Drew DeVault

I write code

Natural language proficiency:
★★★★★ 🇺🇸
★★★☆☆ 🇯🇵
★★☆☆☆ 🇳🇱
★★☆☆☆ 🤟
★☆☆☆☆ 🇫🇷

Does not want to talk to you about cryptocurrency or AI

Website: https://drewdevault.com
Code: https://sr.ht/~sircmpwn
Location: Netherlands
Pronouns: he/him

Public Key

npub1d88002d7uxl3cg9pwtgsnpgxs7qrmrgetqara0p4kw7d3yy4r50qtz57ex

NIP-05 Address

[email protected]

Profile Code

nprofile1qqsxnnhh4xlwr0cuyzsh95gfs5rg0qpa35v4sw37hs6m80xcjz2368spz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0dsuhuxka

Publishing to

relay.damus.io

nos.lol

Author Public Key

npub1d88002d7uxl3cg9pwtgsnpgxs7qrmrgetqara0p4kw7d3yy4r50qtz57ex

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Last Notes

2024-11-23 14:25:37 UTC

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the system requirements I've seen for a relay are perfectly accessible for small organizations and enthusiasts. Apache could easily afford to run one, or your university

2024-11-23 12:55:12 UTC

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yes, I agree... but if you can run a relay and it interconnects then that's still federation, even if it's costly. And I don't take costly as axiomatically bad

2024-11-23 12:41:48 UTC

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I mean based on what I heard and just from my personal experience in provisioning and colocation I'd ballpark it as being a one time cost of <$5000 and ongoing costs of <$200 per month if you shop around

2024-11-23 12:39:56 UTC

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fediverse people tend to think that any design other than ActivityPub doesn't count as federation and I'm kind of tired of it

2024-11-23 10:38:34 UTC

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I have 24 TiB of storage on my home media server and plans to expand

2024-11-23 09:36:23 UTC

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And for the record I think a BlueSky relay would cost a lot less to operate than many people seem to believe, though I don't think it's going to scale well so that won't be true soon. In short anyone who plugs the minimum requirements into the AWS price estimator or whatever is doing it wrong. At this scale it's much more economical to buy a server and colocate.

2024-11-23 09:34:37 UTC

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If the minimum node size raises the barrier of entry to that of, say, someone with a budget of about $50k annually to spend on federation, I don't necessarily feel that this condemns the model. In fact there are advantages to this approach, in particular it makes moderation easier.
If the price floor to run a node is more like $1M then I'm not so comfortable with that.

2024-11-23 09:32:15 UTC

One thing which frames my thinking on federation is "what is the minimum node size". On Mastodon the sweet spot is about neighborhood scale, i.e. 100-500 users. The sweet spot is different from the hard limits; you can run a single user Mastodon instance but the trade-offs make less sense.
Some people feel axiomatically that a minimum node size of one, i.e. fully distributed/self-hosted, is or ought to be the goal; I disagree.

2024-11-23 09:06:12 UTC

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Is it scalable? Not sure. Is it private? Not really. In the moral arc of the free and open source software universe, is it _just_? Well... maybe?

2024-11-23 09:03:46 UTC

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This is inviting a discussion, not making a point. I'm not sure about the answer myself.

2024-11-23 09:03:15 UTC

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They are mostly open source and promise to become moreso and they have kept their promises so far. They have a standard and their model is flawed but based on a genuinely open, federated protocol. I have some qualms about the privacy afforded by their model but that's neither here nor there in terms of open source strategy.
Is it strategic for us, the open source community, to say "this is good enough" to hop onto this platform and gain access to this growing audience of, frankly, normies?

2024-11-23 09:01:34 UTC

So a lot of breath has been used up on how federated or distributed or open BlueSky is or is not (the answer is, to the best of my understanding, "somewhat"). But I wonder: how does BlueSky fare if we evaluate it in terms of being willing to compromise to meet people where they are?
That's not to say being willing to *capitulate* to meet people where they are, I'm not about to hop on Discord. But *compromise*? Maybe.

