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aras

@[email protected]

Programmer. Unity 2006-2021. Now Blender. Website at https://aras-p.info Admin of https://mastodon.gamedev.place

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@rich@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar rich , to random

@aras insufficient shadow map resolution

A corrugated barn siding with a steel pipe casting a shadow on it. The shadow is broken into square shaped due to the angle of the camera and the corrugated sheets
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aras ,
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@rich no filtering either!

@bitinn@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar bitinn , to random

This is a pretty ironic take:

I find Meta Horizon’s developer documentation (for Meta Quest) explains Unity and Unreal Engine rendering features and performance optimizations better than Unity and Epic themselves.

But Meta laid off most of these people because VR was not growing as fast as they hoped.

Example? Just compared these 2 documents:

https://docs.unity3d.com/Packages/[email protected]/manual/rendering/forward-plus-rendering-path.html

https://developers.meta.com/horizon/documentation/unity/unity-forward-plus-rendering/

aras ,
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@bitinn “For more details on how Forward+ works in Unity, check out Unity’s Forward+ Rendering Pathdocumentation page” should really have said “For fewer details <…>”

aras ,
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@bitinn AFAIU in Unity's case this is a result of specialization. Early days: there's documentation, anyone can edit. Towards 2020s: dedicated docs people, anyone editing the docs is frowned upon. Updating docs outside of docs team requires talking with them, having meetings, planning schedule, creating JIRAs etc. Result is that "regular devs" don't bother. Docs people are lovely, but you know what they don't know? Deep technical innards.

aras ,
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@bitinn it was what was supposed to happen in theory, yes ;)

@sschoener@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar sschoener , to random

That's from someone working with the gui library I made for one day :) This is why I make tools.

"btw seb, its super nice to work with the ui, i think its crazy that i basically have 99% parity with my react mockup already ... with almost 0 issues, considering the age and battletestedness of react thats pretty insane"
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aras ,
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@sschoener ❤️

@shivoa@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar shivoa , to random

MS: There is no "Windows on Arm" separate from Windows, it's all Windows 11 and a unified platform despite split hardware. One ecosystem.
Also MS: 26H1 is not the latest version of Win11 for almost all users. It is not going to be an update rolled out to any x86 system. The upcoming (later in the year) release for x86 users is called 26H2. Also those new systems that will ship preinstalled with 26H1 will not upgrade to 26H2 later in the year. https://techcommunity.microsoft.com/blog/windows-itpro-blog/what-to-know-about-windows-11-version-26h1/4491941
What are we even doing lads?

aras ,
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@shivoa Microsoft, lol Microsoft

@grumpygamer@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar grumpygamer , to random

I installed Blender. I'll be crapping out 3D models in no time.

aras ,
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@zeux@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar zeux , to random

Would it kill appliance manufacturers to ship like 16 bytes of non-volatile RAM with every microwave, oven, et al, so that my settings don't randomly reset when power surges/outages happen?

aras ,
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@zeux in this memory price economy?!?!

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

Unity's transformation into where everyone at top level comes from Zynga is complete! https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260210709281/en/Unity-Appoints-Bernard-Kim-to-its-Board-of-Directors-and-Announces-Board-Transitions :unity:

(David is no longer on the board... oof)

aras OP ,
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@Fangh @psilocervine I have no idea about any of that, just sad that the last remaining founder is fully out.

aras OP ,
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@msinilo he’s been gone for a while now

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

So in a game there's a (CPU based) heavy VFX that is taking up 3ms; half of that sorting stuff by distance. You spend a day or two scheming how to move all that to the GPU and all. And then you realize the sorting is not needed at all since shader is purely additive.

(still gonna move it to GPU...)

@mdiluz@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar mdiluz , to random

Time for a alternatives thread, for no particular reason.

I've actually been looking into all available options for the past few weeks for other reasons, so here's a thread to share what I've found.

In particular I'm looking for stuff like:

  • Data sovereignty
  • Strong moderation tools
  • Wide platform support

Hopefully this gives everyone else some ideas too, and feel free to chime in with corrections, suggestions or anything else!

aras ,
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@groxx @mtothevizzah @mdiluz yup, Matrix is still jank!

@joeldevahl@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar joeldevahl , to random

Holding puppies is a truly mind expanding experience.

aras ,
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@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

🧊

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

Me, casually running https://github.com/aras-p/sizer on a (WIP) Unity :unity: game build, because why not.

Largest function in the whole game, at 160 kilobytes? ProBuilder ColorUtility constructor, which fills in a dictionary of 1200 color names, and converts RGB value of each into CIELab.

I'm not sure if the game actually even uses ProBuilder LOL :) https://github.com/needle-mirror/com.unity.probuilder/blob/d315baee93c7d/Runtime/Core/ColorUtility.cs#L387

aras OP ,
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At number 7 in terms of size, InputSystem FastTouchscreen constructor at 66 kilobytes. I don't know what's fast about it, but it seems to be 8000+ lines of some generated code. https://github.com/needle-mirror/com.unity.inputsystem/blob/9efaadae9dd52d/InputSystem/Devices/Precompiled/FastTouchscreen.cs

(the game will never use or need a touchscreen)

@runevision@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar runevision , to random

As part of exploring getting away from Google products, I thought it would be a good idea to go back to using a mail client (via IMAP) instead of a web interface for email, so I could switch providers in the future without having to switch workflow.

