1
Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail
After I mentioned a Jurassic Park anecdote the other day , I watched the movie again. I must have seen it at least ten times now. This time, I researched every computer/software I spotted.
Fabien Sanglard
21/08/2026: My agent.md to improve LLM-assisted code quality 17/08/2026: Quake shareware, a CD just a little too full 13/07/2026: Jurassic Park computers in excruciating detail 11/07/2026: A dock that finally wakes up reliably! 10/07/2026: Don't you meant extinct? 28/06/2026: My favorite keyboards 01/06/2026: The art…
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Visit fabiensanglard.net → RSS feedOn Hacker News Apr 2009 – Aug 2026
Software Engineering 54Games & Graphics 49Hardware & Electronics 19History & Retro Computing 12Systems & Performance 9Tools & Productivity 7
2
The Polygons of Another World
There is a playful way to study the architecture of computers of the past. Find a piece of software you know well and try to find out how it was ported to these machine you don't. A good choice would be DOOM. id Software's 1994 mega-hit has been ported to everything. It is designed around a core with no layering…
3
Why fastDOOM is fast
During the winter of 2024, I restored an IBM PS/1 486-DX2 66Mhz, "Mini-Tower", model 2168. It was the computer I always wanted as a teenager but could never afford. Words cannot do justice to the joy I felt while working on this machine.
4
How DOOM fire was done
The Game Engine Black Book: DOOM features a whole chapter about DOOM console ports and the challenges they encountered. The utter failure of the 3DO, the difficulties of the Saturn due to its affine texture mapping, and the amazing "reverse-engineering-from- scratch" by Randy Linden on Super Nintendo all have rich…
5
FizzleFade
I enjoy reading a lot of source code and after 15 years in the field I feel like I have seen my fair share. Even with a full-time job, I still try to spare evenings here and there to read. I don't see myself ever stopping. It is always an opportunity to learn new things to follow somebody's mind process. Every once in…
6
Street Fighter II paper trails – allocating sprite space by hand
The late 90s saw the emergence of Capcom in the world of arcades. The Osaka based company seemed to produce one hit after another with Ghouls'n Ghosts in 1988, Final Fight in 1989 and Street Fighter II in 1991 among a myriad of other excellent games.
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How Quake.exe got its TCP/IP stack
Released in June 1996, Quake had to ride three technological shock-waves during its lifetime. Besides the emergence of 3D hardware accelerator cards and the growth of the Internet, an operating system shift put game developers in a tough position.
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Quake Shareware, a CD-ROM just a little too full
In the mid-90s the coolest thing to buy for a PC, besides the incredibly expensive Intel Pentium , was a CD-ROM drive . With their capacity of 640 MiB (three times the storage of PC HDD at the time), CDs allowed enthusiasts to step into a world of multimedia, made of high-resolution 640x480 256 colors palette-indexed…
9
Game Engine Black Books Update
I have kept myself busy with the Game Engine Black Books and I have plenty of news. Most importantly, they have been revised. The DOOM book is now in version 1.1 while the WOLF3D book is entering v2.1. And there is more.
10
Street Fighter II, the World Warrier (2021)
This article is part of a series about Street Fighter II and the CPS-1. It is recommended to read the previous entries before reading this one.
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Commander Keen's adaptive tile refresh
I have been reading Doom Guy by John Romero. It is an excellent book which I highly recommend. In the ninth chapter, John describes being hit by lightning upon seeing Adaptive Tile Refresh (ATR). That made me realize I never took the time to understand how this crucial piece of tech powers the Commander Keen (CK)…
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The Game Engine Black Book: Doom
The Game Engine Black Book: DOOM is now available for purchase. It is being released exactly 25 years after DOOM.zip was first published on the University of Wisconsin FTP server in December 1993. You can get it at the following locations: - Amazon ( USA , France , UK , and many more). - Google Books ( here with no…
13
Deciphering the Business Card Raytracer
I recently came across Paul Heckbert's business card raytracer. For those that have never heard of it: It is a very famous challenge in the Computer Graphics field that started on May 4th, 1984 via a post on comp.graphics by Paul Heckbert ( More about this in his article " A Minimal Ray Tracer " from the book Graphics…
14
Quake 2 Source Code Review
I spent about a month in my spare time reading the source code of Quake II. It was a wonderful learning experience since one major improvement in idTech3 engine was to unify Quake 1, Quake World and QuakeGL into one beautiful code architecture. The way modularity was achieved even though the C programming language…
15
How the Dreamcast Copy Protection Was Defeated
After I shipped the DOOM Black Book , I took some vacation in Japan where I was able to play Ikaruga on a real arcade at Taito HEY in Akihabara. The experience reignited my interest in SEGA's ultimate video game console, the Dreamcast. There is a lot of documentation available online which made the studying process…
16
Quake 3 Source Code Review: Network Model (2012)
The network model of Quake3 is with no doubt the most elegant part of the engine. At the lower level Quake III still abstract communications with the NetChannel module that first appeared in Quake World . The most important thing to understand is: In a fast paced environment any information that is not received on…
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Quake Engine Indicators
I was working on a bug in Chocolate Quake netcode. The issue was an edge case where starting two clients on the same machine resulted in the second one zombifying the first one. When the bug occurred there was no disconnection but the client could no longer move. Instead the screen would show an "indicator" looking…
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The Polygons of Another World: Super Nintendo
This article is part of a study about the ports of Another World. It is highly recommended to read Another World 101 before reading this.
