GoKawiilDeveloper details 'double headed stack allocator' technique from Surreal Software's cancelled game
A programmer who worked on animation systems for the cancelled open-world title 'This is Vegas' at Surreal Software (Midway Seattle) around 2010 describes a memory management technique called a stack allocator, also known as a bump allocator. The method pre-allocates a fixed block of memory and uses a simple integer pointer to track allocation and deallocation, replacing costly dynamic memory calls that had become a profiling bottleneck in per-frame animation blending.
GoKawiil's interpretation of the reporting above, not reported fact.
The technique illustrates a common pattern in performance-critical software like video games, where avoiding expensive general-purpose memory allocation can eliminate hotspots identified through profiling. By sharing implementation details from a real production codebase, the post could serve as a practical reference for other engine or systems programmers facing similar transient-allocation problems.
- Stack (bump) allocators replace per-allocation overhead with a simple integer increment, speeding up transient memory use.
- The technique was developed to solve a profiling bottleneck in animation blending for the cancelled game 'This is Vegas'.
- Such allocators are well suited to per-frame memory needs that vary drastically, like animation data in real-time games.
Game Engine Architecture (book by Jason Gregory) — If you're into the nitty-gritty of custom allocators, animation blending, and performance tricks like this double-headed stack allocator, this book is a fantastic deep dive into how real game engines handle memory and systems architecture. It's a great companion for programmers wanting to understand the engineering decisions behind the scenes of titles built under tight performance constraints.
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Published there as: “The Double Headed Stack Allocator”
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