2024-11-21 10:02:49 UTC

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1. Appeal to a kernel maintainer to approve your changes in their subsystem, they say no
2. Complain about them to a general public which has no stake in the matter or domain knowledge about it
3. The gatekeeper is still in charge of the gate and now they don't like you
4. ????

2024-11-21 08:59:11 UTC

Hot take, megacorp employees are better Linux kernel community members than randos with a Patreon

2024-11-20 15:11:44 UTC

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we just want cars to have buttons for fuck's sake

2024-11-20 09:57:02 UTC

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as I understand it, it is possible but onerous to run 100% of the federation stuff yourself. The relays are expensive to operate, but definitely within reach for an enthusiast. I think that's a pretty acceptable approach to federation.
Right now I'm just running a PDS and I'm running the web app locally rather than using bsky.app.

2024-11-20 09:46:13 UTC

I am evaluating bluesky, find me at drew.ddevault.org

2024-11-19 17:40:06 UTC

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2.1 MiB stripped

2024-11-19 17:37:25 UTC

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Added per-block bounding boxes to the block database. Will do the more interesting ones (e.g. stairs) later on. I think the next step is going to be basic inventory management, then mining and placing blocks.
Broke 9,000 lines of #harelang code today. Binary is currently 3.3MiB if anyone is curious about that.
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/510/828/668/439/922/original/ceb36f82d4e2a0ee.png

2024-11-19 11:42:13 UTC

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Minecraft physics is dodgy as fuck but if you're curious about it here's my implementation:
https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/betamine/tree/master/item/engine/physics.ha
It's based on NSDex's 2016 reverse engineering write-up for TrueCraft:
https://github.com/ddevault/TrueCraft/wiki/Entity-Movement-And-Physics

2024-11-19 11:34:53 UTC

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✅ Gravity and jumping
Not sure if I want to do water next or just move on from physics for now... could be a good opportunity to add walking sound effects
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/509/404/168/017/260/original/71ebf89ad4b1f67c.mp4

2024-11-19 10:30:18 UTC

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Basic physics with terrain collisions. Will add gravity, jumping, and swimming physics shortly.
The physics simulation is designed to apply to any entity so it can be reused for mobs and falling sand and arrows and such once those are added.
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/509/141/346/379/912/original/a2156ed7eca45e29.mp4

2024-11-18 17:16:40 UTC

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nice!

2024-11-18 16:59:40 UTC

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you also need my hare-glm fork: https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/hare-glm

2024-11-18 16:59:21 UTC

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yep, forgot to push. Fixed!

2024-11-18 16:32:45 UTC

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you'd be surprised how little 1,000 lines of code is haha

2024-11-18 16:30:50 UTC

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would be nice to develop a nice creative commons asset pack, though!

2024-11-18 16:27:35 UTC

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haha no they don't allow reditribution, hence the script for end-users to fetch it themselves

2024-11-18 16:26:05 UTC

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these are official Minecraft assets
https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/betamine/tree/master/item/scripts/fetch-mojang-assets

2024-11-18 16:25:30 UTC

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need my Hare patch:
https://lists.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/hare-dev/patches/55954

2024-11-18 16:19:31 UTC

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About 13 total days of work, some days more than others, and currently ~8500 lines of Hare code

2024-11-18 16:12:29 UTC

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let me know how it goes :)

2024-11-18 16:10:12 UTC

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https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/504/826/153/910/653/original/8cb44de210e97ea7.png

2024-11-18 16:04:15 UTC

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https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/betamine

2024-11-18 15:09:16 UTC

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https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/504/585/493/627/686/original/377bc5955a0c8bfc.png

2024-11-18 14:29:36 UTC

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https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/504/429/823/588/825/original/aa086fb7cdc40db4.png

2024-11-16 14:59:19 UTC

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Maybe a fun thing to do in the foreseeable future would be audio. Probably should wait until some basic physics are there since the physics engine will be an obvious place to ask "what sort of block is at the player's feet"

2024-11-16 14:43:40 UTC

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Short re-tesselation demo, have a vanilla Minecraft client running on the other monitor placing these blocks
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/493/159/233/094/209/original/59c3c88da399658e.mp4

