cal

c++, gamedev, rendering and some rambling

[beat_pressmen @beat_pressmen]

Perhaps we are failing to consider that software has generally been ubiquitous and good enough for decades and the demand has not been for truly new software but something better than the status quo which, if true, casts the value prop of LLM's in a different light.

[Casey Muratori @cmuratori]

For people using AI in commercial game development: I'd be interested in hearing the best arguments as to why you think people should pay for the resulting game instead of pirating it.

Concisely, if you pirated the inputs, why shouldn't they pirate the output?

[Anna Rettberg @aerettberg]

Generative AI is just a giant billboard that says “I didn’t care about making the thing, but I still expect you to engage with it. I bet you can’t even tell, you idiot. Fuck you.”

I’ve never felt more deeply committed to making handmade things than I do now. ✏️

[Mitchell Hashimoto @mitchellh]

I've got an agent in a loop optimizing a renderer with the goal to minimize frame times (and tests to measure). It got times down from 88ms to 2ms and allocations down from ~150K to 500. Sounds good, right? Wrong. This is exactly why agent psychosis is a big fucking problem.

As an experiment, I rewrote the Ghostty core render state in Go, with access to identically laid out data structures as Ghostty and the exact same validation tests. I made a purposely naive renderer (simple, correct, but slow). 88ms per frame with 150,000 allocations (horrendous, lol)!

I then kickstarted a Ralph loop to bring the frame times down. I told it it can't modify input data structures or the public API or tests (they're correct), but it can do anything else it wants. It got to work.

It has worked for about 4 hours. I've spent around $350 on this experiment so far. The results?

88ms => 1.5ms
150K allocs => ~500 allocs

Incredible right? Nope.

My hand-written renderer I ported has frame times (same benchmark) of ~20us (0.020ms) and 0 allocations in the update path.

This is the problem with psychosis and lacking systems understanding. If you don't understand the system, you're going to accept that this is an incredible result. If you understand the system, you'll see better solutions immediately and can do roughly 75x better on throughput.

The people who blindly trust agent output are in the former camp. They're sheeple, overdrinking from a fountain of mediocrity.

Standard disclaimer: I use AI all the time. I like AI. The point I'm making is to not blindly accept results. Think. Analyze. Learn.

[Flying Oak Games @FlyingOakGames]

Did you catch us on Second Wind? We're thrilled to officially announce KNUCKLE PARADISE, after 5 years of hard work!! 🥊🐔🔥 https://t.co/K4BOZwkPRC

[cal @cal_acton]

the planet is healing

[Ryan C. Gordon @icculus]

The SDL organization has an official position on LLMs and generative AI now: don't use it.

https://t.co/kvHIllZeqp

[Bloomtown @BloomtownGame]

Bloomtown: A Different Story is 🎀 OUT NOW! 🎀

🚌 Welcome aboard the Bloomtown Express!
Keep your snacks, siblings, & demon-taming gear close—anything left behind may vanish into the Underside.

Your demon-whooping summer starts now! 🎒

Now on PC & consoles 💻🎮
Links ⬇️

[cal @cal_acton]

@NoelFB @Nekrik @Liam_Berry Please do! I really enjoyed watching your streams while working :)

[Thomas Altenburger 🐔 @MrHelmut]

I made a template to show how to setup a cross-platform MonoGame game and have Github Actions building and packaging Steam-ready uploads for Windows, macOS (arm64+x64), and Linux from a single unique C# project.

Also leveraging NativeAOT.

https://t.co/4PdhKwzKRR

[Doku // Out of Action @DokuGamesLTD]

'Out of Action' Kickstarter has now launched
👉https://t.co/X55L1cI6ik👈

❗PVP and offline
❗Dynamic movement and brutal combat
❗Deep customisation and progression
❗Unique visual style

[Jeremy Laumon @_plop_]

WTF
Doesn't look great, but I'm amazed ancient Egypt had any 3D rendering at all

[Тsфdiиg @tsoding]

Games are Natives Apps. If your "Native" App does not do what a Game can do 60 times per second, it's your fault unironically.

[cal @cal_acton]

Made a little Tetris clone that plays itself :)

[pikuma.com @pikuma]

false

[notch @notch]

I made my own engine for Minecraft.

Implementing the rest of the game is a much bigger time investment than making the engine.

There is no middleware for innovation.

[cal @cal_acton]

I've finally gotten the chance to play around a little with #raylib for some of my work at university and I've been pleasantly surprised with the design of the library. Good job @raysan5! It's helped us a lot with a small prototype we've been working on.

[https://mastodon.social/@vitaut @vzverovich]

BREAKING: Twitter employees will soon become ex employees

[cal @cal_acton]

new vulkan RHI coming along nicely :)

[Alex Cohen @anothercohen]

I was laid off from Twitter today. I was the designer in charge of our new rebranding to X.

I learned so much in my 2.5 weeks at the company but I’m excited to see where I land next.

If you’re hiring a self taught, junior designer please DM me. Graphic design is my passion!

[cal @cal_acton]

@GabrielSassone I couldn't find anything like that either, and the book has definitely helped fill in some of those gaps for me. Thanks to the both of you for writing it!