Nostr notes by Tom Forsyth

sRGB is linear-space data, stored in a non-linear way (just like ...

2026-10-22T17:16:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…p3e2
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sRGB is linear-space data, stored in a non-linear way (just like float32)

You mean "gamma" - sRGB is linear :-)

2026-10-22T08:30:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…uch3
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You mean "gamma" - sRGB is linear :-)

Starting a new project? Turn on and enforce the following right ...

2026-10-21T18:40:43Z

Starting a new project? Turn on and enforce the following right now:

-sRGB for all rendertargets and source textures.
-premultiplied alpha in both textures and blending.
-fixed-point world time and world position.

Retrofitting these after the fact is a giant pain. Learn from my (repeated) fail!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekr2nIex040

2026-09-28T06:10:31Z

In reply to nevent1q…htmp
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ekr2nIex040

Prat!

2026-09-28T05:34:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…ydy3
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Prat!

Oh like you can avoid it. Good luck making anything of even ...

2026-09-17T16:04:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…05mh
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Oh like you can avoid it. Good luck making anything of even slight complexity that some mathematician won't prove is Turing-complete. As Dr. Ian Malcolm says - "Conway's Life finds a way"

You have to multiply it by distance first.

2026-08-09T19:52:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…ktxk
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You have to multiply it by distance first.

Damn Iron Nest has a fantastic demo. There's a lot of love ...

2026-08-08T06:23:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…vy67
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Damn Iron Nest has a fantastic demo. There's a lot of love and obsession in there.
https://store.steampowered.com/app/2950790/IRON_NEST_Heavy_Turret_Simulator/

PVKK and Iron Nest both look great, but they should have put the ...

2026-08-06T17:08:04Z

PVKK and Iron Nest both look great, but they should have put the gun on a train. Many "railway guns" were aimed in traverse by driving along a curved track.

So you get all the fun of a Big Gun, but you also get to drive a train. You know you want it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Railway_gun

People forget that procrastination is a superpower. I can pack ...

2026-08-04T05:44:45Z

People forget that procrastination is a superpower. I can pack for a 10-day trip in under 5 minutes.

Of course there is also a cost. I am incapable of unpacking from a 10-day trip in anything less than 5 weeks.

Still a classic: ...

2026-08-03T04:26:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…47jp
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Still a classic:

Reminds me of "rabbit" which used to specifically refer ...

2026-07-04T17:58:45Z

In reply to nevent1q…0qk7
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Reminds me of "rabbit" which used to specifically refer to baby lagomorphs - the equivalent of "puppy" and "kitten". The name for an adult was "coney", and it rhymed with "money" and "honey" as you'd expect.

The problem was that "coney" became slang for lady-parts, and so (a) they used "rabbit" instead and (b) they changed the pronunciation to cone-ey.

Fortunately English responded to having "coney" removed from common use by making "pussy" slang for lady parts instead. Indomitable!

What's the current most permissive license for code and ...

2026-07-04T17:14:15Z

What's the current most permissive license for code and algorithms? I thought it was MIT, but apparently there's problems with it? CC0 doesn't feel quite right - isn't that more for art/assets?

STB seems to have two licenses - MIT and "Public Domain (www.unlicense.org)". I guess I could just copy what STB does?

Oooh - I need a catchy, web-searchable name for this technique ...

2026-07-03T06:26:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…p9py
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Oooh - I need a catchy, web-searchable name for this technique don't I? Hmmmm...

How about "Dynamically Animated Skinned Heightfield Rendering" aka DASHR

Only thing I found when searching for "DASHR Rendering" was "Dash Rendar" who is a Star Wars character. Which honestly - perfect - SEO points up the wazoo.

Any other suggestions?

So my TODO list for this project is a mere 80 lines of tersely ...

2026-07-03T05:27:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…ewdv
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So my TODO list for this project is a mere 80 lines of tersely bulletpointed items long. Which honestly I could be screwing around with for 6 months still.

BUT. It's good enough to show the concept. I can continue working on it, and in parallel other people can start trying to adapt it for their pipelines & find out what does & doesn't work.

So I should get writing, right?

Here's another mesh that is an inflated cube. With the debug ...

