Aras Pranckevičius

Programmer. Unity 2006-2021. Now Blender. Website at https://aras-p.info Admin of https://mastodon.gamedev.place

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Last Notes

2026-07-16 10:58:55 UTC

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Blender is cool and all, but also! Here’s Ren sending regards from Poland, Czechia, Austria and Italy.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/929/299/077/582/417/original/9ea713d5ca6bf1dd.jpeg
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/929/299/558/435/657/original/ed08d907662deff3.jpeg
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/929/299/889/839/986/original/f963690aacfba7d0.jpeg
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/929/300/389/489/872/original/c544cb2b658c23e0.jpeg

2026-07-07 09:36:45 UTC

Someone else pointed at this: for all the "massive testing, production-ready, blah blop" talk that Unity does, they also ship pieces of code like this. This is from Unity IAP package, new stable version (5.4.0) shipped last week. Count the number of opening & closing curly braces :)
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/878/016/750/469/624/original/2cf9575ab7952020.png

2026-06-28 13:42:59 UTC

Short blog post about Joys of cancelling a TBB task group: https://aras-p.info/blog/2026/06/28/Joys-of-cancelling-a-TBB-task-group/

2026-06-26 05:43:00 UTC

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@nprofile…4l5v who did she consider worthy?

2026-06-09 05:55:10 UTC

Someone shipped the level with a debug gizmo. Lazy devs!
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/718/600/629/840/249/original/3d17ad599be43092.jpeg

2026-06-08 17:38:05 UTC

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@nprofile…9g3x impressive! Though I am hoping that someday either CSS text-wrap: pretty would just do it, or something new like, I dunno, text-wrap: prettier

2026-06-07 11:18:52 UTC

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@nprofile…k3dk so far so good! She does not quite understand why she’s always on a leash and is not allowed to run or jump. The leg is still limping, sometimes (expected) and the “haircut” is funny. Will be getting an xray checkup in a few days!
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/708/548/880/481/789/original/dcc590b554c83c1f.jpeg

2026-06-07 05:56:39 UTC

Good morning!
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/707/281/846/260/041/original/27dccbc7b89b36fd.jpeg

2026-06-04 06:27:59 UTC

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A month later, a happy outcome! Unity kept the default behavior being buggy, but added a (very hidden) setting to un-bug the terrain shadows. Per-Terrain object, you need to switch inspector to Debug mode and uncheck the new "Enable Heightmap LOD Frustum Culling" toggle. This is in 6000.0.76, 6000.4.9, 6000.5.0b10, 6000.6.0a6 versions.
https://discussions.unity.com/t/terrain-lod-shadows-switching-issue/1630925/7

2026-05-28 13:14:37 UTC

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@nprofile…4e67 my goto hash is PCG https://www.jcgt.org/published/0009/03/02/

2026-05-27 03:56:07 UTC

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@nprofile…c3sc would executables from 2009 still work today on a Mac? (I guess "obviously not"). How about Linux?

2026-05-24 11:39:10 UTC

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@nprofile…0eyj so when is your bike trip north towards the baltics?

2026-05-23 13:39:02 UTC

You know why Polish people are attractive?
They are magnetic poles.

2026-05-23 06:08:20 UTC

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@nprofile…9g3x JCGT has been a very good avenue for exactly these kinds of papers!

2026-05-22 14:27:55 UTC

Unity's take on "we have Roblox at home" will be shutting down. https://struckdunity.zendesk.com/hc/en-us/articles/48437385778580-An-Update-on-Struckd
"Wait, Unity had a Roblox-like thing?!". Indeed it had -- it was called Struckd. Unity acquired the company back in 2021, and yeah, I would have now known about this if I had not been at Unity in 2021.
One could say this attempt did not quite struckd the world by storm.

2026-05-22 08:10:38 UTC

A Freestyler cover you did not know you need! Rakamakafon! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2qjevrDOg_4

2026-05-20 03:57:12 UTC

0x2D today! Still quite a bit to go until 3D.