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The Polygons of Another World: Atari Jaguar
This article is part of a study about the ports of Another World. It is highly recommended to read Another World 101 before reading this.
20
Prince Of Persia Code Review
On Apr 17, 2012 Jordan Mechner released the source code of Prince of Persia. Even though it is the Apple II version written in 6502 assembly language, it was a pleasant experience to dive in the code of that mythical game: As usual there were many fascinating sofware wizardries to discover. The Apple II apparent poor…
21
Doom engine code review
Before studying the iPhone version, it was important for me to understand how Doom engine WAS performing rendition back in 1993. After all the OpenGL port must reuse the same data from the WAD archive. Here are my notes about Doom 1993 renderer, maybe it will help someone to dive in. January 13th, 2010 : Reddit…
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"Another World" (game) Code Review
I spent two weeks reading and reverse engineering further the source code of Another World ("Out Of This World" in North America). I based my work on Gregory Montoir's "binary to C++" initial reverse engineering from the DOS executable. I was amazed to discover an elegant system based on a virtual machine interpreting…
23
The art and engineering of Sega CD Silpheed
The 90's was a decade of considerable improvement in the world of video-game consoles [1] . Each new model brought advanced processing power and better graphics without compromise.
24
The Polygons of Doom: PSX
It was a pleasure to research the material for the "Polygons of Another World" articles [1] . All the machines I studied were different from one another. The diversity I witnessed in the Amiga, Atari ST, PC, SNES, Genesis, GBA, and Jaguar demonstrated the richness of a field then still in its dawn. As I concluded the…
25
Doom 3 Source code review
On November 23, 2011 id Software maintained the tradition and released the source code of their previous engine. This time is was the turn of idTech4 which powered Prey, Quake 4 and of course Doom 3. Within hours the GitHub repository was forked more than 400 times and people started to look at the game internal…
26
Let's compile Quake like it's 1997
The first batches of Quake executables, quake.exe and vquake.exe were programmed on HP 712-60 running NeXT and cross-compiled with DJGPP running on a DEC Alpha server 2100A. In June of 1996, having shipped their title but concerned with NeXT stagnation, id Software switched their development stack.
27
Deciphering the postcard-sized raytracer
"He's done it again!" was my first thought as I looked at the back of a postcard sized Pixar flier [1] which was covered in code. In the lower right corner, the blob of statements and expressions had been signed by none other than Andrew Kensler. For those who are not familiar with him, Andrew is the programmer who…
28
Game Engine Black Book Postmortem
I am pleased to announce that the Game Engine Black Book about Wolfenstein 3D has shipped. It is 316 pages, full color and made of three parts describing the hardware of 1991, id Software tools, and the game engine internals. You can read a preview on Google Books and buy it here:
29
Duke Nukem 3D Code Review
Since I left my job at Amazon I have spent a lot of time reading great source code. Having exhausted the insanely good idSoftware pool , the next thing to read was one of the greatest game of all time : Duke Nukem 3D and the engine powering it named " Build ". It turned out to be a difficult experience: The engine…
30
Revisiting the Business Card Raytracer
What is the most beautiful piece of code you have ever seen? Not only it is subjective, "beauty" is also a word that can mean a lot of things. If we were to be discussing of raw speed, I would bring up the Fast Inverse Square Root [1] . If we were to judge by aesthetic, my answer would be Andrew Kensler's, 1337 bytes…