Today is one of those days when I add documentation, command-line flags and graphical polish to a project that doesn't work So it can not work in a well-explained, customizable and visually appealing manner

Nobody warns you that once you learn what blue noise dithering looks like you're doomed to see it everywhere forever after

Didn't play Deadlock for a month because I had a 25% win rate, I come back for the update and the game decides to move me UP an entire rank tier I'm so gonna get stomped

Wondering if std::variant can be empty and discovering the answer is "no, unless [lengthy edge case about assignment] then yes" is the most C++ thing imaginable

Do any GPGPU people happen to know why this sort of compute shader freezes my desktop until it completes (Vulkan + Mesa + AMD)? The call to memoryBarrierBuffer is load bearing, without it the freeze doesn't occur Am I doing something wrong? Is there a better way to structure operations like this?

MPRIS is the name of the protocol that you're looking for it'll look for the most recent player in its list of players, but you can specify specific ones to look for

On Linux if I have media keys on my keyboard and a media player inside of a browser (say Firefox + Jellyfin) is there any way to pass those key events to that specific browser tab, regardless of window/tab focus? Some sort of media control API I can use to bypass Wayland's input isolation?

My game has a custom flag tool that lets game masters design flags for their real or fictional factions I realized it had some gaps so it's now newly extended with three extra primitives: diagonal slash, half circle and half ring

First time seeing helical stairs There is Something Wrong (but better than expected!)

I've overhauled my puzzle level generation so a level is now "grown" like cell tissue in a triangle tessellation. New elements can be inserted anywhere, and the whole level deforms to make room. This makes it easier to control topology and create paths that loops around areas. #ProcGen #GameDev

Fixed the line builder, here's the "bed" shape primitive with its proper edge lines (actually cylindrical meshes)! Turns out this was broken because I calculated line facing directions in a way that assumed there would never be a "concave" corner (like those found on the inside of this shape)

ok does anyone know what game this is? Because it looks amazing

First look at the volumetric clouds! I pushed this out for quite some time but am happy to see that they are finally on the horizon. #bevy #gamedev

I have the scaffolding part of my tunnel-branch-generator working. I'm going to reply-in-thread with some observations... #indiegamedev 🎵 Starfox (control menu theme, SNES) 🎵

Oh it's Steam replay time? Cool! My quest to clear my backlog didn't go as well this year, only 20 games & DLC completed vs. 36 last year and 30ish the year before But I did read 10 books (vs. last year's 2) so I guess that's where the time went!

Based on the new video I might be back on board for Marathon Between the better natural environments, stronger/moodier lighting and increased grime/visual noise it seems like they're delivering on that blocky colorful-but-dark 3D-printed aesthetic I fell in love with from the pre-rendered trailers

Does anyone know if there's any hope for getting support for Vulkan shader objects + multiview in the near future? They're both great features but the inability to use them together is a real pain point for some of my projects

Thanks Wikipedia, now I don't know what I should call my new stairs primitive 😵‍💫

Did everything I can think of to accelerate terrain generation (except offloading to the GPU), fixed up some editing bugs and now I can do this! Next step will be moving it to a background thread to eliminate the remaining negative effect on frame rate

Released a new version of my terminal PDF reader, just a small update that adds special messages indicating you're reading an empty document outline or an empty page to improve clarity github.com/amini-alligh...

Turns out heightmap SDF queries were returning distance to a flat plane, with that fixed I can now create slopes and depressions in the landscape Unfortunately this reveals just how rough my QEF minimization approach still is, look at those jagged edges 😅

It works! This is user-supplied control points converted to an SDF then the SDF converted to a mesh, allowing you to define terrain that mixes a heightmap with floating additive features and subterranean subtractive features Still blocky for now but it's a relief to know the approach is sound

A while back my Steam Deck's SD card stopped working, it was mountable and readable but the write speed was permanently limited to <10 kB/s, no support for SMART unfortunately I'm just curious, what's the likely underlying cause here? Is this what flash write exhaustion looks like in practice?

