Aras Pranckevičius

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

Programmer. Unity 2006-2021. Now Blender. Website at https://aras-p.info Admin of https://mastodon.gamedev.place

website: https://aras-p.info/
github: https://github.com/aras-p

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nprofile1qqst9urmreyset20fzxcd88trvszweykhhe2thpqexy8vaftd70s2uqprpmhxue69uhhyetvv9ujumt0d4hhxarj9ecxjmntrszwar

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Last Notes

2026-07-07 09:36:45 GMT

Someone else pointed at this: for all the "massive testing, production-ready, blah blop" talk that Unity does, they also ship pieces of code like this. This is from Unity IAP package, new stable version (5.4.0) shipped last week. Count the number of opening & closing curly braces :)
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/116/878/016/750/469/624/original/2cf9575ab7952020.png

2026-05-04 19:16:45 GMT

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welcome back!

2026-01-15 19:56:54 GMT

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so now that you know everything, can you confirm that PS6 is going to be 768 PICO-8s duct taped together?

2026-01-13 15:46:58 GMT

Teapot wireframe: ON
Snow effect: ON
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/888/568/043/533/489/original/8b1b5616f810c679.jpeg

2026-01-06 04:43:29 GMT

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what, this time it is not EdgeGeom on SPUs?!?! Anyway, congrats! (And oof for Unity…)

2025-12-21 12:21:48 GMT

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I'd think that "I'm generating machine code directly" is kinda the opposite of "portable" already to begin with :)

2025-12-21 10:37:23 GMT

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why it would not work? You have to write into executable memory, but that’s about it.

2025-12-21 09:40:34 GMT

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related to your masm on 64 bit woes; I recall a similar case where just generating (very small amount of) machine code directly was easier than trying to get assemblers to work. Something like:
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/756/894/295/225/839/original/4ba0b04c74471f95.png

2025-12-21 07:14:48 GMT

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so that was an introduction alright. How many topics you had drafted after the intro? :P

2025-12-02 08:34:07 GMT

So! This mastodon instance (mastodon.gamedev.place) has 136 custom "emojis" representing various engines & tools often used in gamedev. I made all of them 2+ years ago. Which notable ones have popped up since then that we are missing out on? Here are all the current ones: https://github.com/aras-p/gamedev-emojis

2025-11-12 04:49:17 GMT

"Reflections on My Tech Career" from Bruce Dawson is great, in two parts: https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2025/10/22/reflections-on-my-tech-career-part-1/ and https://randomascii.wordpress.com/2025/11/10/reflections-on-my-tech-career-part-2/

2025-10-20 10:41:22 GMT

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ohh... I run at 150% display scale on windows... so you're saying that's generally still an unsolved problem in Linux land? o_O

2025-10-20 08:19:22 GMT

So... given that Win10 support is EOL, and I kinda want to avoid Win11... What's the take on Linux these days? I mostly use computer for C++ development: Visual Studio, Fork, Superluminal. What's the least amount of hassle? GPU is nvidia.

2025-10-17 03:55:17 GMT

Oh, so these AI slopbros are explicitly training on GPL code PRs, cool cool. The email asks for what I do think about this offer. Hmm.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/387/486/248/942/260/original/252d19f655a9b813.jpeg

2025-10-07 07:48:12 GMT

New thing from the Zstd (and LZ4/xxhash) crowd: OpenZL. A dozen or so building blocks (shufflers, transposers, filters, compressors) that can be chained together. Can automatically build "best" config based on sample data; same decompressor can decompress any config. Nice! https://openzl.org/ (and whitepaper: https://arxiv.org/abs/2510.03203) #compression #openzl

2025-09-16 15:37:21 GMT

I… I just assembled a poster for an Epic Games service. That was not on my bingo card! #bcon25
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/115/214/715/189/229/952/original/69fa8ddae6cfdfd5.jpeg

2025-09-16 04:10:17 GMT

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nice release, congrats!

2025-07-23 03:39:31 GMT

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the winning move is to turn off slack and never turn it on again!

2025-06-13 03:59:02 GMT

“jemalloc Postmortem” https://jasone.github.io/2025/06/12/jemalloc-postmortem/

2025-06-10 03:39:49 GMT

Apple WWDC is happening, so: 20 years ago at WWDC Unity 1.0 has launched. I think it did have a massive effect of the whole game development! Also, 20 years in games tech is a really long time. #unity :unity:
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/656/987/420/203/549/original/1f5232a832f28d0c.jpeg

2025-06-05 10:01:19 GMT

Skribidi - "Nimble bidirectional text stack for UIs" by @npub1rx7…v92v looks very cool. https://github.com/memononen/Skribidi

2025-05-22 11:12:05 GMT

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thank you!