2026-07-03T04:22:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…rray
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Here's another mesh that is an inflated cube. With the debug mode, you can kinda see where the blue seams are for the "teleport" code. They seams work great, but of course they'd look a lot better if a real artist matched the seams up - right now it jumps between radically different texture/heightfield areas - but I'm pleased that it still copes as reasonably as you can expect - doesn't explode.

Anyway, here's some eye-candy. It's a rather violent ...

2026-07-03T04:14:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…3c7f
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Anyway, here's some eye-candy. It's a rather violent "ridged roof tiles" texture, combined with an animated worm thing. This also shows off automated tangent-space generation and "teleports" between texture seams (which still have trouble at the "poles" at the ends).

The debug mode is neat. Green = primary ray steps, red = self-shadow ray steps, blue = number of mesh-edge "teleports".

Also, this shows how it simplifies linearly to standard normal-mapped rendering for LOD.

See now why do I post things like that? OF COURSE there's a ...

2026-07-03T04:03:56Z

In reply to nevent1q…sw62
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See now why do I post things like that? OF COURSE there's a cavalcade of irritating little things to clean up, each of them leading to a few hours of "huh, why does that happen then?"

Still, I am gradually tracking them down and fixing them. Latest fix was a bizarre thing of "when I shrink the heightfield to zero, why does it self-shadow all the time?" The answer was obvious in retrospect, and then the fix was easy, but oy oy oy...

But still haven't really started to write the "paper" as such.

OMG it all works. The annoying (literal) edge cases - I had a ...

2026-06-30T05:46:09Z

In reply to nevent1q…yr4n
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OMG it all works. The annoying (literal) edge cases - I had a solution for them in mind, but I was worried it would need some fiddling. It did not - they Just Bloody Work. Better than expected in fact. Super excited, because this thing is actually practical!

I'm going to add a few more test models, and polish off some edges. But it's time to start writing some actual docs & some sort of "paper". Awesome!

It would be nice to get some good texture, heightfields and ...

2026-06-21T06:13:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…wme5
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It would be nice to get some good texture, heightfields and meshes, but I'm not an artist, and I'm lazy. That can wait, and/or I'll just publish and make that Someone Else's Problem :-) Also, I'm storing everything as big fat float32 right now - I'm sure some data can be compressed.

I really need to get UV discontinuities/seams going, as ...

2026-06-21T06:13:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…nauq
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I really need to get UV discontinuities/seams going, as that's a key part of making it work for meshes in standard art workflows. And extreme animation causes some very odd distortion I need to track down & mitigate.

None of this lighting stuff changed the core of the algorithm, ...

2026-06-21T06:13:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…92e8
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None of this lighting stuff changed the core of the algorithm, it's "just another raytrace" - I just wanted to prove it worked. Also useful for proving out a bunch of the many many tweakable numbers that you need in any algo like this.

I added a debug mode showing number of steps. Green - primary ray ...

2026-06-21T06:13:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…v4nq
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I added a debug mode showing number of steps. Green - primary ray steps, red - shadow ray steps. Because I scale step size by how close it is to the heightfield, you get a green fuzzy glow around rays that almost hit the surface but not quite.

I play with the "LOD" slider which is just a multiplier ...

2026-06-21T06:13:16Z

In reply to nevent1q…wden
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I play with the "LOD" slider which is just a multiplier on the heightfield - very simple. On a slow machine you'd scale with distance/importance and when the slider hits zero it's just regular old normal-map animated mesh rendering, so you can swap out the shader. Same VB/IB data too.

The normals are being generating by sampling the heightmap with ...

2026-06-21T06:13:02Z

In reply to nevent1q…mmzp
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The normals are being generating by sampling the heightmap with deltas right now, which is of course terrible, and you can see a few artifacts - I need to write an actual normal-map generator next. Again, nothing clever, just needs coding.

Here's some bad lighting. My lighting model is terrible - ...

2026-06-21T06:12:38Z

In reply to nevent1q…5hrm
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Here's some bad lighting. My lighting model is terrible - please ignore - but there's some indirect light that is never shadowed, and a direct light that is shadowed by shooting a second ray from where it hits the surface, off towards a sun that is fixed in world space.

I still haven't talked much about the actual algorithm ...

