We did use some external libraries, Nuke Glory, spritecandy and particle candy.
Nuke glory was required because of its ultimate dynamic collision updating. Doubt i could had pulled off the speed of AstroMiner if i used a in-house collision solution.
The main goal behind astro miner was to keep it's performance scalable. I wanted the game to be able to run on older hardware ( with some options turned off ) but I didnt want to punish those of us with recent hardware. So you can actually jack up the eye candy as much as you want based on your hardware.
Nuke glory was required because of its ultimate dynamic collision updating. Doubt i could had pulled off the speed of AstroMiner if i used a in-house collision solution.
The main goal behind astro miner was to keep it's performance scalable. I wanted the game to be able to run on older hardware ( with some options turned off ) but I didnt want to punish those of us with recent hardware. So you can actually jack up the eye candy as much as you want based on your hardware.