2024-11-15 14:44:57 UTC

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This version of the network protocol is really annoying to implement because you have to write decoders for *every* packet format because the packets are not length prefixed

2024-11-15 14:20:03 UTC

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It begins
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/487/403/057/014/335/original/3509e7bf385a907b.png
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/487/405/219/420/552/original/c873e3f627d2e4e0.png

2024-11-12 15:36:19 UTC

Hot take: I don't think the concept of a monorepo would exist if US antitrust laws were in good working order

2024-11-12 14:30:22 UTC

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I think the thing which distinguishes #jujutsu from other attempts to replace #git, in my view, is that rather than criticizing the git porcelain UX and responding to it by replacing it with a dumbed down, lowest common denominator UX, jujutsu says "your expert-level git wizardry is, in fact, the correct way to use git, and we have streamlined all of your workflows and tools and made it much easier you and everyone else to be a wizard and do magic"

2024-11-12 12:47:04 UTC

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Most of the docs are autogenerated from source and that's nice for --help but not going to cut it for man pages I think

2024-11-12 12:45:41 UTC

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To improve the docs:
1. They should maintain a tutorial in-house
2. They should write man pages complete with explanations of each feature in prose and some examples
For all its faults, git's man pages are comprehensive and illuminating, and anything which wants to bill itself as more accessible than git should at least match that in terms of docs

2024-11-12 12:28:31 UTC

Still studying #jujutsu as an alternative to #git. Some new thoughts:
1. I really like it
2. The docs are bad
3. 🤮 Discord

2024-11-11 08:10:55 UTC

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a lot of pipelines are not five minutes FYI

2024-11-10 19:20:09 UTC

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Though I have an answer, for anyone who wants to take a whack at this themselves, I double checked the work against a known solution, which is the solar flux at Mercury's orbit: 8,750 W/m² at 0.44 AU.

2024-11-10 18:52:42 UTC

Can someone who's better than me at math help me figure something out for a short story
The solar constant is 1.361 kW/m² at 1 AU (the amount of solar energy that falls on a square meter). This figure obeys the inverse square law. How far away from the sun would 100 km² of 100% efficient photovoltaic panels need to be in order to collect a terawatt of energy? What equation can I use to play with these variables (distance from sun and surface area of solar panels)?

2024-11-08 16:14:38 UTC

The taxonomy of traffic participants in Dutch law is the brainchild of an orangutan on cocaine

2024-11-07 15:27:26 UTC

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Last few days have been a break from implementing Minecraft beta 1.7.3 to spend some time actually playing it for the first time in... a while
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/442/371/305/066/539/original/15963545ba410ba5.png

2024-11-05 10:20:30 UTC

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lol, I thought the tesselator was causing the lag spikes, it was the scheduler (it takes 100x longer than the tesselator with this stupid algorithm)

2024-11-04 12:49:22 UTC

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So they fixed blender in Alpine which means I actually have to learn how to use it
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/424/763/738/787/136/original/211c30d5e483c18b.png

2024-11-04 08:56:06 UTC

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👉 👈

2024-11-03 09:41:45 UTC

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That's probably all for today. Not bad for eight days of work :)

2024-11-03 09:39:30 UTC

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Improved state of the Nether
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/418/354/990/202/720/original/ab7209b3ef869816.png

2024-11-03 09:07:58 UTC

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Optimize it and crank that render distance up baby
Bonus points for anyone who recognizes the seed
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/418/226/615/885/177/original/ad72fdf1b07aed07.mp4

2024-11-02 17:22:36 UTC

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https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/414/513/662/189/630/original/1d4c83efe0d4a940.png

2024-11-02 13:15:20 UTC

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Back up to a more reasonable framerate with unloading of distant chunks and frustrum culling in place (note C is given as a ratio now)
However, lots of verticies still need to go by making chunk tesselation aware of neighboring chunks (and not unconditionally rendering faces on chunk boundaries).
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/413/536/414/747/696/original/95db2521bf59b56d.png

2024-11-02 10:51:13 UTC

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Implementing Minecraft beta 1.7.3 from scratch in #harelang, day 7, browsing Dialko's survival world:
https://www.planetminecraft.com/project/beta-1-7-3-survival-world/
Code: https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/betamine
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/412/970/610/071/595/original/9ea072cfe946773a.mp4

