New update for the Mip Explorer: github.com/HaukeThiesse... There's now a dedicated mode for (tangent space) normal maps which compares normalized vector directions instead of averaged channel diffs. The results aren't that different, but it's just the proper way to deal with them. #gamedev

It's understandable that Unreal needs to touch a lot of files when starting the editor. But what if I told you that >5500 of those files are not needed for the editor to start at all and are just adding seconds to the editor launch time? (Fix included!) #u5 #gamedev larstofus.com/2025/09/27/s...

Becoming obsessed with adding QoL features to the Mip Explorer: - Navigate directories with the arrow keys - Taskbar notification when directory scan ends while app is in the background - Resizable UI - Support for single-channel textures (ok, not just QoL) github.com/HaukeThiesse... #gamedev

Goddamn, Metal Gear Solid 2 with texture filtering turned off is a hell of a vibe

With the latest update for the Mip Explorer, it now also reads and compares the alpha channels if existent, and can process entire directories, returning the results in a sorted list. The goal is to turn this from a toy into a tool for actual production. github.com/HaukeThiesse... #gamedev

Exactly my type of humor. The developers at Epic know better than to allow AI-generated slop in their code base, but Unreal 5.7 will ship with AI code generation tools.

There are a lot of reasons why starting the Unreal editor can be slow. In my latest blog post I fixed 38,000 of them. #ue5 #gamedv larstofus.com/2025/09/02/s...

I wrote an article about how to disable camera motion blur in Unreal, which is a good idea for city builders/RTS games, etc. You only need to change a single line of code, so I won't hold it against you if you only read the TLDR (also just one line). haukethiessen.com/how-to-fix-m... #gamedev

what framerate is perceptually halfway between 30 and 120 fps? A: 75 fps B: 60 fps C: 48 fps

Starting the weekend with an update for the Mip Explorer: github.com/HaukeThiesse... - Several bug fixes (3-4, depending on how you count) - In the Channels mode, the list now actually shows the per-channel differences - Tooltips for the settings #gamedev

Graphics Programming weekly - Issue 405 - August 24th, 2025 www.jendrikillner.com/post/graphic...

🚨 BREAKING: 44 MONTH SENTENCE FOR £150 RETOUCH OF 'SUNFLOWERS' PAINTING During their trial, it was acknowledged that only £150 was spent retouching the frame. But Phoebe and Anna were banned from talking about monetary value, so the jury were not informed. novaramedia.com/2025/08/22/t...

We're getting closer and closer to 2027, and I get the feeling that Human Revolution's ceiling predictions were overly optimistic...

Even Wikipedia isn't safe from being flooded with AI slop! I hate this timeline😠

It would be a boring weekend without a new blog post about game optimization: haukethiessen.com/introducing-... This time, it's about the genesis of a tool that I wrote a while ago to identify overly large textures. #gamedev

Ritual of Raven is OUT NOW! 🔮✨🌱 🌿Grow a magical herb garden & automate your farming 💌Befriend a cute bunch of weirdos 💫Perform powerful rituals & find the portal keepers 10% launch discount 💸 RTs greatly appreciated! 💜 #indiedev #indiegame

I love how optimizing game performance oscillates between replacing the entire second half of the level with a screenshot and digging through compiled shader code to replace divisions with bit shifts. Both optimizations are done at the same time and in the same project, and both have their place.

🔮 5 MORE DAYS until Ritual of Raven is out! 🔮 Prepping the tavern & tuning instruments… █████▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒▒ 29% #indiedev #indiegame

My new blog post is there, and it's a bit different from usual: Fixing stutters in your own code is hard enough, but this time I try to fix performance issues in a closed-source game. No source code or debug symbols, but a lot of guesswork. larstofus.com/2025/07/27/p... #gamedev #Trackmania

Wrote a new blog post about making UI textures use less memory: haukethiessen.com/ui-textures-... It's an expanded version of what was originally only one section of my talk at the German Dev Days. #gamedev #techart

This isn't immigration control, it's genocide.

The entire Latino population in the U.S. is 65 million. She means all of us.

TIL that Windows disables the touchpad while you're typing. Ofc, this causes issues in most games. Thankfully, there's a way to disable that behavior: learn.microsoft.com/en-us/window... (If you're using Unreal, you don't need to do that yourself, because it was included in UE 5.6) #gamedev

Found a bug in Unreal's static mesh editor: When converting box colliders to convex ones, the resulting colliders don't have the 'Collision Generated' flag and will be deleted upon the next reimport. Here's my pull request to fix that (only one line🎉): github.com/EpicGames/Un... #gamedev

Angesichts der Bilder von DeSantis, der stolz vor den Käfigen in seinem neuen Gefangenenlager im Sumpf posiert, sollte man sich daran erinnern, dass Dorothee Bär, die sich so supi für Games einsetzt, sich mit ihm getroffen hat und ihn ganz toll findet.

I worked on RuneScape 2005-2014. I haven't thought about it much since then, but it occasionally pops up in my feed and seeing it usually it makes me happy and nostalgic. But this makes me really angry. Cowardly and disgusting.