2026-06-20T04:43:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…f5x0
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I still haven't talked much about the actual algorithm itself. I'm super happy about it, but I haven't handled arbitrary texture seams in the UVs yet. I'm pretty sure my method will work, but it might take some fiddling. Then I can write it all up properly.

Minor problem that my coder-art introduces singularities of ...

2026-06-20T04:43:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…9pe5
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Minor problem that my coder-art introduces singularities of infinite UV distortion at the very end vertices, which of course breaks everything - that's the fractal "fountain" at the ends. Ignore those - no actual artist would do that, right?

The mesh is just to kick off pixels that are reasonably near the ...

2026-06-20T04:43:40Z

In reply to nevent1q…uum9
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The mesh is just to kick off pixels that are reasonably near the surface, and start the raytracer. It just has to be "outside" all the geometry you want to raytrace. It's a coarse mesh - 16 quads around the tube, 8 along the tube, so the animation looks reasonable (2 quads per bone).

Near the end I flip debug to show the raw mesh being rendered - ...

2026-06-20T04:43:29Z

In reply to nevent1q…2c8x
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Near the end I flip debug to show the raw mesh being rendered - just a tube - nothing clever. That's animated by the bones - standard 4-bone-weights-per-vertex code every engine uses for skeletal deformation - nothing novel here. But that's the point - this fits right into a regular pipeline.

Big update! Changed the geometry to a tube with rounded ends, and ...

2026-06-20T04:43:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…z9wk
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Big update! Changed the geometry to a tube with rounded ends, and some bones animating it. Same ugly heightfield, which also doesn't wrap properly (at the purple parts) - but it copes just fine. You can see what's going on though.

Publish it so people can put it in their engines and pipelines.

2026-06-10T18:22:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…ug5c
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Publish it so people can put it in their engines and pipelines.

Parallax mapping is the cheesy equivalent of my raytracer ...

2026-06-10T17:25:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…vn9d
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Parallax mapping is the cheesy equivalent of my raytracer stepping through the heightfield. Again - that's not really the important bit here.

The raytracer isn't the clever part - the one I use is dumb ...

2026-06-10T15:24:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…mxzf
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The raytracer isn't the clever part - the one I use is dumb as rocks and not very efficient - it's just placeholder. There's tons of great Shadertoy/demoscene raytracers you could drop in that are way better.

The part I've been working on is the continuously-curved distortion. That's the key to taking all the brilliant volumetric/SDF-style rendering tech we have in demos, and getting it into the traditional boned-mesh art pipeline.

I haven't done normal-map lighting yet, but that would all ...

2026-06-10T15:21:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…kgdv
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I haven't done normal-map lighting yet, but that would all work in the standard way. But because this is fundamentally a raytrace through a volume, you could trace a ray back out towards the sun and get self-shadowing. Also, the surface could be fuzzy, or slightly translucent, or procedurally hairy.

The mesh has the standard normal/tangent/bitangent at each ...

2026-06-10T15:20:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…np2s
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The mesh has the standard normal/tangent/bitangent at each vertex, those are skinned in the usual way, and those decide how the heightfield is distorted.

The nice thing is this is all just the same authoring pipeline as we have today. But as well as a normal map, you get a heightfield/SDF.

The heightfield is a fixed texture I drew in MSPaint - I'm ...

2026-06-10T15:12:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…drw6
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The heightfield is a fixed texture I drew in MSPaint - I'm not animating that. You could use any sort of SDF or other volumetric structure you want. The trick is to set up a curved (and animated) mapping between linear object/world space, and the space the heightfield/SDF was defined in.

More details at some point - lots more work to do (seams!) and got to write it all up and so on. But very exciting, had to post :-)

The only geometry here is the outer box - 18 verts, 32 tris. The ...

2026-06-10T15:07:55Z

In reply to nevent1q…zqy3
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The only geometry here is the outer box - 18 verts, 32 tris. The pixel shader is doing all the hard work stepping through the heightfield. The clever part is that it has to trace LINEARLY in world space, but that translates to a CURVED line through heightfield space because of the animation.

Holy shit my thing actually works! Didn't even need much ...