2024-11-02 09:27:34 UTC

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For culling I'm going to start with culling entire chunks but I have a few reasons to suppose that splitting chunks into 16x16x16 cubes would have performance gains in frustrum culling but also in a few other places as well, like re-tesselation when a chunk is changed (e.g. by placing/removing a block)

2024-11-02 09:24:50 UTC

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Added some key performance indicators to the debug overlay: (C)hunks rendered, (V)erticies rendered, and the ratio (V/C). The goal is to bring all of these number down.
63M verticies is entirely too many for the scene shown here -- the tesselator needs to find more opportunities to reduce the V/C count, and frustrum culling needs to reduce the number of chunks rendered as well.
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/412/629/319/672/416/original/ab1a4518149f7f76.png

2024-11-02 09:21:28 UTC

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Terrain renderer's back, now integrated into a dynamic chunk manager!
Watch that FPS counter drop like a rock -- there are still a number of performance improvements I have to do (e.g. frustrum culling) and chunks are never actually *un*loaded once loaded
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/412/620/026/978/227/original/cd54ba2c4cea0154.mp4

2024-11-01 18:01:38 UTC

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I am aware that those chunk coordinates are wrong and I have fixed the problem

2024-11-01 17:30:16 UTC

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No pretty graphics but here's today's improved Minecraft world format implementation
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/408/879/422/200/843/original/ee026fd0c516de6d.png

2024-11-01 16:40:25 UTC

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Here's today's exciting screenshot, in which the terrain renderer is missing while a bunch of code is refactored to improve the world management and rendering pipeline
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/408/682/077/993/315/original/d95f1a21350152fa.png

2024-11-01 12:23:31 UTC

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Instead of doing anything I said I would do today, I am working on reorganizing the code into something resembling an actual game, like moving the render loop out of main() and making the list of render layers and updated modules dynamic instead of hardcoded

2024-10-31 17:38:26 UTC

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Had a lot of Real Work to do today so that's probably all for betamine today. Tomorrow I might do "onequads" (like rails and ladders) and set it up to fetch chunks from regions dynamically (and explore the whole world).

2024-10-31 17:01:10 UTC

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"FIRETEX!", my old friend
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/403/103/874/018/338/original/3a79a4a5f4f65c87.png

2024-10-31 16:34:37 UTC

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Got the "twoquads" done
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/402/999/605/621/648/original/da511635e1c5722a.png

2024-10-31 16:17:54 UTC

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Blender is broken in Alpine and let me tell you manually trial-and-erroring vertex positions and UV mappings in its absence is not very fun

2024-10-31 10:54:36 UTC

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Some stuff to look forward to nearish term:
- Models for stairs, "twoquads" (e.g. flowers) and "onequads" (e.g. ladders)
- Animated textures
- Finalizing the lighting system and day/night cycle
- Stars in the night sky
- Particle effects for e.g. torches
After that it will probably make sense to pause rendering to flesh out the chunk manager and connect it to a server

2024-10-31 10:51:30 UTC

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Lots of Real Work to do today so no betamine updates unless I clear my plate

2024-10-30 16:31:00 UTC

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Same location rendered by betamine and Minecraft, the latter with "fancy" graphics and "smooth lighting" (ambient occlusion) disabled
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/397/318/223/192/879/original/ad8b14268316c820.png
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/397/321/018/028/416/original/c55fe3165c955c92.png

2024-10-30 16:27:01 UTC

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Today: edge cases galore and little else
(Actually I also did some lighting refactoring)
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/397/306/799/052/581/original/41d73756f21216ce.png

2024-10-29 18:41:59 UTC

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More faithful sky rendering
Still missing stars, though. Next step is to update the terrain lighting along with the day/night cycle
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/392/173/882/064/822/original/263472b4da72b0d0.mp4

2024-10-29 18:36:36 UTC

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Anyway the sky colors are much more faithful to Minecraft now.

