demofox

https://mastodon.gamedev.place/@demofox

Graphics and game dev - and published researcher. previously EA SEED, nvidia, blizzard, monolith, others. graphics, audio synth, exotic computation. No gods, no masters. Destroy what destroys you. http://blog.demofox.org.

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nostr.land

relay.damus.io

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Last Notes

2026-09-06 01:47:46 GMT

How can you tell if someone is a vibe coder?
Dont worry. They'll tell you.

2026-08-14 01:23:06 GMT

TIL about floating point math:
float w=a*b;
float e=fma(-a,b,w);
w is the closest float possible to the real answer of a*b, but the difference between that and the actual answer can be significant.
e is that difference, and apparently the difference is exactly representable as a float.

2026-08-01 18:10:14 GMT

My 9yo daughter said she wants to make a game with me, where she makes the art and I code it.
I said ok, and tasked her with making a standing/idle pose for the main character.
She delivered and wow, this is usable, actually. I have mixed feelings about it knowing what the life of a game artist (or a gamedev in general!) is like🙃
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/117/021/584/500/029/328/original/afb1b963ae6d3213.png

2026-07-18 16:08:06 GMT

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"people who never cared about anything can finally stop doing stuff"
And yet somehow, its us who do care to know and learn are the ones in danger of being left behind?
Absolute nonsense.

2026-07-08 20:18:55 GMT

I left EA yesterday and am now officially on summer vacation, woo!
After a few weeks ill be joining Bolt Graphics, a startup GPU company, aiming to put the graphics back into graphics processing unit.
It's a small company with a bold but respectable plan. Wish me / us luck!
https://youtu.be/-fZM9wOvbh0?is=HRgzejXgpo5cd9Yw

2026-07-01 20:48:47 GMT

What To Learn To Be A Real Time graphics Programmer
https://blog.demofox.org/2026/07/01/what-to-learn-to-be-a-graphics-programmer/
I wrote this up over lunch and it's surprisingly popular so sharing over here too.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/846/682/889/270/188/original/1cfe2205ea3f722c.png
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/846/683/207/291/329/original/4ba3e3e4549c3ea2.png

2026-06-23 13:19:33 GMT

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it looked like a marble counter top until I looked closer!
Those living things are clumping up into red noise :)

2026-05-28 02:57:51 GMT

Omg brutal - but accurate.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/649/955/734/265/199/original/c9bba535454fff84.jpeg

2026-05-19 19:38:51 GMT

I just finished the last bits of the early access content in subnautica 2 and am floored by how good it was.
Any other game would call that a full release and a full game.
I can't wait to see what else they do with it.
Also, it's VERY clear where the boundaries of the world, and end of the early access storyline is. If it hasn't explicitly told you to stop, keep going.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/602/927/449/751/239/original/acf2c54e79cdb569.png

2026-04-17 03:39:59 GMT

I was thinking tonight how im just not cut out for the world as it is. Cruelty, greed, apathy, malice, violence, lies.
But you know, I think most people arent.
I think that's the whole point. Stuff is bad and it needs to be fixed. This aint working.

2026-03-13 23:23:41 GMT

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im not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing :/
I assume it must be bad

2026-02-27 05:21:34 GMT

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I miss the point about this topic. They could be deterministic. A seeded prng and then the same input gives the same output.
What am I missing?

2026-02-12 03:50:12 GMT

Hey All, I made a header only C++ library where it's 1 line of code to init, then you can start writing to pixels on the screen.
I call it thirteen.h, as it is inspired by the simplicity of the 13h days.
Examples include a mandelbrot viewer and a playable mine sweeper game.
MIT licensed.
https://github.com/Atrix256/Thirteen
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/055/610/443/271/583/original/9d9313edbdd7e058.png
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/055/613/085/029/562/original/f97fdd7d834af646.png
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/055/613/541/058/918/original/143e1b2d0d1ed936.png

2026-02-08 23:21:18 GMT

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this reminds me of when Picard touched an artifact and lived the life of an ancient person.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/037/574/780/829/463/original/edfdbda64af42ee4.jpeg

2026-02-06 00:44:36 GMT

Interviewer: can you reverse a string?
Me: would you like to see a random access invertible shuffle iterator which visits the items in a low discrepancy sequence to improve results in stochastic algorithms?
Interviewer: uhhh?
Me: how bout a point set that is hyper uniform over both space, and separately, time?
Whenever I have to interview again that is how it's going to go down, and will probably result in rejection 😂

2025-11-26 18:40:37 GMT

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haha so true

2025-11-26 18:36:31 GMT

Not going to read the article but wondering what aspect of fight club.
Making soap?
The literal fist fighting?
The desire to erase debt?
Im ok never knowing, going to leave this one toy imagination
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/617/439/541/451/413/original/aec1e89a2eb717cd.jpg

2025-10-25 16:14:58 GMT

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im a graphics programmer in game development, without a degree, and your explanation makes sense to me.

2025-10-14 22:01:01 GMT

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yeah that is where it comes from. Trying to understand why is what's throwing me.
Why should this intersection be at the most irrational value?
What other deeper meaning might there be here?
Not in the "golden spiral is everywhere" sense, but in the "phi drives the optimal 1d low discrepancy sequence" sense :P

2025-10-14 21:36:41 GMT

I just found out that y=x^2 intersects the unit circle at (+/- sqrt(1/phi), 1/phi).
Im not really sure what to think about this or how to feel about it, but I am shook.