2026-06-10T15:04:27Z

Holy shit my thing actually works! Didn't even need much tweaking. This is a traditional mesh (very simple one right now - a 2x2 quad), skinned with the usual 4-weighted-bones, but it has "thickness", and has a heightfield embedded in it that the pixel shader traces through.

Oooh - I have my nephews doing code.org and imminently deciding ...

2026-05-31T18:21:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…6aq0
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Oooh - I have my nephews doing code.org and imminently deciding how to get them into the real thing.

Tic80 vs Pico8 vs something else - opinions?

Are you using an order-conserving "remove" method, or one ...

2026-05-04T18:22:30Z

In reply to nevent1q…zg2l
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Are you using an order-conserving "remove" method, or one that just swaps the last item into the one you removed?

What's your favourite static web page builder? Something that ...

2026-04-28T01:28:18Z

What's your favourite static web page builder? Something that takes some form of markup language and splits out some HTML. Nothing fancy, I just really really need to get my (read-only) web page/blog updated. Currently using https://pandoc.org/ which is great, just wondering if there's other options.

Interesting: "true HDTV (1920 x 1035) resolution" I ...

2026-03-30T22:30:47Z

In reply to nevent1q…hpa3
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Interesting:

"true HDTV (1920 x 1035) resolution"

I wonder where that specific rez came from. The 1.85 ratio seems common in cinema, but then they combined it with 1920 wide.

LHTAPTDA = Lift Heavy Things And Put then Down Again. Any ...

2026-02-24T06:06:06Z

LHTAPTDA = Lift Heavy Things And Put then Down Again. Any strength exercise that uses the big tendons on the inside of your wrists. Weights, rowing, swimming, rock-climbing, etc.

CTI = Carpal Tunnel Inflammation. The tightness in your wrists after too much fine-motor work - typing, playing an instrument, etc. Also called RSI but let's be specific here.

malloc is fine. The tricky one is free - that's where all the ...

2026-02-07T06:55:43Z

In reply to nevent1q…g9sw
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malloc is fine. The tricky one is free - that's where all the trouble starts. But there is a solution...

Our glorious leader confuses political asylum and insane asylums ...

2026-01-13T18:24:02Z

Our glorious leader confuses political asylum and insane asylums because:

First you have to fix floor numbering in the USA!

2025-12-24T18:11:50Z

In reply to nevent1q…num8
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First you have to fix floor numbering in the USA!

Nit-pick - a "fifth" goes up FOUR notes. Because... uh... ...

2025-12-24T18:04:35Z

In reply to nevent1q…ps4w
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Nit-pick - a "fifth" goes up FOUR notes. Because... uh... reasons. Bad ones. Same bad reason the thing is called an "octave" even though it's only got 7 notes in it.

STL = Stuff Takes Longer :-)

2025-12-10T19:24:37Z

In reply to nevent1q…chnd
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STL = Stuff Takes Longer :-)

If you actually played Receiver 1 - that was a quickie game jam ...

2025-12-09T09:48:41Z

In reply to nevent1q…3f0l
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If you actually played Receiver 1 - that was a quickie game jam thing. Receiver 2 is a far more polished version. I mean, it's still user-hostile - but for very deliberate and satisfying reasons!

Playing Receiver 2 again, and I had forgotten just how simple the ...

2025-12-09T06:21:31Z

Playing Receiver 2 again, and I had forgotten just how simple the Glock 17 is. All the other guns have fancy controls and routines and so on (holy crap the Single Action Army - what a faff!).

Not the Glock - the Glock is simple. You put bullets in one end, and they come out the other into your leg.

Oh. OF COURSE he also has a scuba diving channel and OF COURSE he ...

2025-12-02T06:41:01Z

In reply to nevent1q…3vdz
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Oh. OF COURSE he also has a scuba diving channel and OF COURSE he wanted to see if the Casio F-91W would stand up to it. It's like he's reading my mind.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ow2mWkpyIUY

I remember it was one of the first cars our family had in the UK. ...

2025-12-01T05:57:10Z

In reply to nevent1q…ezdy
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I remember it was one of the first cars our family had in the UK. The suspension was incredibly soft - my dad used to stand beside it and push the roof to show how easy it was to move the thing around just with your hand.

