I began developing a 3D software renderer for the Playdate by testing with a raycaster based on Ken Silverman's code. This benchmark revealed the device's limitations: it lacks the power of early 3D accelerators like the 3dfx Voodoo or original PlayStation, but its 1-bit display offers significant memory advantages. I remained confident I could achieve a perceived visual quality similar to the 3DO or Sega Saturn era.

The Playdate has no GPU, so the CPU must handle all vertex transformation, projection, clipping, sorting, shading, and framebuffer writes. To manage this, I adopted Quake's BSP format, leveraging existing tools like Trench Broom and ericw-tools for level design and compilation. The BSP tree and PVS (potentially visible set) allow the renderer to reject unseen geometry before rasterization, which is crucial for performance on constrained hardware.

Initially I avoided a z-buffer, using the painter's algorithm instead, but it caused more problems than it solved. I ultimately implemented a 16-bit reciprocal depth buffer, which resolved occlusion issues without meaningful performance loss. The project demonstrates how reusing mature toolchains and understanding hardware constraints can make software 3D rendering viable on minimal platforms.