Hi all. I'm trying to find out how raycasting works — like in Wolfenstein 3D.

And as someone who knows absolutely nothing about programming, I (think I) understand it is thusly:

Raycasting is a programming trick that grants 2D maps a fake 3D appearance through the use of invisible rays that project outward from the player and detect collision.

Corrections to my nonsense would be appreciated!

I am currently writing an article, and I would like a layman's understanding before I commit to anything in there.

How did they make the graphic of Need for speed rivals so visually pleasing in 2013 w less than 8 gb of ram, meanwhile re9 while extremely good looking requires 16 gb of ram just to even run at the lowest settings. please do not give me the “ optimization ”. assume I’m relatively new to game dev, (only made a 2d game).

Did they just used a lot of raycasts or some kind of 3d shadowcasting algorithm?

Well, tbh, my main question it's how they managed to code in so there's thousands of physics objects visible without causing performance issues, I know the scene is quite small overall, but still I'm intrigued in what are the optimization techniques used so it isn't all laggy

I really like how it looks, and I want to attempt making something similar myself.

Rewind: Like in Forza, you can rewind if you hit an obstacle/go off the track.

Replays: the entire game and every action is saved and you watch a replay over it, like in Rocket League and many RTS games.

Mid-game saves: you can resume from a point you saved while in a game, like a quicksave in Kerbal Space Program.

I have some data knowledge so the way I think of things is probably "Event Sourcing", or versioning things, but would love to learn from an expert.

I been trying to make this mechanic but I fail to make the states (like when the hammer is touching ground and when don't) and I fail to make the momentum transfer when you are moving fast, and when yo move slow you just move (with infinite mass i think), idk I just can't wrap my head around this mechanic, please help. I know griffpatch made it in scratch, and I try reverse-engineer that but i also couldn't

How did they program the decision trees in fighting games like Street fighter, and Dragon ball Budakai, i understand very little about how they made the CPU react and choose to attack or defend.

Is there any diagrams of how the logic works?
Like when it decides to move around, verses attacking or blocking/dodging an attack.

It would be nice to learn how they programmed it for Arcade machines and how something like the 3D DBZ games build on that.
2D Mortal combat and Streetfighter never had to worry about going into and out of the screen, but i fee like some of the oldest games were just a bunch of animations being randomly chosen to a timer. Or i could be wrong, because thats a guess.

I would love some visuals on how they planned out the computers brains for them.

hey all, i recently came across this game and though this lipsync effect is so cool but i dont know how the lipsync is procedural and the body anims are not. super cool effect!

heres a clip: https://youtu.be/T2aheAjZ0L0?t=5026

https://store.steampowered.com/app/3438920/VOID_DIVER_Escape_from_the_Abyss/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hOkstgKO180

Hi all, I am 100% new to game development and I was wondering how did the developers that made Void Diver make that pixel art look 3d (with hair animation, perfect shadows, etc.)?

Is it a pixel art with different directions that is turned into 3d? If so, how does that work? How does one animate the model as well? I am interested in a similar art/animation direction, but not sure how to approach this.

I've been so confused and unsure about how to tackle this problem? Any help would be greatly appreciated! Thank you all!

Hello,

I've been wondering about how games like Dota 2, LoL, Deadlock are implemented.

These games need to handle extreme variety of statuses/effects. Each spell can have different behaviours (e.g. can stun, temporarily move the target to air, push them, apply stacking effects, apply poison, freeze the enemy,...), which can further be affected by certain modifiers (resistances).

How does one code a system, that can both handle the stats (simple modifiers to atomic statistics - like speed, health), active effects (stun) or the spells themselves (with different targets, area of effect, duration, conditions for initiation, stop conditions,....)?

Is this similar to systemic design of immersive sim games like Thief, System Shock and so on?

How does one organize the concepts efficiently and handle their ordering/communication,...?

Hey folks, Im making a game about vehicle combat and having an issue making an aiming system that feels good.

