#This isn't my first doom rodeo

[foone]

I was only about to scroll past this so many times, so:

Doom doesn't draw fucking triangles. GPUs draw triangles because it makes sense to build a GPU to do one specific thing! That way they can do it in parallel and very quickly. So GPUs specialize, they only do triangles. Need to draw a square? Use two triangles. A hexagon is like 4 triangles. A circle? Well, pick some number, draw that many triangles. They can draw millions per second, so the fact that it's less efficient to draw a square as two triangles doesn't matter.

Doom... Is not remotely like that! It's from 1993! Triangle-shoving GPUs? That's a late-90s thing.

Doom is a 2d renderer. It has no hardware acceleration, and it's drawing individual pixels in software.

It uses some BSP/raytracing math to figure out where the walls are, and draws them A SINGLE PIXEL AT A TIME individually. Like, one wall at a time. It uses some careful math to minimize overdraw, because it is expensive to waste time covering up what it already drew. The floors and ceilings are arbitrary polygons... Which it draws horizontally, no triangles involved.

(Image from Fabien Sanglard's website. They wrote the Doom Programming Black Book)

See? It's all individual pixels. This required a LOT of very smart programming just to get this shit to run at 35 frames per second on computers at the time. This is amazing for the time, sure, but it's a mess. You could only make Doom in 1993 because you had one of the greatest programmers of all time working on it. That's great for Doom, but these days you can make 3d games without a genius on your team: BECAUSE WE HAVE GPUs.

This actually makes Doom hard to run on modern hardware. It wants to use the CPU to draw individual pixels, and modern GPUs want triangles. It doesn't know triangles. Sure you could use our new faster CPUs to just do it the old way, but that means your GPU is idle. Your GPU is supposed to make this faster, right?

So a LOT of work has been done by clever people in the 28 years Doom has been open source, and they've figured out how to write a whole new triangle based renderer on top of the old doom code. It uses triangles, of course!

(fun fact: the floors and ceilings are the hard part. The walls and sprites? Easy. Two triangles each, apply the right texture, and you're done. Floors? Those are arbitrary polygons. Not even convex polygons, either. So there's a whole thing with triangluating the floors in a way that makes it into proper triangles that isn't too slow to do at level load)

But that's the modern source ports only. Gzdoom and descendants.

The old doom, even some of the slightly modernized dooms like chocolate doom? They have no triangles, just CPU-calculated individual pixels.

Anyway, my point is, if you want to "run Doom on some kindergarteners", you only need big grid paper and some crayons. Tell them where to draw the walls, then the floors and ceilings, and you're done. No triangles needed. It's all paint by number.

Anyway: I know this because I'm actually planning to do it. Not with kindergarteners, mind you (I have none on hand), but Doom could be run "on a" human with paper and pencil, and I'm working towards doing that. It'll take a long while per frame (so I'm only going to do one), but I'll have to do a bunch of math on paper and then color in some grid paper with a large pile of colored pencils. But what I won't have to do is DRAW ANY TRIANGLES.

Kindergarteners will be so proud of themselves for being able to draw a triangle. My GPU can draw tens of thousands of those in a second. You are not special.

[luciddreamingstuff]

Just Because The Source has Stopped Creating, Doesn't Mean It Dies.

Okay so like many, we all heard the news that the Dream SMP is not coming back for a second season. Personally, I think that was a good move.

But for some, this means doom and gloom. As someone who's been around the track a few times, I'm not too bothered. Just because the source is no longer creating, doesn't mean it dies completely. Part of watching the internet grow up in the early 2000s, leading into the 2010s, and now into the 2020s, there is a massive archive of fandoms that have come and gone. And this isn't my first rodeo with a Minecraft RP fandom either. Let me tell you of an example, circa 2014, when a certain captain joined a little world known as Mianite. Yeah if you haven't heard of it, please don't tell me, I don't need more grey hairs. Yeah, that series has passed, but the fandom is still there, and the creativity is still there. Sure in small pockets, but I'm still happy to say that I am a follower of Lady Ianite. And an even smaller series known as Herobrine Lake. Yeesh, I am 0ld and in the sticks. But there is still a small group keeping that fandom alive, despite the creator moving on from gaming completely. Just some personal experience is all. But the point I am making here is that the fans keep it alive for as long as they want to. Doesn't have to die, so long as folks want to keep it alive.