2025-05-20 19:08:17 GMT

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Here’s me shocked at sudden year increase, and Ren trying to calm me down
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/541/729/735/103/235/original/21b1861fe5b7998d.jpeg

2025-05-20 13:15:53 GMT

So one thing led to another, and I turned 44, AMA

2025-04-30 19:45:01 GMT

Teapot vs Tulips
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/428/627/926/063/036/original/d045e24d47c41863.jpeg

2025-04-09 04:13:57 GMT

"Senior Engineer tries Vibe Coding" is excellent. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_2C2CNmK7dQ

2025-03-28 15:51:10 GMT

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out of interest (have deleted my LI some years ago), is that still happening? I know job requirements used to speak of ninjas and rockstars umpteen years ago, I had assumed that fad is over by now…

2025-03-28 15:45:07 GMT

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now now, there’s no need to insult actual rockstars like this!

2025-03-22 19:50:27 GMT

Ok, time for some reflection
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/114/207/819/236/483/967/original/98a6c8c4bd8ac25a.jpeg

2025-03-19 04:42:34 GMT

“Please stop externalizing your costs directly into my face” https://drewdevault.com/2025/03/17/2025-03-17-Stop-externalizing-your-costs-on-me.html

2025-01-04 18:53:55 GMT

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great video, thanks ❤️ This answer to "do you think AI will ever be able to write a good song?" question by Nick Cave -- way back from 2019! -- I often think about. https://www.theredhandfiles.com/considering-human-imagination-the-last-piece-of-wilderness-do-you-think-ai-will-ever-be-able-to-write-a-good-song/
There's also his later (2023) answer about ChatGPT writing lyrics: https://www.theredhandfiles.com/chatgpt-making-things-faster-and-easier/

2024-12-20 17:56:06 GMT

RenderDoc :renderdoc: 1.36 is out, and while it contains DXIL debugging, raytracing capture and other magic things... it also now can load and display tiled & mipmapped EXR files! For the, I dunno, three of us who use :renderdoc: as an EXR viewer :) https://github.com/baldurk/renderdoc/releases/tag/v1.36

2024-12-17 19:16:30 GMT

Oh, turns out this :mastodon: instance (mastodon.gamedev.place) has been running for 7 years already. Not a terribly bad result! Here's what I wrote about it at the very start: https://aras-p.info/blog/2017/12/04/Gamedev-Mastodon-mastodon.gamedev.place/

2024-12-06 12:42:27 GMT

"Mission: Importable - Ghost of Tsushima PC Postmortem" is good. Iteresting to see that the very 1st step is getting debug markers correct, so you can look at frame structure in RenderDoc :renderdoc: (without RenderDoc large parts of PC gfx dev would fall sideways...). Would have not expected "emulate PS API on D3D12" to work as well as it did for them, good job! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tostM4-rK6o #GPC2024

2024-11-24 07:22:16 GMT

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it’s not a leak, it is revealing design thinking! Please “leak” more! ;)

2024-11-22 12:57:31 GMT

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like, even the whole asset dependencies concept I feel like is not known about widely enough

2024-11-22 12:56:35 GMT

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oh wow, that is pretty cool! I’m wondering how many of “yeah this is actually possible” workflows are possible, just Unity does not clearly tell people about them

2024-10-24 11:51:55 GMT

In the middle of #bcon24, Cycles team is reviewing pull requests with integrals and formulas and stuff. As one does.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/113/362/253/284/513/298/original/53998e074677ba29.jpeg

2024-10-02 04:02:31 GMT

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This is one of "all the apps automagically update themselves" reality downsides: it used to be that software you have stays the same, on the same computer. Now, computer stays the same, but software (slowly but surely) gets slower. Needs more memory, no longer acceptably works on non-SSD, etc. etc.

2024-10-02 04:00:46 GMT

Was trying to figure out why laptop of mother-in-law was very slow. It is 7 years old, 4GB RAM, HDD, so yeah. But it used to be not slow! Constant updates of both Windows and Chrome make everything sluggish. Even bringing up task manager takes half a minute. *One* app there that is still snappy? Picasa. Because it was discontinued before the laptop was made, so it had *zero* updates that would make it slower.

