Best of 2015

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2015. 119 posts.

Games & Graphics
97

Make a Doom level, part 1: the basics

I love Doom. Or, well, I love Doom 2, which is the game we actually had when I was nostalgia years old. I love the aesthetic — pixely in a 3D(ish) environment, and consistent in a way that meshes together really well. The classic levels are abstract (occasionally too abstract), but still detailed enough to feel like…

98

Time travel in Braid

I bought Braid on the promise of lavish visuals and neat puzzles with temporal mechanics, and on this basis I was rewarded. I found some frustration with the controls, which I eventually traced to dodgy keyboard drivers - the game wouldn't register the up or down arrows while I ...

107

Make a Doom level, part 2: design

I assume you’ve read the introduction, which tells you the basics of putting a world together. This post is more narrative than mechanical; it’s a tour of my thought process as I try to turn my previous map into something a little more fun to play. I still touch on new editing things I do, but honestly, you already…