Top posts
Every blog post that took off on Hacker News, ranked by the votes of its best submission. 2,925 posts.
How to find exploits in video games
Reverse Engineering: In this guide, I'll walk you through how I create tools to find exploits in video games for bug bounty programs. Specifically, I'll focus on my research into the game Sword of Convallaria. This exploration is purely for educational purposes. As such, I have removed some of the assets as an…
Visualizing black holes with general relativistic ray tracing
Okay I ended up making this write-up waaaaaay too long, so before I get into any of the jargon, let’s take a look at the finished product:
WonderWorld: Interactive 3D Scene Generation from a Single Image
Project website for WonderWorld
The Glorious, Profitable, Inescapable Art of Addiction
Get those numbers up! Those are rookie numbers! I've been reading a lot about Anthem. It's that gigantic, mega-budget looter-shooter fr...
Break down of a C64 demo effect
This generated a lot of lively discussion on twitter and /r/c64 . A bunch of people were curious as to how it works and I promised to explain it on my blog.
Straightened Trees
Using custom code, the natural curvature of each tree is "corrected." Manufactured objects, i.e. buildings and power lines, twist and contort around the artificially plumbed tree. Each photo is shot on large format film, the only medium that captures enough detail to straighten the tree without pixelly artifacts…
Portability benchmark of Dota2 on MacOS
gfx-rs is a project bringing efficient cross-platform graphics to rust. This blog supposedly hosts the major milestones, concepts, and recaps of the project.
New Release: 0 A.D. Alpha 23 “Ken Wood”
Wildfire Games, an international group of volunteer game developers, proudly announces the release of 0 A.D. Alpha 23 “Ken Wood”, the twenty-third alpha version …
Making "LCD, Please"
The de-make no one asked for. Play on itch.io I love a good set of limitations and on my way to making games with miasma and wind I’ve stopped off at the Game & Watch tier. LCD. Why. I played a lot of LCD games when I was a kid. They were mostly terrible. Before the Gameboy existed, mostly terrible in your pocket was…
Game Jam 2 Results
Build retro games using WebAssembly for a fantasy console
Carlsen wins game 9, only needs 1 draw in 3 remaining games
The Lecturer Training Programme (LTP) is a process that is used by the FIDE Arbiters’ Commission to ensure that those qualifying from it will have the necessary knowledge and skills to teach candidates who wish to become arbiters at FA level and above. The following have progressed to the final stage of the Lecturer…
Counter-Strike Global Offsets: reliable remote code execution
One of the factors contributing to Counter-Strike Global Offensive’s (herein “CS:GO”) massive popularity is the ability for anyone to host their own community server. These community servers are free to download and install and allow for a high grade of customization. Server administrators can create and utilize…
Max Payne – two decades later – Graphics Critique (2021)
It has been two decades since the video game Max Payne was release on July 23, 2001. The game itself was some incredible homage to The Ma...
The Making Of Dust (2003)
For a long while Dust was the world's most-played Counter-Strike map and it's still the one for which I am best known. Yet few players realise it was the product of thievery and luck...
Adventures in algorithmic trading on the Runescape Grand Exchange
Runescape has been a game near and dear to my heart since I was a child. Though I do not actively play anymore, it still functions as an interesting programming project substrate. Most recently, I created a bot that automatically executes trades on the Grand Exchange in order to conduct market making via common…
Building a WoW (World of Warcraft) Server in Elixir
Thistle Tea is my new World of Warcraft private server project. You can log in, create a character, run around, and cast spells to kill mobs, with everything synchronized between players as expected for an MMO. It was floating around in my head to build this for a while, since I have an incurable nostalgia for early…
Running a million-board chess MMO in a single process
How one million chessboards works
Converting a fisheye image into a panoramic, spherical or perspective projection
The source code implementing the projections below is only available on request for a small fee. It includes a demo application and an invitation to convert an image of your choice to verify the code does what you seek. For more information please contact the author .
Remote Code Execution in Marvel Rivals Game
Reverse Engineering: I discovered a serious Remote Code Execution (RCE) vulnerability in a popular game that could let attackers run code on your PC. Watch how I found it, reported it, and what you can do to stay safe.
MMO Architecture: clients, sockets, threads and connection-oriented servers
More on MMO Architecture:- MMO Architecture: Source of truth, Dataflows, I/O bottlenecks and how to solve them- MMO Architecture: Optimizing Server Performance with Lockless Queues- MMO Architectur…
Deus Ex – Alpha Terrain
Three years ago, while playing Deus Ex: Mankind Divided , I noticed a nice little trick and tweeted about it – today is the day when I finally release it as an article. Do you guess, what’s this about?
Plotter Drawings: Five seconds of Donkey Kong
One of my hobbies is using a pen plotter to make computer-generated drawings. If you really like them, you can buy one!
Factorio's Belt Bug
Factorio is a factory-building game involving lots (and I mean, LOTS) of conveyor belts. The code that implements these belts is marvel of optimization, but unfortunately they can't handle every construct.
How X-Plane Works
X-Plane works by reading in the geometric shape of any aircraft and then figuring out how that aircraft will fly. […]
Battlecode: MIT's longest-running hardcore programming competition
As MIT’s Independent Activities Period draws near, I’ve received quite a volume of inquiries from underclassmen about “what should I take?” or “which of these competitions is better?”