2026-05-18 14:28:43 UTC

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@nprofile…kudx Really humbled and honored to witness this incredible evolution in thought leadership. 🚀
We’re no longer limiting AI to generating low-value blog content — we’re empowering it to drive scalable engagement directly in the comments section. 💡📈

2026-05-16 08:10:32 UTC

The new Spotify app icon has to be an inside prank. I find no other explanation.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/583/237/491/577/037/original/2e855f1e803fc5ee.jpeg

2026-05-15 08:48:07 UTC

Oh wow! :unity: Unity 6.6 (alpha) has added selection history! This was a feature that I have worked on in... <checks notes>... 2021 december. I have left before shipping it though. No idea if now they used the same code or a complete reimplementation, but still very nice!
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/577/722/973/196/388/original/e7a2b93d4f2e40fc.mp4

2026-05-15 08:18:05 UTC

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@nprofile…zdn5 after two weeks of trying to use Zed and VSCode, I'm reluctantly back to CLion. Zed seems to be made by people who don't do C++ at all, and wrt VSCode I don't like the "everything's a command, no toolbars", plus debugging is *extremely* slow on Blender. CLion has really bad typing latency, but at least everything works.

2026-05-10 18:04:47 UTC

Historical unicorn
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/551/600/265/468/290/original/7a9f1026da703b75.jpeg

2026-05-08 05:28:04 UTC

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@nprofile…tdpa I keep on thinking that in a hypothetical future when I’ll have infinite spare time, I should resurrect glsl-optimizer and bring it up with today’s Mesa NIR goodies (back when I was doing it, NIR did not exist yet)

2026-05-08 03:54:28 UTC

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@nprofile…c3sc is this a subtoot of “DGF super compression”, or of something else

2026-05-08 03:50:58 UTC

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@nprofile…tdpa nice post! Audience is probably dozens of us who are both into compilers and shaders, but this audience likes it very much :)

2026-05-07 13:37:20 UTC

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@nprofile…4e67 why you can’t use Unity’s?

2026-05-06 11:35:53 UTC

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@nprofile…4e67 @nprofile…zt48 windows and soon linux, so yeah Mac is “tough luck”

2026-05-06 11:30:58 UTC

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@nprofile…4e67 this is why one uses @nprofile…zt48 :)

2026-05-05 18:27:58 UTC

There’s a known rule that every 3D code that works has an even number of axis sign errors.
New rule: every image processing code that works has an even number of errors where width is confused with height.

2026-05-04 08:09:02 UTC

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Still trying to convince Unity that buggy shadows (that were not buggy before) is perhaps a bug. https://discussions.unity.com/t/terrain-lod-shadows-switching-issue/1630925/3

2026-05-03 07:37:49 UTC

Metric: “we need to increase Copilot usage”. Solution is easy, make it co-author all the commits.
In every large company various metrics tend to become the actual goal. e.g. at Unity at some point there was a metric to “fix many bugs”. Sounds good! What actually happened often tho, was that bugs were simply closed without an actual fix. Because the graphs presented to the management still look great!

2026-05-02 06:56:08 UTC

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@nprofile…sx6q my garden

2026-05-02 06:55:57 UTC

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@nprofile…sm4q I did model this after Utah teapot :)

2026-05-02 06:07:38 UTC

Happy to report that the wireframe teapot still works!
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/503/481/882/875/695/original/6eeb06c7208bf103.jpeg

2026-05-02 03:13:58 UTC

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@nprofile…x9sp yeah

2026-05-01 12:34:16 UTC

“Cycles Texture Cache” writeup about new tiled/mipmapped texturing system in #blender 5.2 :blender: https://code.blender.org/2026/05/cycles-texture-cache/

2026-04-29 08:03:01 UTC

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@nprofile…zdn5 subscribing! I'm on CLion, but the typing latency and general "it loads all my CPU cores with _something_ all the time" is getting on my nerves. All my projects are CMake based, what are other IDEs good for this on Linux?

2026-04-28 18:06:03 UTC

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And yes, of course one can use AI/LLM/ML tools "for good use" in a way where that actually improves productivity, removes some menial tasks, enables small teams to do larger things.
Just like someone could use blood money for good things. That's still blood money tho.
I don't like this, don't like this at all. Oof.

2026-04-28 18:04:09 UTC

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Some people are really, really against gen-AI stuffs, especially among artists (some are not! this should be obvious)
And yes, you could argue that back when blockchain, or web3, or NFTs were happening, some of these companies were blender fund members too, and genAI is not "categorically different" from that. Maybe. But also, most of the former list were vehicles to drain speculative investors money, whereas whole AI already has much wider effects.

