Topics /

Games & Graphics

The most popular blog posts about games & graphics on Hacker News. 2,047 posts.

Any year
785

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…

786

Exploring the Halo 1 System Link Protocol

One of my all-time favorite games is Halo: Combat Evolved that launched together with the original Xbox in 2001. One major part of the game was multiplayer, up to 16 people at a LAN party could play together by connecting four Xbox consoles over Ethernet , referred to as System Link .

791

The anatomy of a Godot API call

UPDATE: This article has started an ongoing conversation with the Godot devs. They care about the issues raised, and would like to improve things. Significant improvements will almost certainly be made, although it’s still early days and it’s unclear what will change and by how much. I am encouraged by the response. I…

794

Playing “Moneyball” on EA FIFA 16

I'm an EA FIFA enthusiast. More than that, I’ve played since 1994. Last year, I was talking with a friend about the game and he asked me if I was playing Career Mode. My first answer was: "That is boring ... I want to play the real game and not play as a manager". From that day, he decided to convince me to play…

795

Secrets of smooth Béziers

I haven’t posted here much lately, and I admit, it’s because I’ve gotten sidetracked thinking about curves again. I did my PhD thesis on curves, so spent years thinking about them, then put that on hold for a while, aside from some work in crunching font file sizes down.

809

Writing for Half-Life

(File dated November 9, 1998) PREFACE: Another file from the same disk with the Nihilanth sketches, this one, if it is to believed, written the day after we shipped Half-Life. I do believe it because the file’s creation date is indeed November 9, 1998, and I am not l33t enough to know how to fake […]