive objects. In addition, objects receive a callback when their status changes.
In this way, the information provided by the plugin can be used to optimize expensive computational operations, since the algorithms can be limited to a relevant part of the scene objects. Since the system allows multiple “chunk activators”, complex conditions, such as multiple player characters, can be easily achieved.