2024-09-21 05:03:46 GMT

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you mean they also did a groundbreaking discovery that computers can display more than six colors?! or — gasp — vary the color a bit across a rectangle on screen?! what a time to be alive!

2024-09-19 18:51:29 GMT

Whoa. D3D is switching to SPIR-V as shader bytecode format! This is excellent, and I guess lets them move away from their llvm 3.7 fork easier. https://devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/directx-adopting-spir-v/

2024-09-15 14:54:54 GMT

How it started / how it is going. Never been to Utah, but the wireframe teapot is now here! Dog for scale.
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/113/142/142/791/447/342/original/38fea493a59096c1.jpeg
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/113/142/142/856/022/057/original/533801c4ebf1a3a9.jpeg

2024-09-10 04:00:47 GMT

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And no mastodon/"fediverse" is not a sustainable and scalable answer. You still need someone to run the servers (costs $$$) and do moderation (costs human work and sometimes human misery).
Like, this instance running at all is a combination of Someone paying a $700 bill each.and.every.month, and about 5 moderators looking at reports and user registrations each.and.every.day. *So far* this has been working. Will it keep on working? Who knows! Forever? Probably not :/

2024-09-10 03:59:20 GMT

Cohost shutting down (https://cohost.org/staff/post/7611443-cohost-to-shut-down) is sad but not surprising. Unfortunately.
People saying "I wish media was not like today! I'd gladly pay $N for a nice no-nonsense / no-ads social platform". And then they don't.

2024-09-08 18:02:04 GMT

Monica Harrington's story on early days of Valve & Half-Life is a good read! https://medium.com/@monicah428/the-early-days-of-valve-from-a-woman-inside-bf80c6b47961

2024-09-07 11:55:48 GMT

"No CPU, no GPU, no memory" demo category is cool! You actually make an ASIC that outputs a VGA signal. My friend ReJ just made one. "The Drop", 3.5k logic gates, displays pictures and plays muzak. Submitted to Tiny Tapeout. Source: https://github.com/rejunity/tt08-vga-drop
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/113/096/139/891/860/181/original/5f4753b56952e92f.mp4

2024-08-21 07:18:27 GMT

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I don't know, and that's why I'm a code monkey and not some biz guy :) But yes a good question. And it is entirely possible that Unity without VC would not exist at all today.
Heck, I think Unity without JR becoming CEO back then would probably not exist today. There was *a lot* of internal power fighting among C suite and everything was a mess for about a year before JR became CEO.

2024-08-21 07:10:51 GMT

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Also, maybe having multiple visions at once, which are conflicting with each other, is also not great. And trying to solve multiple visions by "let's hire everyone!" just means all the usual growth pains, plus an unsustainable business due to massive burn rate. Unity "the engine" was close to 1500 people at one point, ffs.

2024-08-21 05:15:25 GMT

I wrote some random thoughts about Unity https://aras-p.info/blog/2024/08/11/Random-thoughts-about-Unity/

2024-06-18 04:05:17 GMT

Wait, so the whole VFX industry uses these ".cube" files for grading LUTs that are just... half a million floats in ASCII format? Have we not learned anything from OBJ? It would be oh so trivial to have these LUTs be like 15x smaller files, and I guess faster to load too.

2024-06-13 04:01:28 GMT

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I think you are several years late to state of the art. UIs are hallucinated by an AI model these days!

2024-06-12 13:11:10 GMT

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brb, first need to port Lua garbage collector and all the user code callbacks to compute shaders!

2024-06-12 10:39:15 GMT

So once you move a video editor timeline strip control UI widget to be done in a GPU shader, you know what is the obvious next step, right? Running a shadertoy as the widget background, of course. #blender #vse
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/112/603/217/975/671/031/original/dab9a6325c72dec3.mp4

2024-06-09 17:24:53 GMT

Organic truck
https://cdn.masto.host/mastodongamedevplace/media_attachments/files/112/587/826/085/892/069/original/c7b1d3e72159795b.jpeg

2024-06-07 15:53:55 GMT

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my bad sire, indeed I don’t know what I was thinking

2024-06-07 15:33:43 GMT

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replace Adobe with <well, any decently large tech company> and it still is still very much true.

2024-05-31 11:10:20 GMT

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“Google eats glue after it tells users to eat glue”