2026-04-28 18:01:10 UTC

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To expand: of course Blender needs money to pay salaries etc (hey, I'm doing my part! a bit!). It's a tough problem, in how to get money, and from whom, and how consistent they are with funding, and how much they *really* just do funding vs expect something in return, etc. etc. I don't envy anyone doing these decisions.
Still.

2026-04-28 16:43:18 UTC

I can’t say I’m a fan :(

2026-04-28 07:04:00 UTC

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@nprofile…622w @nprofile…hm63 mine is Hugo too, website https://aras-p.info and actual “source” of it https://github.com/aras-p/aras-p.hugo
Hugo tries to do “everything” these days, but I just ignore everything I don’t care about. Singe executable that I just put into version control means I don’t have to worry about updates.

2026-04-25 05:16:52 UTC

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@nprofile…3v4s ✅ IS IT PROVIDING?
✅ IS IT VALUE?
✅ IS IT FOR?
✅ IS IT THE?
✅ IS IT SHAREHOLDERS?

2026-04-22 18:12:42 UTC

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@nprofile…c3sc devil’s advocate point could be that maybe they don’t post about all the cases that were just fine.
Anyhoo, what’s your overall feeling about AI for coding? Mine is convoluted and complicated :/ I can see areas where it is useful and improves things, but also plenty of problems and gotchas too…

2026-04-17 10:18:12 UTC

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@nprofile…4e67 no, the suggested workaround globally raises the terrain detail everywhere. which works around the worst artifacts, yes, but at expense of negating their claimed "performance optimization"

2026-04-17 07:06:57 UTC

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...aaand closed with "lol sorry, won't fix" :/ https://issuetracker.unity3d.com/issues/terrain-shadows-changing-shape-when-they-are-viewed-at-a-different-angle-from-the-same-position

2026-04-16 18:14:21 UTC

Oh, so turns out #unity has introduced a terrain shadow bug somewhere between 2022.3.7 and 2022.3.62, i.e. in the "critical bugfixes only!" LTS release train. Nothing related mentioned in the release notes. The bug is still present in all later versions (6.5 a8 is latest I checked). Fun fun fun!
The bug is: when there's a very steep terrain cliff behind camera, and light is also from behind, sometimes shadows use really low res LOD.
Let's see if a bug report goes anywhere...
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/415/742/511/802/037/original/749ce93f5b7f962a.mp4

2026-04-14 16:24:54 UTC

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@nprofile…3vpz this post did not make me mad!

2026-04-10 15:26:12 UTC

There’s an old cemetery in Vilnius that for one week a year looks like this (Scilla siberica in bloom)
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/381/107/412/996/827/original/ad3f433f0acc3f24.jpeg

2026-04-09 07:23:48 UTC

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@nprofile…celm my impression is that most usage of sin/cos for PRNG in shaders comes from ancient days of shadertoys, back when it was WebGL1 only; there's a million shaders written that way. These days when you can actually have integers (incl WebGL2), a PCG based PRNG is much cheaper and better quality, but of course not all shadertoys have been updated.

2026-04-05 18:42:50 UTC

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@nprofile…yk06 great interview, and the title does not do it justice - it is so much more than about Spark!
Your stories in beginning about programming on paper rang a bell. I used to do that too on ZX, but the reason was that my cassette player could not record, only load programs. Programming on paper and typing that in is a workaround :)

2026-04-04 13:49:26 UTC

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@nprofile…px8z yep, https://youtu.be/0Zfsn82MF3E?is=5ycPdjzWpUF8aiJ-

2026-04-03 17:29:53 UTC

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@nprofile…gj9s haha indeed

2026-04-03 16:27:31 UTC

This birch tree has grown a light saber
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/341/712/313/101/973/original/680ab8a0b4833ced.jpeg

2026-04-02 17:08:22 UTC

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@nprofile…c3sc is a nice infographic!

2026-04-02 13:08:32 UTC

Interesting! harfbuzz 14 adds GPU rendering via @nprofile…3mmn Slug algorithm. https://github.com/harfbuzz/harfbuzz/releases/tag/14.0.0

2026-04-01 05:24:25 UTC

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@nprofile…22w0 sudont, when you don’t want to do something, but with superuser rights.
Oh wait, that actually exists https://github.com/cbondurant/sudont

2026-04-01 04:51:46 UTC

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@nprofile…22w0 frag.exe for when your HDDs are too fast

2026-04-01 03:48:46 UTC

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@nprofile…u7p7 did anyone find the place where claude code is supposedly "similar to a full game engine", as was claimed by some of their folks a while ago?