But damn, how can most mail clients still be so bad? Gmail popularized threaded conversations (with sent and received mails in one) in 2004, and yet neither Apple Mail or Thunderbird support it in 2026?

aras ,
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@runevision I don’t have good input, except “following with interest”. Gmail recently started showing “you know how we can fetch email from POP3 accounts? We’ll stop being able to do that soon”, which is one way to drive people away :/

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

"Nanite Tessellation", a series of blog posts about, well, Nanite tessellation by @BrianKaris https://graphicrants.blogspot.com/2026/02/nanite-tessellation.html

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

"Life at two seconds per frame", triptych, unknown author, early 21st century

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

tee hee :)

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random
@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

Teapot wireframe: ON
Snow effect: ON

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

Unrolling into 2026

video/mp4

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

Before video games, “a cool side scroller” was this

video/mp4

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

Most impractical thing I did recently? Got a double bass. Well, a "folk" style one (basedla/basolia), which is really meant to be played with just open strings (the distance from strings to the fingerboard is impossibly high -- like 2cm -- wtf). However it is not a proper bass, which means forbidden bass lines are allowed on it.

(if it looks like I can't play, that's because I really can't; still a long way ahead :))

video/mp4

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

All slides from the excellent Graphics Programming Conference 2025 conference are up! https://graphicsprogrammingconference.com/archive/2025/

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

Andreas Fredriksson (Insomniac, Unity DOTS, DICE, demoscene) on Wookash Podcast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Le8iafkLxNo

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

Windows 11

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

C++ codebase build times! It is almost 2026, and one fancy trick to shave off 20% of the build time is... a precompiled header. Yup, technology from I don't know how many decades ago. https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/151766

aras OP ,
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Also, holy smokes Mac M4 is fast. Like, literally 3x faster at building blender codebase than my PC is (sure my PC is older, but still). 10 minutes for a complete blender build on either windows or linux (Ryzen 5950X), 3 minutes on mac (M4 Max).

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

Sebastian Aaltonen finally finished his "No Graphics API" blog post! Which ends with a graphics API of course :) But it is like 150 lines of "API surface". Pretty cool. https://www.sebastianaaltonen.com/blog/no-graphics-api

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

A while back we found “common Lithuanian-English phrases” book among grandfather’s stuffs, from around 1930s. Back then the common woes seem to have been that “I can’t get no work, since machines do all the work”. Now the same but with AI!

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

So! Back in 2011, BitSquid made a "Header Hero" tool for C/C++ codebase header analysis. I did some updates to it in 2018. But now that I'm on Linux, I rewrote the UI (now it works on Win+Mac+Linux), did some performance improvements, and some other tweaks. Here: https://github.com/aras-p/header_hero

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

Now this is a proper kind of vibe coding: https://youtu.be/GWXCCBsOMSg

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

This is a weeping song, a song in which to weep

video/mp4

@morgan3d@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar morgan3d , to random

To celebrate 10 YEARS (!) of beautiful markdown documents with Markdeep, I made a new website!

https://casual-effects.com/markdeep/

Same attention to hand-crafted code, 100% data privacy, client-side processing, and text-based obsession.

New fancy CSS styles, support for more editors and markdown features, and new browser compatibility tricks for a seamless document experience.

This kicks off a month of new Markdeep feature releases to ring in the new year and the next decade of Markdeep.

aras ,
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@morgan3d 10 years? Whoa.

@yiningkarlli@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar yiningkarlli , to random

Holy smokes I now share a film credit with HIDEO KOJIMA. This is so cool.

aras ,
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@yiningkarlli whoa! congrats!

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

So! Blender 5.0 video editor has compositor-node-based modifiers, that modify the image of a single strip. I made a PR that also implements node based effects/transitions. Want to try it out? PR: https://projects.blender.org/blender/blender/pulls/150694 and builds: https://builder.blender.org/download/patch/PR150694/

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

So! This mastodon instance (mastodon.gamedev.place) has 136 custom "emojis" representing various engines & tools often used in gamedev. I made all of them 2+ years ago. Which notable ones have popped up since then that we are missing out on? Here are all the current ones: https://github.com/aras-p/gamedev-emojis

aras OP ,
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@schwa eeeeh... :)

aras OP ,
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@airakose @ruby0x1 you're way too late, :luxe: has been among the icons for two years by now :)

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random
@zeux@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar zeux , to random

My advanced plotting skills tell me the next version is going to be a big deal.

aras ,
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@zeux meshoptimizer 9000 when

@bitinn@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar bitinn , to random

Fellow , do you ever had a moment in life where you read the word “pokerface” and end up thinking it is about “perforce”?

aras ,
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@bitinn shut up, you git!

@msinilo@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar msinilo , to random

Had a little debugging session this week that I thought was interesting enough to deserve an own blog post: http://msinilo.pl/blog2/post/chasing-a-hitch/

aras ,
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@msinilo a thought: would some of this have been a bit simpler in Superluminal? It captures all processes anyway, just by default displays the ones you profiled. But you can change timeline to show all processes.

@aras@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar aras , to random

Ah, this is exactly what I wanted to write recently, but Arseny did it for me! “Picture is worth a thousand words”, but that’s when it actually is. AI slop is very much not; at least for me it is more often than not a net negative to the slide quality. Just… don’t?
https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@zeux/115633895110698090

@molecularmusing@mastodon.gamedev.place avatar molecularmusing , to random

I've been asked quite a few times lately how certain things in Live++ work underneath, e.g. PDB loading, string lookups, performance, testing, hookikg, etc. that I think it would maybe be a good idea to start blogging again.

What do you think?

aras ,
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@molecularmusing Yes. Yes! Did I say YES already?