The last few days I've gone from "wow these heightmap SDF queries are slow" to I know, I'll test against bounding spheres around the triangles to I know, I could nest the bounding spheres and discard whole regions at once to This would be better with bounding boxes to I've reinvented BVH, haven't I?

Last night I was looking at my Steam Deck next to my bed and thought it would be really cool if it was a desk clock So I wrote my own :] codeberg.org/AeriaVelocit...

The z-buffer and depth testing (aka z-testing) have been the dominant way of hidden surface elimination for over 50 years, introduced but not implemented in W. Straßer's PhD thesis in 1974, and actually implemented in Ed Catmull's PhD thesis in the same year. 1/4

I'm not sure exactly what's happening when I try to do QEF minimization, but I'm pretty sure it's bad 😵‍💫

Taking a little break from terrain tools to fix up the Radial Grid primitive This one enables game masters to make cart wheels, ship's wheels, bars on circular windows or drains and so on

Dirty gamedev secret: sometimes instead of building proper debug visualizations I just dump the information to OBJ and use Blender to visualize it 😅 But now at least I know my SDF dual contouring is working

Ripped out my previous two attempts at user-friendly terrain tools and replaced them with the frontend of an all-new SDF-based approach Now I just need a backend: what algorithm do people recommend for converting a (potentially very concave with internal voids) SDF to a mesh? #gamedev

Added a preview widget for custom flags the game master is designing (seen here previewing the flag of Night City from Cyberpunk 2077) With this the custom flags feature is now done! Time to return to figuring out how to make easy-to-use terrain tools #gamedev #vr

Last day to get Return of the Immersive Sim Bundle on Digiphile (7 games for $20) buff.ly/67Z63Ci #ad

Random question... If you're a fan of shooters (first person or otherwise), what sort of experiences do you want right now that you don't feel are being provided by current games? Including indies, AA, and AAA.

I've been quiet but busy! Progress on a new primitive called "Flag" which lets game masters quickly assemble a flag out of colored stripe, checker, circle, etc. layers, useful for marking areas belonging to real or fictional factions and organizations #gamedev #vr

Recent discussion about the perils of doors in gamedev reminded me of a bug caused by a door in a game you may have heard of called "Half Life 2". I wrote it up over on Mastodon (I find it's better at long threads): mastodon.gamedev.place/@TomF/115589...

My Xbox controller's bumper broke ...I'm gonna use this as a convenient justification for my impending Steam controller purchase

Announcing: New @steampowered.com Hardware, coming in 2026: Steam Controller Steam Machine Steam Frame.  Watch our jazzy announcement video and wishlist now: steampowered.com/hardware

Steam Frame, Steam Controller, Steam Machine announcement is expected soon, here's a first look!

And some extremely jank SSR, everything in this scene is fudged numbers and synchronization issues.

Almost every PC game ever made generates an identical list of resolutions to choose from, including resolutions that didn't exist when the game was made This feature is more consistent than not crashing when you tab out Does anyone know how it works? Is it a library function? A popular code snippet?

It pains me to say this as someone who adores the last two games, but Endless Legend 2 feels like it's had a lot of the flavor sucked out? Almost everything in EL1 & ES2 had full artworks and long flavor text attached, that's mostly gone in this entry (Possible it's coming later in early access?)

I've made a new utility! Here's wlgamma, a way to tint your screen a custom color on Wayland compositors: github.com/amini-alligh... #linux

AMDVLK is dead, long live radv: github.com/GPUOpen-Driv...

Are there any games that simulate doing occult research? Decoding ancient texts, doing experiments, making your own deductions about the rules of magic, maybe even learning a made-up language The closer the gameplay is to actual research the better (non-video media like gamebooks are valid too)

Another shape primitive, paraboloid! This one's a little niche but without it you can't put satellite dishes on your sci-fi installations (might make a good serving dish, too) #gamedev #vr

Blair witchy Pacific Drive? Sure, I'm in