2025-08-20 23:06:08 GMT

Friends, I have been having a ton of really great ideas :)
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/063/593/437/517/183/original/5f5a6a36eeba7de2.jpg

2025-08-13 22:48:39 GMT

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is it a bug on their side due to type casting maybe?

2025-08-06 17:10:24 GMT

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and eating just the parts folks complain they are violating 😂

2025-07-29 17:40:44 GMT

I linked someone my resume on discord and an hour later I got a recruiter email from discord.
Yikes.
What else are they scanning for?

2025-07-09 20:48:21 GMT

https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/825/238/901/866/177/original/9de1a2ec114e0f2d.jpeg

2025-05-08 21:53:58 GMT

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Ok I think i regret watching deer hunter and i suggest nobody else watches it either. That was a dark ass movie.

2025-05-08 13:24:40 GMT

Taking advantage of being bed ridden sick yesterday (better today!) I watched waterhsip down, and started watching the deer hunter. In the past people said these movies were brutal and I avoided them, but am seeing for myself.
Watership down was rabbits being very human and being complete jerks to each other.
Deer hunter.. im 1 hour in of 3 and it's just been a wedding so far. Hmm!

2025-04-19 22:45:25 GMT

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i had no idea anything was being planned. I'm sure I'm not the only one!

2025-03-20 00:16:56 GMT

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as another American, 100% agree.
We don't want any of what's going on and are doing what we can, but any help from the outside is much appreciated.

2025-01-25 22:05:19 GMT

An article about an algorithmic advancement for leaving preallocated space between sorted objects in a way that minimizes how much you have to move things around for an arbitrary insert.
https://www.quantamagazine.org/new-book-sorting-algorithm-almost-reaches-perfection-20250124/

2025-01-07 15:10:14 GMT

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yeah, so you can "least squares fit" points while going through them once, pretty easily. Check this blog post about it. The first section "bilinear surface fitting" is exactly this.
https://blog.demofox.org/2017/01/02/incremental-least-squares-surface-and-hyper-volume-fitting/
It mentions a previous post that starts out with curves, while this one talks about surfaces. This is that post in case helpful for understanding better:
https://blog.demofox.org/2016/12/22/incremental-least-squares-curve-fitting/

2024-12-23 23:07:55 GMT

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hey! Quaternions are actually used directly fairly commonly too, and converted into matrices as the last step before use. One place they are used directly is in skeletal animation.

2024-11-30 23:06:20 GMT

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how weird. This must have been AI generated because it's all kinds of wrong.

2024-11-24 16:57:21 GMT

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do you know why they did that? I haven't seen anything ban worthy from you....

2024-11-14 03:30:05 GMT

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is one done in linear space and the other in srgb space??

2024-10-15 00:28:19 GMT

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watch out for the reaper leviathans

2024-10-09 17:41:45 GMT

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holy shit. Google is backing up your facts. Insane.
Congratulations on escaping mentally and physically. That couldn't have been easy.

2024-10-09 17:31:33 GMT

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ha! How much of that is true?
Go watch the movie, you might dig it!

2024-10-09 17:21:09 GMT

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yeah. Remember in never ending story when the knight without self doubt got lasered at the sphinx gate?
Atreyu had self doubt enough to dodge when the lasers shot.
Never forget!

2024-10-09 17:15:27 GMT

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also, in the state of California, it was shown that iq tests bias towards higher socio economic status white person academic culture. So if a person identities themselves as "African american" on a form, a school is legally not allowed to give any test which reports it's score as an "IQ". It's fine to give if the test calls the score something else.
The world is a strange place, but it is for sure full of biases and stereotypes.
Individuality is too much work to support 🙄

2024-10-09 17:12:37 GMT

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my wife is an educational psychologist.
I myself am a self taught, no degree, computer science / game dev / graphics researcher working with PhDs and known in my field for my work.
So, this topic resonates with me too. Don't sweat it 😀

2024-10-09 17:10:45 GMT

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if it helps, there is no singular IQ test or IQ measurement. There are various tests made with different research and then statistically normed with a bias towards whoever was easier for the academics to get access to (people closer to academic circles!).
In other words, don't sweat it. It isn't what you think it is.
Tests like that can help you understand your strengths and weaknesses though, which can help you get closer to reaching your potential.

2024-09-25 20:56:57 GMT

I think i just realized something - is a chromatic aberration effect just depth of field with frequency specific (per color channel) dof settings?

2024-09-22 19:15:23 GMT

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new logging API dropped

2024-08-23 16:10:18 GMT

OK here is my big announcement. For the past couple years I've been working on a rapid prototyping and development platform for real time rendering.
TL;DR - use nodes in a node graph to string together compute shaders, ray gen shaders, draw calls, etc. View it in a viewer that supports hot reloading. When you are done, generate code that would pass a code review. (Currently only DX12 code gen is public. More coming in future!)
https://github.com/electronicarts/gigi
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/113/012/193/962/279/432/original/4a3e94f6bce01e2e.png
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/113/012/194/475/144/851/original/4b9fc0fe1c8c1333.png
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/113/012/194/973/318/001/original/260feb3422db62b4.png

2024-08-04 20:52:21 GMT

I recorded a short 2 minute video showing an example of how math can be useful for programming.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hFn6s_deCmo

2024-06-08 19:33:23 GMT

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for client side game dev, I've only ever seen roughly api compatible replacements used. The standard implementations are considered not fit for use in games, but having a standard set of data structures and algorithms that are well documented and known make it easier to hire people or have people move between code bases.

2024-05-04 00:30:56 GMT

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there was a kick butt FPS that was straight up affiliated with the US army some years ago. Definitely did not make me want to join but it was a pretty great game.