I also wrote a new article about adding thumbnails and using Windows Search to find #gamedev assets. This may sound trivial, but it really helps with common frustrations. haukethiessen.com/how-to-find-...

After being frustrated with Artstation's blogging options for way too long, I finally moved to WordPress🎉: haukethiessen.com All posts so far did survive the move. I'm still getting used to the newfound freedom and polishing the new site, so please let me know about any rough spots. #gamedev

Is it just me or is does the pirate on the cover of Sid Meier's Pirates! look like a slightly painted-over Patrick Swayze?

I just realized that A Short Hike is the only game (that I know of) where the length of the soundtrack matches the average playtime.

In software development, there should be a term for when you have some actual work to do, but instead you go over your existing code to find ways to optimize it further, convincing yourself that you're being productive. Not 100% sure about the name yet: procrasmization? opticrastination? #gamedev

Latest fashion upgrade 📍

This is a pleasant surprise, Epic actually worked on reducing the Unreal's disk size. The core components are around 9 GB smaller and the templates were even shrunk down from 3.7 to 0.8 GB 🥳 ....oh and the new MetaHuman stuff added another 5 GB + 12 GB more debug symbols 🙃 Well, it's something

💫Release Date Announcement💫 Surreal to think that the game we started working on 4 years ago is now inching closer to the finish line! 😮 🔮Ritual of Raven launches August 7th, 2025! 🔮 #indiedev #cozygames #indiegames Part of The MIX Summer Game Showcase @themix.bsky.social‬ 🌴

After a longer break I finally started working on my MipExplorer tool again. For now, I only submitted a list displaying the information densities of the mip maps, but the backlog is growing again...😅 github.com/HaukeThiesse... #gamedev

Today I learned that the original System Shock had a VR mode: www.pixsoriginadventures.co.uk/system-shock... Sadly, there's no video footage of it. It may exist, but you can't find it anymore because the remake also has a VR mode, and that makes it impossible to find the original☹️ #gamedev

Number of voiced languages in games vs their remakes/remasters: Oblivion: 2006: 5 2025: 1 Riven: 1997: 8 2024: 1 System Shock: 1994: 3 2024: 1 Games are becoming an English-only club and I don't think that's a good thing in the long run. #gamedev

I almost missed the latest Folding Ideas video, because it's a recording of a presentation at the last PAX and not uploaded on the Folding Ideas Youtube channel: www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSkb... Even though it's live and not edited as the usual essays, it's funny and insightful as always.

I blogged about how disabling occlusion queries in Unreal 5.5 completely breaks anything that depends on UPrimitiveComponent's GetLastRenderTime(), including Skeletal Animation. https://www.stevestreeting.com/2025/05/22/ue-5.5-skeletal-animation-/-lastrendertime-bug/ #unrealengine

I use my Steam Deck regularly on long train rides, so I'm very aware of how games can impact its battery life🪫. I looked into ways to improve the energy efficiency of games and wrote a list of helpful techniques (not just for the Steam Deck): www.artstation.com/blogs/hauket... #gamedev

I understand that the implementation of scalability settings is often rushed, but adding a toggle called "Additional optimizations" is just wild😅. (Found in the otherwise superb Escape Simulator.) #gamedev

#gamedev tip: Whenever you are wondering if your LODs are too aggressive, consider that the visitors in Episode One's pod race were colored Q-Tips. And for basically every object, there's a distance at which it can be replaced with a colored Q-Tip.

Started playing It Takes Two again, and was happy to see that Mio and Zoe from #SplitFicton both exist as published authors there🙂. I'm not sure if this was patched in later or if development on Split Fiction had already begun, but it's a really nice detail.

I didn’t have an arts education and am definitely a philistine, but Stable Diffusion et al taught me something. I thought I only appreciated art at an aesthetic level, but now slop machines can do aesthetics I realise why that’s not nearly enough

I wrote a blog post about Blender, FBX, ufbx and similar pleasures of life: "Blender FBX importer via ufbx" aras-p.info/blog/2025/05... #blender

www.pcgamer.com/hardware/val... I understand why this is a good idea... But still, the Steam Deck's battery life is already pretty short, and reducing it further doesn't feel great. Yes, I can disable the option if I need to, but that's another setting to keep track of...

This is a spicy video, right here. www.youtube.com/watch?v=4v9S...

I'm looking forward to playing Croakwood one day, but until it's released, I'm just happy whenever a new dev blog post drops: www.texelraptor.com/blog/croakwo... Each post explains various techniques used in the game, and is visualized in a way that makes it easy to understand the concepts used.

I implemented Homeworld 2 style sky meshes using baked vertex colors in @threejs.org. Reduces VRAM usage from 200mb (2k x 4k UASTC GPU compressed) to a lowly 4mb! For reference, iOS Safari used to crash web pages at 256mb, so this a big win :) #threejs #gamedev #IndieGameDev

Cleaned up my Mip Explorer tool and released it on GitHub: github.com/HaukeThiesse... The 'cleaning up' was mostly about adding exceptions, so it now handles any problems with the processed files more gracefully. Still, please drop me a line if you try it and find any problems📬. #gamedev