2026-03-31 18:26:40 UTC

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@nprofile…qcgs yeah very much like you wouldn't want to dump "something really complex" 3D into OBJ, there are practical limits how much 2D stuff you can dump into SVG before it becomes not usable :/

2026-03-31 17:56:15 UTC

I was today years old when I realized that just like OBJ files are really useful to write while debugging 3D stuff, SVG files are useful for 2D cases! So obvious, but I never did it before! Well, turns out an old dog can still learn some new tricks. Example: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/156622

2026-03-31 09:12:56 UTC

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@nprofile…4l5v I know! You could try this on my old ToyPathTracer: https://github.com/aras-p/ToyPathTracer

2026-03-30 17:12:37 UTC

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@nprofile…4e67 most excellent. Did I tell you that you have a superpower of going really deep into rabbit holes like that, emerging with fantastic stuff?

2026-03-30 17:00:58 UTC

Rune's work here is brilliant! Most excellent blog post and the visualizations (incl. in the video form for y'all kids :)). The "paint mountains with a mouse, right in shadertoy" is wonderful cherry on top. https://www.shadertoy.com/view/sf23W1

2026-03-30 09:38:06 UTC

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@nprofile…raqz “vibe coding whole games into existence” the CEO already said somewhere? I wonder if they tried vibe-businessing the whole company into profitability yet.

2026-03-29 08:16:09 UTC

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@nprofile…22w0 good timing on my timeline, so @nprofile…zdn5 made dwarven vector graphics.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/311/468/808/677/465/original/ebf065e0daedb78a.png

2026-03-28 15:46:25 UTC

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@nprofile…c3sc @nprofile…yk06 ah, right indeed

2026-03-28 09:49:24 UTC

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@nprofile…yk06 whoa, how do you even begin to reverse engineer these formats?

2026-03-28 07:35:05 UTC

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@nprofile…x9sp @nprofile…22w0 Frankly Zappa
Pink Floyd Rose

2026-03-28 05:35:50 UTC

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@nprofile…nl3u whoa! and congrats!

2026-03-27 16:17:29 UTC

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@nprofile…22w0 would that be a result of paying topless men a lot

2026-03-27 15:18:57 UTC

:blender: Cycles is joining the grown-up renderers in that it finally gets a tiled/mipmapped texture caching system for 5.2. https://developer.blender.org/docs/release_notes/5.2/cycles/#texture-cache - thx Brecht and Weizhen for doing all that work!

2026-03-27 15:12:06 UTC

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@nprofile…c3sc indeed

2026-03-27 09:05:31 UTC

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@nprofile…4tpy indeed, how inconsiderate of me

2026-03-27 08:54:33 UTC

Unity, 2022: we have merged with ironSource! Unity, 2026: we are discontinuing the ironSource thingamabob. https://investors.unity.com/news/news-details/2026/Unity-Releases-Preliminary-First-Quarter-Results-Exceeding-Guidance-Will-Enhance-Growth-and-Profitability-by-Exiting-Non-Strategic-Ad-Businesses/default.aspx
Strategic brilliance is why the top men are paid a lot, eh!

2026-03-27 07:46:21 UTC

"Data Inheritance" by @nprofile…zdn5, article and code: https://github.com/memononen/data_inheritance

2026-03-26 19:14:00 UTC

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@nprofile…unwf that’s garbage!

2026-03-24 10:30:05 UTC

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@nprofile…9g3x is it similar vibes as “oh you know cuda? that does not count as actual programming because it is proprietary”

2026-03-22 20:05:29 UTC

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@nprofile…ahvu yeah if you have an array of structs that tend to have spatially varying data, struct size is under 256B and is multiple of 4, then using meshopt vertex codec is very easy to try, and produces great results in my experience

2026-03-22 19:52:31 UTC

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Topic jump: Arseny talks about meshoptimizer compression for *mesh* vertex data compression, but turns out, it is very good for lossless compression of other same-sized kinda-structured data. I've used it to compress game saves (https://aras-p.info/blog/2023/02/02/Float-Compression-4-Mesh-Optimizer/) and HDR images (https://aras-p.info/blog/2025/07/08/Lossless-Float-Image-Compression/) and it fared very well there. Very fast decompression speed too.