Those of you who are devout Gun Jesus followers will be ...

2025-12-01T05:34:21Z

Those of you who are devout Gun Jesus followers will be completely unsurprised by the car he drives. A Chauchat with wheels? Of course it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=duxdKap09e4

And there you have it. The two biggest bug-farms in gamedev - ...

2025-11-21T21:58:06Z

In reply to nevent1q…3rkq
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And there you have it. The two biggest bug-farms in gamedev - doors and floating point - contrived to make a simple NPC placement bug into quite the time-travelling palaver. /end

And that's why the bug went "back in time" - because ...

2025-11-21T21:57:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…k604
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And that's why the bug went "back in time" - because yes it's the old code, but we were using a newer compiler with new default settings. In the original build, the compiler defaulted to x87, but in the newer compilers the default is SSE. It's not that one is "better" - the fundamental bug is that the guard was too close to the door, and that had always been there. But in the original the problem "self corrected" and so was never spotted, whereas in the newer compile it became a showstopper.

So on the next frame of simulation, his toe is still in the way ...

2025-11-21T21:56:34Z

In reply to nevent1q…ldl6
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So on the next frame of simulation, his toe is still in the way of the door. The door isn't allowed to just pass through his toe, so it does the only other option - it bounces back. I think by default it's set to do so completely elastically, so the door bounces back with exactly the speed it came in at, slams shut, and locks again. And you're stuck.

But on the SSE version, a whole bunch of tiny precisions are very ...

2025-11-21T21:56:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…v6jk
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But on the SSE version, a whole bunch of tiny precisions are very slightly different, and a combination of the friction on the floor and the mass of the objects means the guard still rotates from the collision, but now he rotates very slightly less far.

On both versions, the door has just enough momentum to rotate the ...

2025-11-21T21:55:54Z

In reply to nevent1q…8q8w
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On both versions, the door has just enough momentum to rotate the guard very slightly. The guard's friction on the floor is not quite enough to oppose this, and he rotates a tiny fraction of a degree. On the x87 version, this tiny rotation is enough to move his toe out of the way, the collision is resolved, and the door continues to swing open. All is well.

This collision is actually properly modelled - a big innovation ...

2025-11-21T21:55:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…879z
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This collision is actually properly modelled - a big innovation of HL2 was the extensive use of a real physics engine. The door and the guard are both physical objects, both have momentum, they impart an impulse on each other, and although the door hinge is frictionless, the guard's boots have some amount of friction with the floor.

So problem solved, right? 80 bits of precision means the ...

2025-11-21T21:54:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…u2vt
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So problem solved, right? 80 bits of precision means the collision didn't happen, but in 32 bits of precision it does, and that's your problem, more bits better, QED, right? Well not quite.

The guard's toe overlaps in both cases - a few millimeters is still significantly larger than ANY of the possible precisions. In both the SSE and x87 versions, the door hits the guard's toe. So far, both agree.

But ten years later in 2013, SSE had been standard in all x86 ...

2025-11-21T21:54:13Z

In reply to nevent1q…t436
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But ten years later in 2013, SSE had been standard in all x86 CPUs for a while - the OS depended on it being there, so you could rely on it. So of course by default the compilers use it - in fact you have to go out of your way to make them emit the old (slightly slower) x87 code. SSE uses a much more well-defined precision of either 32 or 64 bit according to what the code asks for - it's much more predictable.

So this kicked off an even longer bug-hunt. The answer was (as ...

2025-11-21T21:53:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…k62w
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So this kicked off an even longer bug-hunt. The answer was (as with so many of my stories) good old floating point. Half Life 2 was originally shipped in 2004, and although the SSE instruction set existed, it wasn't yet ubiquitous, so most of HL2 was compiled to use the older 8087 or x87 maths instruction set. That has a wacky grab-bag of precisions - some things are 32-bit, some are 64-bit, some are 80-bit, and exactly which precision you get in which bits of code is somewhat arcane.

OK cool now we can ship the game phew. But why did this EVER ...

2025-11-21T21:53:05Z

In reply to nevent1q…xrej
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OK cool now we can ship the game phew. But why did this EVER work? The guard's toe was in the way in the original version as well. As I say, we went back in time and compiled the original as-shipped source code - and the bug happened there as well. It's always been there. Why didn't the door slam closed again? How did this ever ship in the first place?