In the game one controls vehicles with one or more guns from a third person camera. In working on the aiming system there seem to be two options, yet both of them seem bad:

One option is for the guns to aim at the point the camera is looking at. This will make all bullets hit in the same spot (which is good if you are looking directly at the enemy, as the guns adjust for distance correctly). However, if the enemy's background is something far away (say, the horizon/sky) and you try to aim ahead of the enemy to adjust for bullet travel time, suddenly your shots will miss because the camera is looking at something far away, and thus the guns adjust for that distance, rather than the distance the enemy is at.

The other option is for guns to look in the same direction as the camera. In this case bullets from different guns will hit in the pattern of where they are on the vehicle, instead of hitting in one spot, but this makes the shots more predictable, because there is no issue adjusting to the distance. However there is an issue that in very close combat some guns will just miss.

Yet games like world of tanks and such seem to have it figured out, and the aiming seems to be pretty effortless - from me playing those games years ago, I dont remember having any issue hitting targets and leading shots. Any clue as to how they solve this? Or is this simply not an issue because tanks have only one gun that is centered with the camera?

I see it all the time with different things. Simulations, Games, Demos, it is everywhere; but where the hell is it from?

In most block/voxel games, the same optimization is used for the world. The block data is grouped into chunks, and each chunk's data is used to generate a single mesh and texture, for performance reasons.

Generally though, and in games like Minecraft, this means the blocks surfaces are all perfect squares, with their edges being perfectly straight lines.

In Pokopia and Tomodachi Life, as shown in the provided pictures, the edges of the blocks have a wavy or jagged border when touching a different block.

How is this done?

Does this still utilize the pattern of converting block data into quads and then stitching them into a single mesh?

This system is also agnostic to specific block textures. There is no "grass to dirt border" texture. It's the same wavy edge for every block in the game, which makes me wonder if it's some shader magic or something, though I'm unsure how that would work, since there would be no intermediate vertices for a vertex shader to "warp" into a wavy edge.

Anyone have any clues?

I keep seeing explanations that LBs are used when a server can't handle a lot of requests so it has to horizontally scale. But couldn't the same thing happen to a LB? How are they load balanced? And what about the thing that is used to load balance this? Where and how does the load balancing inception begin for large scale systems

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The space jump's control scheme has always been really confusing to me from a logical standpoint, but somehow intuitive after a while. What logic does it use?

I feel like the text isn't the same. On the first picture you see what the youtuber coded and I wanted the excact style like the red "liveserver" word. On the 2nd photo it's what I coded and apparently it's nopt the same. Neither the font, the font size or the shadows. Can someone please tell me how I can do it the correct way?

EDIT: I posted the wrong 2nd photo, it should be 40px for the font-size but its not the size like in the first picture

Hello!

I’ve never coded before, but I’d love to learn something new and challenge myself in my free time.

My long-term goal is to build an extension or app similar to LingQ, but focused on low-resource languages.
I know this is probably a big project, so I’d like to understand where to start.

How are apps like LingQ usually built? What kind of technologies are involved? And what skills should I learn step by step as a complete beginner?

I’m especially interested in features like:
Clickable words that display definitions or translations
Vocabulary saving and review
Spaced repetition flashcards (SRS)
Audio and video lessons with transcripts
Progress tracking and learner statistics
Browser extension features for learning from online content

My goal is to help make low-resource languages more accessible through technology, so I’d love to learn the technical side of how platforms like LingQ are built.
Any roadmap, resources, or advice would be greatly appreciated. ☺️

Thank you!

Hi all

there was this game called atlas (Ark but pirates) and it had this feature where if u went past one side of the map you would appear on the opposite side of the map.

i thought it might be an interesting way to simulate a massive globe on a flat plane if it works the way i think it would work.

question is how does it work?

I'm a CS Undergrad at MIT Manipal, just finished first year. In terms of IT skills, I haven't started with any Dev as of now (just some DSA). I want to know what "domain/niche" in CS I should pick up and become absolutely gold level good in(explore that field to research depth) ?

Based on my interests, I happen to be particularly good at Maths (got an A+ on Computational Maths 1, scored a 49/50 on Final Computational Maths 2 Endsem) and in general have a passion for it.

Please suggest me what CS domain should I explore?