2026-03-22 18:51:09 UTC

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@nprofile…c3sc ...it *does* allow you to create/modify meshes to be in fairly flexible attribute formats, so people who really want to do have decent quantization/formats (e.g. octahedral normals in sane amount of bits etc.), they can do it. But does not come out of the box. Why is a good question, "it's two dozen reasons that all compound" as always.

2026-03-22 18:49:11 UTC

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@nprofile…c3sc btw Unity and mesh quantization: it actually has it, but done in arguably strange way. It had user configurable mesh quantization forever (like since 2010 or so), but that was only for *storage*, it was always uncompressed at load time (strange/stupid? yes).
Then later it *also* got "a bit" of actual quantization that stays quantized in memory, but with much less user control and more opaque when that would actually get used & how.
However, ...

2026-03-22 18:46:50 UTC

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@nprofile…c3sc Ren dropped by to hang out, but for some reason was *not* interested to learn about how vertex caches actually work.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/274/312/561/052/215/original/85292910f0b0c620.jpeg

2026-03-22 18:45:33 UTC

Oy! @nprofile…c3sc talks about meshoptimizer on wookash podcast! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KtxiuFe83Hg
Great run down of all the topics there.

2026-03-21 19:40:16 UTC

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@nprofile…wgz8 some years ago I did that, wife & kids immediately went “plz never do that again”

2026-03-21 15:06:55 UTC

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@nprofile…4e67 whoa this looks really good!

2026-03-19 18:05:30 UTC

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@nprofile…c3sc I *am* that predictable, yes

2026-03-19 17:48:58 UTC

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...I'm excited because I am biased -- I've been helping a tiny bit on that game for past month or two. Most of that time so far has been trying to remember how Unity stuff works lol :) game development, heck yeah!
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/257/097/965/273/371/original/9b76b8e7761741fc.mp4

2026-03-19 13:29:01 UTC

Oy! @nprofile…grch's upcoming The Free Shepherd game has a new short! Excite! https://www.youtube.com/shorts/GP50oPnnR34

2026-03-19 05:03:42 UTC

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@nprofile…ksv8 you make fun of it, but men kicking spacetime warping vortexes (vortexii? vortexa?) is going to be a new popular spront soon now!

2026-03-19 04:44:48 UTC

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@nprofile…tlf8 I was reading the other comments, and going "huh this does not feel like hacker news at all, where's all the snark?!" but then this one showed up, and now everything's back to normal :)

2026-03-16 19:58:00 UTC

My first reaction to DLSS5 can be summarized as “🤮”. So now this completely discards artistic intent, and replaces all game characters with fake instagram influencers?
Is it just me?
https://www.nvidia.com/en-us/geforce/news/dlss5-breakthrough-in-visual-fidelity-for-games/

2026-03-13 07:52:29 UTC

That's some nice D3D/PIX tooling improvements coming from Microsoft! https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx-bringing-console-level-developer-tools-to-windows/

2026-03-11 06:57:10 UTC

Oldskool gamer table
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/209/236/463/000/160/original/feb73986e9b84db7.jpeg

2026-03-10 04:56:53 UTC

I imagine @nprofile…c3sc sits down, legs crossed, eyes closed, chanting "OMM" as he makes pull request number 1024. https://github.com/zeux/meshoptimizer/pull/1024

2026-03-10 04:37:05 UTC

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@nprofile…wxct congrats and very well deserved! ❤️

2026-03-09 17:57:51 UTC

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@nprofile…4tpy resolved: “by design”

2026-03-09 15:08:51 UTC

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@nprofile…4tpy such a doggo!

2026-03-07 20:33:12 UTC

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@nprofile…4e67 I did not compare it, but the rapidhash repo itself claims it is much better than xxhash at small sizes

2026-03-07 19:15:33 UTC

I ported Rapidhash to C#/Unity, and that by itself is trivial. But what surprised me: Unity Burst'ed Rapidhash is very close to native performance, whereas Burst'ed xxhash (XXH3) is quite a bit slower than native. Anyway, blog post: https://aras-p.info/blog/2026/03/07/Rapidhash-Unity-port/ #unity