Once we'd figured this out, the fix was simple - move the ...

2025-11-21T21:52:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…ek8e
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Once we'd figured this out, the fix was simple - move the guard back about a millimeter. Easy. But it took a lot of work to find because people had to dust off old memories of how the debugging tools worked, etc.

If you watch the video, when the door unlocks and then opens, ...

2025-11-21T21:51:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…s4nc
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If you watch the video, when the door unlocks and then opens, there's a second guard standing inside the room to the left of the opening door. That guard is actually standing very slightly too close - the very corner of his bounding box intersects the door's path as it opens. So what's happening is the door starts to open, slightly nudges into the guard's toe, bounces back, closes, and then automatically locks. And because there's no script to deal with this and re-open the door, you're stuck.

After about a day remembering how to use the debugging and replay ...

2025-11-21T21:51:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…3kkv
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After about a day remembering how to use the debugging and replay tools, someone smart (sorry, I don't remember who) figured out what was going wrong.

Someone even goes back in the source history and compiles the ...

2025-11-21T21:51:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…0mym
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Someone even goes back in the source history and compiles the original game as it shipped - nope, that original version is also broken. How can this possibly be? At this point people are freaking out - this isn't a normal bug - it appears to have traveled backwards in time and infected the original!

Oh dear. We can't ship this. I get some other folks, ...

2025-11-21T21:50:53Z

In reply to nevent1q…pjdn
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Oh dear. We can't ship this. I get some other folks, including some folks who worked on HL2 originally, and yep - it's broken. And it's broken when you're not in VR either - so it's not something Joe and I broke. But nobody knows why - none of the relevant code has changed.

I checked a video online, wondering if my memory was faulty - ...

2025-11-21T21:50:15Z

In reply to nevent1q…n7lw
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I checked a video online, wondering if my memory was faulty - nope, the door's meant to open automatically, and you walk in. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y_3vMUOayyc&t=215s (at 3:40). But... now it doesn't!

What is meant to happen is a guard (spoiler alert - it's ...

2025-11-21T21:50:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…zedv
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What is meant to happen is a guard (spoiler alert - it's actually Barney in disguise) bangs on a door, the door opens, he says "get in", and then the game waits for you to enter the room before the script proceeds.

But in this case the door sort of rattled, but didn't open, and then locked shut again. So you can't get in the room, and the gate closed behind you, so you can't go do anything else. The guard waits forever, pointing at the locked door, and you're stuck.

So I started it up, selected new game, played the intro section. ...

2025-11-21T21:49:23Z

In reply to nevent1q…hqmm
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So I started it up, selected new game, played the intro section. It's a fairly well-known section - you arrive at the train station with a message from Breen, a guard makes you pick up a can, and then you have to go into a room and... uh... I got stuck. I wasn't dead, I just couldn't go anywhere. I was stuck in a corridor with a guard, and nowhere to go. Bizarre.

Of course we've played a bunch of HL2 by this point, testing ...

2025-11-21T21:49:00Z

In reply to nevent1q…86gg
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Of course we've played a bunch of HL2 by this point, testing all the VR stuff works. But we just skipped to the relevant chapters - we never actually played through from the start. And I hadn't played it through in a while, so I thought I'd do that in VR, start to finish. If I discovered anything that still didn't work, I could at least document it in the release notes.

Luckily, there was some other excuse to reissue HL2 anyway (see ...

2025-11-21T21:48:20Z

In reply to nevent1q…khq4
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Luckily, there was some other excuse to reissue HL2 anyway (see https://developer.valvesoftware.com/wiki/Source_2013) and the VR version worked pretty well, so we put the VR support on a command-line, labelled it "beta", rebuilt the whole of HL2 and prepared to ship it.

But HL2 did actually work pretty well. Joe spent a lot of time ...

2025-11-21T21:47:44Z

In reply to nevent1q…0afg
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But HL2 did actually work pretty well. Joe spent a lot of time making the boat sequences work in a reasonable way.

There's a sequence of stacking boxes near the start that is somewhat infuriating in the original - the stack keeps falling over - but in VR it's really easy to place them well.