2024-10-29 18:36:23 UTC

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It took me a long time to realize that the "temperature" that goes into the sky color calculation was not the "temperature" of the biome itself but rather the "temperature" of the noise function that Minecraft uses to pick the biome. Also it's *not* HSL, it's HSV.

2024-10-29 13:42:30 UTC

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Quick break from real work to add clouds
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/390/999/205/623/244/original/f52d109a0ecc9453.png

2024-10-29 09:12:38 UTC

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https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/389/937/842/270/527/original/b18b3f8c243147a3.png

2024-10-29 08:39:53 UTC

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Fog
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/389/809/084/473/527/original/06f3d24156dc61a3.png

2024-10-28 22:01:37 UTC

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Currently sitting at about 3000 lines of code all said

2024-10-28 21:55:57 UTC

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Moar chunk, sourced directly from a region file I have lying around in ~/.minecraft
cc @npub1mpu…lk4h, you were curious about this
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/387/266/115/193/871/original/4ec08c45b3a2a8ab.mp4

2024-10-28 17:56:04 UTC

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Added Minecraft-style ambient lighting because it was easy and makes it look a lot nicer
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/386/333/559/594/336/original/ae5f8105dfe88d41.png

2024-10-28 17:43:03 UTC

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(~2000 FPS when vsync is disabled and I'm not recording the screen on the crappier GPU)

2024-10-28 14:23:59 UTC

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Better
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/385/497/666/775/896/original/b5b222d2c056c332.png

2024-10-28 14:00:01 UTC

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Behold: a chunk
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/385/395/670/106/479/original/4d86f9fe7ff4a369.png

2024-10-28 10:22:24 UTC

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Cursed
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/384/549/227/259/488/original/4ba61a11d7709f9c.png

2024-10-28 09:52:50 UTC

Is there a name for the 3D object which has two upright quads in an "X" configuration

2024-10-27 14:43:08 UTC

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https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/379/911/592/992/670/original/d1faac78f12d7c1c.png

2024-10-27 11:36:01 UTC

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Added some stuff to the debug overlay to procrastinate generating terrain geometry
(FPS hangs out around 1700 on this machine when vsync is disabled, for the curious)
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/379/173/478/085/110/original/e367132515dc777d.png

2024-10-27 09:39:39 UTC

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Behold: some text
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/378/718/487/881/394/original/be28b89792566d76.png

2024-10-26 10:43:52 UTC

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Behold: a sprite
Code is a bit messy since I'm remembering how to write OpenGL code in real time as I work on it
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/373/309/110/930/187/original/516c42cc464e22ba.png

2024-10-25 17:51:22 UTC

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Behold: you can look
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/369/326/764/400/417/original/6925e0563264ac0f.mp4

2024-10-25 16:04:09 UTC

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Behold: you can move
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/368/905/542/129/901/original/c09d74ab273a82bc.mp4

2024-10-25 13:00:08 UTC

Behold: it spins
https://cdn.fosstodon.org/media_attachments/files/113/368/181/684/498/780/original/1bec113a001964ff.mp4

2024-10-20 17:00:30 UTC

Soliciting scifi/fantasy book recommendations to read while traveling this week. Some books recently read & enjoyed Samantha Shannon, R. F. Kuang, Alastair Reynolds, Vernor Vinge, Adrian Tchaikovsky. Anyone kindred spirits care to share a few titles from their shelf?

2024-10-20 11:35:12 UTC

Been looking at jj as an alternative to git and I find it pretty interesting (though making note of a nontrivial number of critiques as I explore it).
But the thing which assuredly, tragically kills it dead for me, is that their community is on Discord
It's so fucking sad when I mentally have to throw a promising project into the bin for this one stupid, tragic decision.

2024-10-14 16:25:53 UTC

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and I'll add my own take which is that (1) RMS is not invoking "romeo and juliet" laws, he has defended 80+ year old men having sex with teenagers (2) your stupid take makes this community worse for everyone but especially women so put a sock in it

2024-10-14 16:24:47 UTC

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the report addresses this (stupid) take:
https://stallman-report.org/#minor-adult-sex-rebuttal

2024-09-13 14:01:03 UTC

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Things appear to be coming back up. The issue is largely out of our control but the optimistic view is that it's back for good.