New blog post: alek-tron.com/Pop/Pop.html

My new blog post is about my experience developing 'from scratch' software for real users and how easy it is to forget basic functionality when it is not handled for you by a framework anymore. Functionality that users take for granted and expect to work. alek-tron.com/AppChecklist...

Working a bit on the visuals of my game. Tried Magicavoxel for modeling the drones and satellites. Not my strong suit but it certainly looks better than the placeholders from before. The lasers also have some actual sprites now. #gamdev #indiedev #odinlang #voxels

Implemented a prototype voxel renderer and I'm already quite happy with the result. Unfortunately I can't use MSAA for anti-aliasing anymore so edges are a bit ugly at the moment... #gamedev #indiedev

Some UI work

Currently redesigning my old game into an Incremental Game. Video compression is not happy about it. #gamedev #indiedev #odinlang #incrementalgame

My 'Dear Imgui' Odin backends are finished (for now). Supports Windows as platform with D3D11, OpenGL 3.3 and a very much experimental software rasterizer for rendering: github.com/alektron/img... @ocornut.bsky.social @gingerbill.org

Imgui Odin backends now also include an OpenGL renderer in addition to DirectX and the software rasterizer: github.com/alektron/img... #imgui #dearimgui #odin

Now also features an experimental software rasterizer. #imgui #dearimgui #odinlang

I wrote a custom Dear ImGui backend for Windows/DirectX in Odin. With thin abstraction layer to allow easy extension for more platforms/renderers: github.com/alektron/img... #imgui #DearImGui #Odin #Odinlang

When I found a pub with an inverted normal map. (If you understand what this means, you have to repost.)

dear imgui 1.92 released! github.com/ocornut/imgu... New protocol for backends to create/update textures, with support for 13 renderers. Dynamic font scaling. Dozens of font/atlas related changes. Dozens of other changes. Expect some turbulence. (misc video from January...)

Super minimal profiler + flame graph for DearImGui (~100 LOC): alek-tron.com/FlameGraph/f... Can be trivially adjusted for other UI systems and languages due to its simplicity. #imgui

Currently working on a native version of DXF Explorer (dxf-explorer.com) It opens DXF files with millions of entries in milliseconds, filters them in realtime and comes as a single executable file.

"Why am I fighting this thing daily for what essentially becomes a glorified asset loader" Works well with what always like to say about big engines: Their biggest 'benefit' is platform independence, especially in regards to rendering APIs. Everything else is just in the way.

Creating a Windows window with custom title bar is for some reason much harder than it should be. Here is my method to achieve it which is simpler than other solutions I've found online, yet covers most edge cases AFAIK: alek-tron.com/borderless/b...

The predicted trajectory of a spaceship in an N-Body system visualized in realtime. Multiple trajectories with different timesteps are calculated in parallel which results in this chaotic shape until it converges to the calculations with the lowest timestep. #gamdev #graphics #space

Got my old space sim project running again and might implement some new ideas I've been having...

Made this little cheat sheet for #odinlang pointer/slice/container types

My game 'Chunk Miner' is now on GitHub: github.com/alektron/Chu... A simple but complete game, written almost from scratch in just ~3200 lines of Odin code. Care was taken to make the code simple, readable, extensively commented. No cruft, no engine, just a game. #gamedev #indiedev #odinlang

some admittedly ambitious research for new project

Not sure what's going on with my VR game all of a sudden. This is more traffic than it got ever since I released it. Well... I happily take it alektron.itch.io/fear-of-fall... #gamedev #indiedev #vrdev #vr

My little game is almost finished and according to cloc it's just 3150 lines of code. Not bad, considering that its only dependency is the #Odin standard library (stb_image and miniaudio). #gamedev #indiedev

Join my game jam if you: - Want to learn game development - Want to learn Odin or low-level programming No prior knowledge required! You have 7 days to figure things out. You'll be able to make something! No worries, no pressure. Just have fun! Starts on March 8. itch.io/jam/odin-7-d...

Added saving/loading to my game today. Thanks to the whole game state being a relatively sane struct I simply write the memory buffer to disk and done. Effectively a one liner. Even stuff like the particle system Just Works™ #gamedev #indiedev #odin

Make sure you don't run out of ore... #gamedev #indiedev #Odinlang

My little game project that I've been working on for a bit over a month is nearing its end. A lot could still be improved but all the mechanics are there. I'll probably give two more weeks for balancing and some polishing and then call it a day. #Odin #Odinlang #gamedev #indiedev

The drills movement which is fully descrete under the hood is now nicely interpolated for butter smooth motion. #Odinlang #gamedev #indiedev #handmade

Added a little particle system that collides with the terrain for some neat effects. Written with Odin + D3D11 #Odin #Odinlang #gamedev #indiedev #graphics

people will speak about a game they played as a kid with the same reverence that they might a great song or novel, about how it engrossed them totally and completely. They may even tear up talking about it. and then you ask what game it was and it was Spongebob battle for bikini bottom

Minerals can now be sold and the money be used to buy several upgrades. For example drill strength to speed up drilling and allow mining of harder materials like rock. Written from scratch with Odin + D3D11 #gamedev #indiedev #Odinlang

You don't have to flip your textures for OpenGL alek-tron.com/TextureOrigi...

Another #Odinlang cheat sheet. This one is for understanding the memory layout of Odin strings and how it relates to the concept of runes when iterating. #Odin #dev

Made this little cheat sheet for #odinlang pointer/slice/container types

Imagine a world where you never learned or tried anything new, you just kept pushing the button for another pellet like a rat.

The single biggest advantage of Unity, Unreal and the likes is portability. Everything else just gets in your way.

Maybe it's just me but that little counter rotation of the wheels, which is absolutely not a bug, kind of adds some character to the little guy. I might just keep it. #gamedev #indiedev #odin #odinlang

Added sound, a more dynamic drilling mechanic, world re-generation and a sky gradient. You can also store a block and poop it back out. From scratch in Odin + Direct3D11 #gamedev #indiedev

when the windows file explorer URL reads "Documents" instead of "C:\Users\<user>\Documents" even after clicking it to focus the file path, I feel a sudden urge to sternly talk to someone at microsoft

Some more progress on my little drilling game. I can now load .obj file so my driller now has an actual 3D model. Written from scratch with Odin + Direct3D #gamedev #indiedev

Finally got subpixel anti-aliasing working for my GPU font renderer! Not much to see in a compressed video so here it is 600% zoomed in to see at least a little bit what is going on. Here I am cycling through "no AA", normal AA, subpixel AA

Not quite the same but the times I've been using DearImGui and been saying to myself "there's gotta be some flag to do this"... and there always is!

Added indicators for when fuel or money values change. Also added a shop to buy and upgrade fuel (only available when on "the surface") #gamedev #odin #indiedev

Added a simple UI and did some tweaks to the movement mechanics (horizontal climbing with vertical climbing as an upgrade option) #gamedev #Odin

Subpixel issues are always a pain to figure out but very satisfying when it works out in the end

Feels kinda stupid to not have participated in @zylinski.se 's game jam. I probably could have churned this out in 48 hours if I tried really hard. Next year, maybe...

Added some revolutionary mechanics to my little game project in Odin: Mining gold for money, fuel, "climbing"

Working on a quick and simple game in Odin over the holiday, since I'm sick anyways and can't really do much else.

Realized that I could visualize the instruction memory as well. This way the return addresses in the stack frames have something to point to. Probably not that useful but kinda cool.

My memory visualizer can now show stack memory in addition to heap memory. Pointers now get a path drawn to the address they point to.