Also, whacking the manhacks with your crowbar goes from being a panicked flailing in flatscreen, to being an elegant one-swing home-run hit in VR.

We picked Team Fortress 2 as the game - the reason why is a whole ...

2025-11-21T21:46:27Z

In reply to nevent1q…k5fs
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We picked Team Fortress 2 as the game - the reason why is a whole different story I won't go into here. TF2 used the Source 1 engine, and as it happened two Valve games also using that same version of the engine were Half Life 2 and Portal 1. So as a side-effect they also got to work in VR.

Well, Portal 1 "worked" - but all the tricks with perspective when you went through a portal were of course a nauseating disaster - it was pretty unplayable.

Once upon a time, I worked at Valve on virtual reality. This was ...

2025-11-21T21:45:51Z

In reply to nevent1q…5nte
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Once upon a time, I worked at Valve on virtual reality. This was in 2013 around the time the Oculus DK1 emerged, and Joe Ludwig and I decided that the best way to figure out how VR would work in a real game context was to port a real game to it and see what happened.

Recent discussion about the perils of doors in gamedev reminded ...

2025-11-21T21:45:35Z

Recent discussion about the perils of doors in gamedev reminded me of a bug caused by a door in a game you may have heard of called "Half Life 2". Are you sitting comfortably? Then I shall begin.

This decline in peanut allergies in kids is great news. I ...

2025-11-16T20:38:51Z

This decline in peanut allergies in kids is great news. I remember this paper right around when my nephews were born, and discussing it with their mother, and she took the new advice - early, little and often. It seems others did too, and with fantastic results.
https://www.theguardian.com/wellness/2025/nov/11/peanut-allergies-declining-children-explained

Yup, that's the reason CSG is tricky. Even if you don't ...

2025-10-09T17:27:49Z

In reply to nevent1q…v4cx
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Yup, that's the reason CSG is tricky. Even if you don't go to fixed-point, it's a good idea to quantise the vertices to the worse-case precision first - then you have uniform behaviour. There really is no point in having better results in one corner of the model than everywhere else.

Has anybody got a robust C/C++ CSG library that they have ...

2025-10-09T08:10:19Z

Has anybody got a robust C/C++ CSG library that they have actually used and like? There's a bunch of them out there, but CSG is notorious for ugly edge cases that make it failed to be watertight and suchlike.

Yeah, I thought this video was great, but also depressing because ...

2025-10-05T17:41:46Z

In reply to nevent1q…sz2f
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Yeah, I thought this video was great, but also depressing because of how worn down she sounded. The line between "I make videos for fun" and "holy shit now this is my job, and so I have to care about my audience" is brutal.

CMYK test finch. Useful for printer calibration. ...

2025-07-13T03:54:03Z

CMYK test finch. Useful for printer calibration.

It's a dwarf merchant reading a note! ...

2025-06-17T01:49:19Z

In reply to nevent1q…qa88
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It's a dwarf merchant reading a note!
https://dwarffortresswiki.org/index.php/DF2012:Tilesets

Applying for a passport renewal... Your photo must be: unaltered ...

2025-05-12T06:03:32Z

Applying for a passport renewal...

Your photo must be:
unaltered by computer software
a jpg or jpeg file

Folks, I have startling news about JPEGs...

I am trying to find a game I can play co-op PvE with my nephew. ...

2025-04-19T20:39:01Z

I am trying to find a game I can play co-op PvE with my nephew. The constraint is he's on Switch 1, and I'm on a PC. There's a decent number of games on both platforms, but so far all the fine print reveals that the two platforms can't play TOGETHER (e.g. No Mans Sky). Very frustrating. Any ideas?

I watched it on a 12-hour plane flight when I had literally ...

2025-02-22T10:03:25Z

In reply to nevent1q…jwl8
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I watched it on a 12-hour plane flight when I had literally nothing else to do, and at the end I regretted it, instead of doing something more interesting like punch myself unconscious.

Holy crap people - the script is FREE - you take a smart person, ...

2025-02-22T09:48:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…ce23
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Holy crap people - the script is FREE - you take a smart person, you give them a laptop, and you lock them in a room for a month. What could it cost, ten dollars?. But nooooooooo instead you spend millions on all the other aspects. And it doesn't work. Your film is forgotten.