[phantasiiae]

❝  i have heard that men who live by a waterfall cease to hear it — in such a way did i learn to live beside the rushing torrent of my doom.  ❞ reint. seph & cloud

TSOA || Accepting

"...And everyone calls me pessimistic."

Cloud frowns, crossing his arms as he sits there with Sephiroth. He shouldn't be surprised. Now that Jenova has control of Genesis, things seem bleaker than ever. Would there ever be an end to it, or would she not stop until she had what she wanted? It has to be Sephiroth. Genesis must simply be a means to an end. Cloud just wishes it didn't have to be that way.

"Look, Seph, you're gonna be fine. This isn't our first rodeo with Jenova. You've got all of us behind you. We just have to be on our toes, is all. I get feeling like it's hopeless. I felt like that for a long time...but you'll come out on the other side. Promise." As he says this, he reaches over and rests his hand on his shoulder, giving it a gentle squeeze. "Would I lie to you?"

[blockgamepirate]

And for context, if any of you feel like I'm being overly suspicious: it's because this isn't my first rodeo

I've seen this kind of thing before, I've even seen this kind of thing in the field of independent webcontent before!

I want to trust Quackity but he needs to give us something to trust first

I keep talking about respect and communication, because in my experience that's frankly what matters the most. Usually when the communication is bad or vague and there isn't a clear show of respect between the parties, that's a bad sign

I'm not saying I think this is all doomed, I'm not gonna leap into premature conclusions. But I don't feel reassured either, I feel very on edge and very stressed out

Also I'm just gonna say it: I think Léa specifically deserves respect for voicing the problems, trying to help her coworkers and raising awareness of labour abuse

Even if everything else is fixed but Léa still gets shunned and treated like a traitor, I won't be happy

Also I wanna be clear again that I genuinely love QSMP as a project, that's why I feel the need to be so critical

I care about it, I want it to be better

[mishkakagehishka]

Korka I just came back from work and was so shocked and concerned when I saw you mentioning a hate anon at the top of my dashboard so I went on your blog to see what happened, kind of doom-scrolling, trying to prepare myself for what might have triggered this ( because fuck you anon, what is wrong with you)

And what brought on all of this was... a post where you said that not all literature classics originated from English speaking countries? Like THAT is what caused someone to send petty anon hate to you??? 😭

I'm glad you seem to be taking it well though, all things considered

SHAHSBDBDN sorry for giving you a fright! I hope you've had a good day at work, tho!

And literally right????😭 But, here's the thing. I pride myself on being able to see from anyone's point of view and understanding people's motivations for almost anything. This isn't my first rodeo, as I said, people getting angry at me when I said I'd like people to start saying "dalmatian dogs" is smth I understood - Oh, I was angry when I wrote the post, I came across agressive, so they must have felt attacked. And when you feel attacked, you want to defend yourself, and this is how people often do that - by attacking back" and I could like. Calmly eplain myself to those off-anon (and make fun of anons), bc I understood that they're just responding in an emotional way to what they assumed was me attacking them first, is what I'm saying.

But THIS PERSON😭😭 took me saying "classics aren't just anglo" and "you should read classics from as many countries as you can because it's enriching and will broaden your horizons" and they somehow extrapolated "I think my culture specifically is superior to all others" from that. I've seen people fail reading comprehension exams for less. Not even mentioning the "europeans don't deserve rights" bc 1) that was such obvious bait and 2) my post was a response to calling classics only english and white american. What continent do they think those would be from?😭😭

Man. As I said. So many more valid things to send me hate over. If someone was on anon calling me a freak for writing gore I'd just go "Understandable, it's not for everyone, and I know I seem like a maniac when you don't know why I write it" but this...😭😭😭