i dunno if this has changed but last i checked every item slot in minecraft's GUI was also rendering one of these 3D items except that they're rotated so they look like 2D images and as far as i know there's no caching going on

meanwhile block game just caches 2d images to use as an icon for every item in the game at startup because uhh, hello?? why wouldn't you do that???

before i started block game there were lots of things in minecraft that made me go "that's weird why wouldn't they do it this better way? i guess the microsoft funded multi billion dollar studio must have a good reason for it"

and now that i've been making block game i am starting to strongly suspect they do not, in fact, have a good reason for it

and you can make the argument that gpus are real powerful now, so what's the point in saving a few triangles?

meanwhile my 2012 laptop that ran minecraft great 10 years ago can basically no longer run it at playable framerates

this is why i wanna make block game run on old computers. because people are poor, squirtle

(also lower power draw hardware is a thing for desktops now and that hardware ain't all that powerful)