7 ms·

I went through this a few months ago in Rust. I wrote all the code by hand, no LLMs. Then I went ahead and added a small "game" on top, plus some special effect

I went through this a few months ago in Rust. I wrote all the code by hand, no LLMs. Then I went ahead and added a small "game" on top, plus some special effects like pixelization shaders and chromatic aberration at the edge of a flashlight. https://github.com/kshitijl/tinyrenderer-rs https://github.com/kshitijl/tinyrenderer-rs if anyone is interested! The repo has lots and lots of in-progress screenshots so you can see the renderer come to life, plus all the hilarious visual bugs along the way. I learned a lot! My biggest lesson, other than the specifics of how rendering works, was that modern CPUs are really fast: a single-threaded CPU renderer can definitely run an interactive 3D game with some fancy special effects.

njjsjsys 2mo ago
[dead]
0x1ceb00da 2mo ago
Why does it pull in wgpu if it's a software renderer?
- grovesNL 2mo ago
  In this case wgpu is just providing the surface texture for the window that the software rendered pixels are drawn into.
  - deleted 2mo ago
    [deleted]
  - john01dav 2mo ago
    Softbuffer? (I originally wrote this a few years ago but other people maintain it now)
    - LoganDark 2mo ago
      I like softbuffer, but it owns its window and doesn't support as many events / integrations as winit.
      - soxfox42 2mo ago
        You might be confusing softbuffer for minifb here, as softbuffer doesn't do any window handling of its own. All window management and event handling happens through winit (or another crate providing a HasWindowHandle implementation).
        LoganDark 2mo ago
        Oh, you're right! My bad
  - articulatepang 2mo ago
    Yes, exactly this -- it's a fast and convenient way for my code to just write the pixels into a spot in RAM (the CPU's RAM, not VRAM) and have those pixels end up on screen. On modern architectures this nearly always goes through a GPU, so even if you're not using the GPU to accelerate your 3D rendering/math, you gotta deal with it just to put pixels on a screen at the end of the day. So that's what wgpu does for me.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- LoganDark 2mo ago
  You do often need a graphics context to create the surface that displays the framebuffer.
  - delta_p_delta_x 2mo ago
    Not necessarily. Most desktop OS compositors provide a void** buffer that can be blitted to. Sure, this buffer will probably end up going through the compositor which does GPU hardware acceleration anyway, but it is definitely possible to shrink the application-side stack without relying on D2D/GLUT/GLEW/GLFW/SDL/WGPU in this case. On Windows: CreateDIBSection and BitBlt On macOS: CALayer and CATransaction commit Not sure about Linux, too many stacks involved.
    - LoganDark 2mo ago
      Cross-platform support can be more difficult in that case, but yes it is possible.
    - mananaysiempre 2mo ago
      > Not sure about Linux, too many stacks involved. Wayland: wl_shm and that’s it for the “stack”.
    - Lerc 2mo ago
      I have done this on a number of platforms over the years. Going back to before createDIBSection existed (In fact I had something break when Windows provided an easy path and took away the method I had been using). Linux has always been a weird kettle of fish, the thing that worked best for me was imlib2 which was originally part of enlightenment. It did what it was supposed to do, hid pixel format conversion without killing performance. I'm not sure what would serve a similar function today, If anyone knows of a library that takes a rectangle of memory, a pixel format and places it onscreen regardless of the display environment I'd like to hear about it. The faster and more efficient, the better. More features than needed, worse.
      - lelanthran 2mo ago
fridayis 2mo ago
[flagged]
- pjmlp 2mo ago
  It is a fashion thing, it is more relevant to discuss about a game engine does ECS, than what the game is all about. Meanwhile, games like Minecraft, Balatro, Stardew Valley, Celeste, Geometry Wars,... blow up in adoption.
  - juuduahsvxyd 2mo ago
    [flagged]

njjsjsys 2mo ago

[dead]

0x1ceb00da 2mo ago

Why does it pull in wgpu if it's a software renderer?

grovesNL 2mo ago
In this case wgpu is just providing the surface texture for the window that the software rendered pixels are drawn into.
- deleted 2mo ago
  [deleted]
- john01dav 2mo ago
  Softbuffer? (I originally wrote this a few years ago but other people maintain it now)
  - LoganDark 2mo ago
    I like softbuffer, but it owns its window and doesn't support as many events / integrations as winit.
    - soxfox42 2mo ago
      You might be confusing softbuffer for minifb here, as softbuffer doesn't do any window handling of its own. All window management and event handling happens through winit (or another crate providing a HasWindowHandle implementation).
      - LoganDark 2mo ago
        Oh, you're right! My bad
- articulatepang 2mo ago
  Yes, exactly this -- it's a fast and convenient way for my code to just write the pixels into a spot in RAM (the CPU's RAM, not VRAM) and have those pixels end up on screen. On modern architectures this nearly always goes through a GPU, so even if you're not using the GPU to accelerate your 3D rendering/math, you gotta deal with it just to put pixels on a screen at the end of the day. So that's what wgpu does for me.
deleted 2mo ago
[deleted]
LoganDark 2mo ago
You do often need a graphics context to create the surface that displays the framebuffer.
- delta_p_delta_x 2mo ago
  Not necessarily. Most desktop OS compositors provide a void** buffer that can be blitted to. Sure, this buffer will probably end up going through the compositor which does GPU hardware acceleration anyway, but it is definitely possible to shrink the application-side stack without relying on D2D/GLUT/GLEW/GLFW/SDL/WGPU in this case. On Windows: CreateDIBSection and BitBlt On macOS: CALayer and CATransaction commit Not sure about Linux, too many stacks involved.
  - LoganDark 2mo ago
    Cross-platform support can be more difficult in that case, but yes it is possible.
  - mananaysiempre 2mo ago
    > Not sure about Linux, too many stacks involved. Wayland: wl_shm and that’s it for the “stack”.
  - Lerc 2mo ago
    I have done this on a number of platforms over the years. Going back to before createDIBSection existed (In fact I had something break when Windows provided an easy path and took away the method I had been using). Linux has always been a weird kettle of fish, the thing that worked best for me was imlib2 which was originally part of enlightenment. It did what it was supposed to do, hid pixel format conversion without killing performance. I'm not sure what would serve a similar function today, If anyone knows of a library that takes a rectangle of memory, a pixel format and places it onscreen regardless of the display environment I'd like to hear about it. The faster and more efficient, the better. More features than needed, worse.
    - lelanthran 2mo ago

fridayis 2mo ago

[flagged]

pjmlp 2mo ago
It is a fashion thing, it is more relevant to discuss about a game engine does ECS, than what the game is all about. Meanwhile, games like Minecraft, Balatro, Stardew Valley, Celeste, Geometry Wars,... blow up in adoption.
- juuduahsvxyd 2mo ago
  [flagged]