Hacker News·48wOdyc.js
Odyc.js is a lightweight JavaScript library designed to help users create interactive narrative games without requiring extensive programming knowledge. The library aims to make game development accessible to beginners while leveraging JavaScript's capabilities for creating engaging interactive experiences.
Codrops·46wCoding a 3D Audio Visualizer with Three.js, GSAP & Web Audio API
A comprehensive guide to building an interactive 3D audio visualizer that combines Three.js for 3D rendering, Web Audio API for real-time sound analysis, and GSAP for smooth animations and draggable UI elements. The tutorial covers creating custom GLSL shaders for audio-reactive effects, implementing frequency analysis to drive visual distortions, and building a sci-fi interface with momentum-based interactions. The result is a glowing orb that pulses and morphs in sync with music while users can drag control panels around the screen.
Code Monkey·49wDev followed my FREE course, then made $150,000!
A game development instructor shares success stories of students who learned from his free Unity courses and went on to create profitable games. The main example is Urban Jungle, a cozy home decoration game that generated approximately $150,000 in revenue after the developer started as a complete beginner and followed a 10-hour Unity tutorial. The post highlights multiple success stories and promotes various free programming courses, emphasizing how beginners can learn game development through structured tutorials and reverse engineering existing code.
Low Level Game Dev·48wIt's easy to make games in C++ from scratch!
Making games in C++ from scratch is more accessible than commonly believed, requiring only basic language features like functions, structs, and vectors. A three-step approach involves learning fundamental C++ concepts, creating simple 2D games using libraries like SFML, and progressively tackling more complex projects like Terraria clones. While game engines offer quick prototyping, custom C++ development provides better optimization control and fewer limitations for specific game types, particularly those requiring custom systems like voxel-based games.
Community Picks·49wWhimsy game engine
Whimsy is a beginner-friendly game engine and fantasy console designed for creating interactive narrative games without coding. It features a visual scenario editor with drag-and-drop blocks, built-in pixel art tools, pre-implemented game mechanics like character movement and dialogue systems, instant playtesting, and cross-platform export to HTML. The platform works on desktop, tablets, and mobile devices, making game creation accessible anywhere.
Hacker News·48wAI Sprite Generator - Professional Game Animation Sprites From An Image
An AI-powered sprite generator that creates professional game animation sprites from uploaded character images or text descriptions. The tool generates complete animation sets including combat moves, special attacks, and character movements with transparent backgrounds and proper formatting for immediate game integration. Features include custom action model training, multiple art styles from pixel art to anime, and pay-per-use pricing without subscriptions.
80 LEVEL·45wCheck Out Reign of Nether, Mod That Turns Minecraft into RTS
Reign of Nether is a Minecraft mod that transforms the sandbox game into a real-time strategy experience. Players can build bases, manage resources, train armies, and engage in strategic battles within Minecraft's voxel world, similar to classic RTS games like Warcraft and Age of Empires.
DaFluffyPotato·48wHow to Make Multiplayer Python Games - Tutorial
A comprehensive tutorial covering Python network programming fundamentals for creating multiplayer games. Demonstrates building a client-server architecture using TCP sockets, threading for asynchronous communication, and binary data serialization. Shows implementation of an authoritative server that validates moves and broadcasts game state, with clients sending player actions. Covers practical considerations like error handling, connection management, and deployment to remote servers. Uses tic-tac-toe as the example game to illustrate core networking concepts applicable to various multiplayer game types.
Code Monkey·46wWhat do the BEST Programmers do differently?
Skilled programmers share 15 key attributes that set them apart from beginners. The most important traits include mastering tools deeply rather than jumping between them, breaking complex problems into manageable pieces, never stopping learning, taking responsibility for code issues instead of blaming the computer, and understanding that there are no shortcuts to gaining experience. Success comes from consistent practice, writing millions of lines of code over time, and helping others along the way. The deterministic nature of programming means the same code always produces the same results, so debugging requires careful analysis rather than frustration.
80 LEVEL·45wSakura Rabbit's Cool Real-Time Clothes Wrinkle Effect on Mobile
3D artist Sakura Rabbit demonstrates a real-time cloth wrinkle effect running on mobile devices using Unity. The showcase features fabric simulation with stockings that performs well on smartphones, proving that complex real-time rendering effects can be optimized for mobile platforms. The project is available through the artist's Fanbox page.
Low Level Game Dev·45wShould you start with OpenGL or Vulkan?
OpenGL is significantly easier to learn than Vulkan for beginners, requiring 10 times less code to render basic graphics. While Vulkan offers better performance and more control, it demands extensive programming experience and complex debugging. OpenGL remains viable for many applications and provides a better foundation for understanding graphics programming concepts before potentially transitioning to Vulkan.
Gamefromscratch·45wLUXE: One of a Kind Game Engine a Decade in the Making!