It is very distressing to watch some movies these days where the ...

2025-02-22T09:48:36Z

In reply to nevent1q…dqru
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It is very distressing to watch some movies these days where the acting is great, the sets are great, the tech is great, everything is great, EXCEPT the script. And it doesn't matter about all those other things, because at the end of the movie you don't remember any of it.

I'm kidding of course. This is an amazing movie. For all the ...

2025-02-22T09:48:22Z

In reply to nevent1q…xgfu
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I'm kidding of course. This is an amazing movie. For all the obvious reasons, yes, but primarily because the writers (Cameron, Hurd and Wisher) clearly sat there and day after day polished and refined every single scene and line. Over and over and over. And it shows.

The Terminator. It's OK. Competent. Arnie has like three ...

2025-02-22T09:47:59Z

In reply to nevent1q…nfr5
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The Terminator. It's OK. Competent. Arnie has like three lines - hard to screw them up. Everyone else is fine. 6/10 perfectly acceptable 80s action movie.

I love Conan The Barbarian because it's so absurdly ...

2025-02-21T06:36:24Z

In reply to nevent1q…zunz
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I love Conan The Barbarian because it's so absurdly self-serious. But the comedy in this one really bursts the bubble.

As an example, in the first one, Arnie punches a camel, and it's bizarre but amusing. Here, Arnie punches the same camel, and it falls flat.

Ah well - there's worse Arnie movies.

This film was made when Grace Jones was enjoying her new boy toy ...

2025-02-21T06:36:11Z

In reply to nevent1q…qtwd
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This film was made when Grace Jones was enjoying her new boy toy - a brilliant chemistry student named Dolph Lundgren. He would have fit right into this movie, but his first actual screen appearance was A View To a Kill the year after.

Nobody has any real acting to do here - hey it's a Conan ...

2025-02-21T06:35:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…amsy
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Nobody has any real acting to do here - hey it's a Conan movie. Grace Jones is probably the stand-out, though she maybe had ten lines if that. It's not what you watch a Conan movie for. Every other character was a cardboard cutout as expected.

Wilt Chamberlain towers over all of them as the fifth wheel here ...

2025-02-21T06:35:21Z

In reply to nevent1q…3qym
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Wilt Chamberlain towers over all of them as the fifth wheel here - the princesses' bodyguard. Andre the Giant is also famously uncredited as the monster in a suit. Arnie is a decent height - 6ft2. But Wilt is 7ft1 and Andre the Giant is 7ft4.

As mentioned, the jokes were bad. In the first movie they were ...

2025-02-21T06:34:52Z

In reply to nevent1q…p33q
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As mentioned, the jokes were bad. In the first movie they were forgettable, but here they actively detracted from the movie, which was a shame. The fellow playing the thief was fine, but there's a limit to what you can do with the material.

Interestingly the Wizard (who got a name this time around - ...

2025-02-21T06:34:33Z

In reply to nevent1q…sdg4
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Interestingly the Wizard (who got a name this time around - Akiro) wasn't a joker character this time. They swap out the Archer and replace him with the Thief, and he's the comic relief. And the valkyrie is played splendidly by Grace Jones. Still four of them, as the Gauntlet gods decreed.

Tonight was Conan The Destroyer. It's fine. They didn't ...

2025-02-21T06:33:57Z

In reply to nevent1q…jar3
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Tonight was Conan The Destroyer. It's fine. They didn't pack nearly as much plot in as the first one, so the pace was a little slow, and they filled it out with some weak jokes. Still some amazing sets and costumes though.

Get you a wife who puts up with your nerdy jokes long enough to ...

2025-02-21T02:18:14Z

Get you a wife who puts up with your nerdy jokes long enough to get 30th anniversary rings that are also emojis (hers is the smaller one - doesn't quite fit me).

Incidentally, if you're thinking the name "Hargitay" ...

2025-02-20T07:00:39Z

In reply to nevent1q…c74u
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Incidentally, if you're thinking the name "Hargitay" sounds familiar, you may be thinking of their fourth child, Mariska Hargitay - who plays Olivia Benson on Law & Order: SVU.