Best of 2026

The blog posts Hacker News loved most in 2026. 193 posts.

Games & Graphics
99

Infidel goes wild

Planetfall was yesterday's public release, but of course I've spent the past few weeks concentrating on Infidel. A couple of days I came across the most egregious bug I've yet seen in an Infocom game. This bug is extremely difficult to detect ...

111

Snow Simulation Toy

One of the first significant things I ever coded in QBasic was a falling snow simulation- I think they're very soothing to watch, fun to customize, and there's lots of possibilities for extra little delight. Here's one I built on idle afternoons over the holidays this year at my parents. Enjoy!

113

The Low-Tech AI of Elden Ring

FROMSOFT has a reputation for diverse and punishing npc encounters across the entire Soulsborne extended series, but the implementation of the AI decision making itself is perhaps unexpectedly low-tech. Since the majority of the code is implemented in Havok Script (A games-oriented Lua implementation from Havok) it’s…