LUXE is a unique 2D-first game engine that has been in development for nearly a decade and recently became publicly available. Built with C++ and using the Ren programming language, it features an entity-component-system architecture with custom terminology throughout. The engine supports Windows, Linux, Mac, and web platforms, with console support in development. It offers both visual editor and code-first workflows, includes tile mapping tools, and uses a pay-what-you-can pricing model with free access for students and hobbyists. While powerful and distinctive, the engine currently has stability issues, lacks hot reloading, and has a steep learning curve due to its unique terminology and workflow.
Hacker News·47wA developer toy from PostHog
PostHog introduces DeskHog, an open-source handheld gaming device built around an ESP32-S3 microcontroller with a color TFT display, WiFi connectivity, and 10-hour battery life. The palm-sized device features a custom 3D-printed case and comes with several pre-built games including Pong variants, idle clickers, and roguelike adventures. Developers can create their own games using AI editors or C++, and the device can connect to PostHog for displaying analytics data. The hardware includes expansion ports for additional functionality and all design files are available on GitHub for DIY builders.
Game Developer·45wGenAI animation startup Motorica raises 5 million pounds in investment
Motorica, a generative AI animation startup, secured £5 million in funding to develop tools that automate tedious animation tasks like keyframing and locomotion. The company claims AAA studios including Quantic Dream are already using their AI mocap technology, which aims to let animators focus more on creative work rather than technical grunt work. The funding will support platform scaling, R&D investment, and team expansion across engineering and animation roles.
Dave's Garage·48wVibe Coding 101: Writing an AI with AI
A developer demonstrates live coding of an AI system that learns to play the classic arcade game Tempest through reinforcement learning. The project involves running multiple game instances on a 96-core machine, extracting game state data from memory, and iteratively refining reward functions to improve AI performance. The AI currently reaches level 33 but struggles with faster yellow levels, prompting adjustments to encourage more cautious gameplay behavior.
Codrops·48wBuilding a Real-Time Dithering Shader
A detailed walkthrough of creating a real-time dithering shader using GLSL and WebGL. The implementation uses a 4x4 Bayer matrix for ordered dithering, supports optional pixelation and grayscale modes, and integrates with the postprocessing library as a composable effect. The shader transforms smooth gradients into stylized pixel patterns reminiscent of 8-bit graphics, offering customizable parameters like grid size and pixel ratio for retro visual effects in modern web applications.
80 LEVEL·45wCustom Unity Renderer Transforming 3D Scenes into Pixel Art
Red Giraffe created a custom Unity render pipeline that transforms 3D scenes into pixel art using downsampling and quantization techniques. The system works by downsampling internal textures into low-resolution buffers, quantizing them, then upsampling back to source resolution. The colorful shadows are achieved through a custom render pass that quantizes the image and matches shadow values to appropriate available colors.
80 LEVEL·46wiCity Gets New Terrain Editing Tools & Road System Enhancements
iCity 1.5, a procedural city generator for Blender, introduces enhanced road systems with highway conversion capabilities, custom intersection presets, and improved road customization options. The update includes new terrain editing tools, a background export system supporting multiple formats (GLB/GLTF, FBX, USD), and enhanced park and green area block controls. Additional improvements cover UV mapping, texture resolution handling, and overall performance stability.
Gamefromscratch·48wBlender 4.5 - Vulkan Has Arrived!
Blender 4.5 beta introduces Vulkan rendering support as its major feature, offering significant performance improvements but requiring manual activation. The release includes quality-of-life improvements like dual scroll wheel support for navigation, multi-object UV viewing without edit mode, customizable properties panel visibility, and enhanced geometry nodes with new import nodes and better organization tools. However, this version marks the end of Intel Mac support and removes Collada file format support, while adding improvements to glTF, USD, and FBX export capabilities.
Godot·48wUpcoming (serious) Web performance boost – Godot Engine
Godot Engine now supports WebAssembly SIMD compilation, delivering significant performance improvements for web games. Benchmarks show 1.5x to 2x performance gains in normal scenarios, with even higher improvements during CPU-intensive situations. Starting with Godot 4.5 dev 5, official web templates will require SIMD-compatible browsers to maximize performance benefits, though developers can still build non-SIMD versions if needed for older browser compatibility.
C/C++ Community·48wAm I the only one who took a whole day to set up a lib in C++
A developer shares their frustrating experience transitioning a game project to C++, spending a week choosing an IDE and an entire day just setting up the SFML library, highlighting the complexity of C++ development environment setup.
Awesome Go·46wIntroducing Chess V2: A New Chess Library in Golang
A developer announces version 2.0 of their Go chess library, featuring significant performance improvements with up to 40% faster move generation compared to existing libraries. The rebuild includes optimized bitboard implementation, robust PGN parsing, comprehensive documentation, and an optimized position type that forgoes move validation for better engine development. Future plans include implementing the UCI standard for chess engines.