6 months post

config.toml

@@ -4,8 +4,9 @@ base_url = "https://lynxize.dev"
 compile_sass = false
 build_search_index = false
 
-generate_feeds = false # need to configure it to be at /blog/atom.xml which takes Work(tM)
+generate_feeds = false # set to true in the blog _index
 
+author="lynxize"
 
 [markdown]
 highlight_code = true

content/about.md

@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@ You can find the source for this site [here](https://git.lynxize.dev/lynxize/web
 You can find me in the following places:
 - Discord - `@lynxize`
 - Bluesky - [`@lynxize.dev`](https://bsky.app/profile/lynxize.dev)
-- GitHub - [`@lynxize`](https://github.com/lynxize)
+- GitHub - [`lynxize`](https://github.com/lynxize)
 
 You can also reach me [through email](mailto:lynxize@gmail.com), though response times will definitely be slower.
 

content/blog/_index.md

@@ -3,4 +3,8 @@ title = "Various Ramblings"
 sort_by = "date"
 template = "blog.html"
 page_template = "post.html"
+
+generate_feeds = true
 +++
+
+Some random blog posts/ramblings/text walls of mine.

content/blog/six-months.md

@@ -0,0 +1,277 @@
++++
+title = "Game Progress Log - Six Months"
+date = 2025-04-18
++++
+
+{% important() %}
+This is more of a personal progress log than a blog post.
+I wrote it more for my future self than anyone else, though you're obviously welcome to read it if you want.
+{% end %}
+
+
+## Background
+Despite what I sometimes like to pretend, I'm not really a game dev. 
+I've created and deleted my fair share of Godot and Unity projects, I've messed around with [libGDX](https://libgdx.com/), I've completed three game jams (with varying degrees of success)
+but I've never actually made anything I'd consider *finished*. 
+I'm great at starting projects but terrible at completing them.
+
+A little over a year ago, I tried following the [learnopengl](https://learnopengl.com/) tutorials, and had a lot of fun doing so.
+I got as far as a pig in a spotlight before bad design decisions and my inexperience with C++ caused the project to collapse under its own weight.
+
+*Maybe in retrospect trying to learn graphics programming and C++ at the same time was not the best idea*...
+
+{{ image(src="/assets/6months/pig.png", alt="Minecraft pig model drawn in front of a space-themed skybox", caption="piiiiiiiggggg") }}
+
+Fast-forward to 8 or so months ago, and I finally thought up a game idea I thought was worth persuing.
+Something I could stay motivated to work on in the longer-term, and hopefully stick with long enough to complete.
+
+I really want to love [Godot](https://godotengine.org/).
+It's my go-to choice for game jams, but once a project hits a certain size I can't figure out how to structure it.
+And I guess I just sort of got bored, or something. 
+I made a little prototype, ran into some weird Godot limitation I no longer remember, and thought "hmm, what if I did this myself."
+
+## Stuff
+So, for the last six months I've been working on a little game framework thingy in my free time.
+
+[SDL3](https://libsdl.org)+[Kotlin](https://kotlinlang.org) is a bit of a cursed combination,
+but Kotlin is my current favorite language and I wasn't going to repeat the mistake of using a language I'm not comfortable with. 
+
+When I started, [LWJGL](https://github.com/LWJGL/lwjgl3) didn't have bindings for SDL (though [it does now](https://github.com/LWJGL/lwjgl3/pull/1033)) so it wasn't an option.
+[jextract](https://github.com/openjdk/jextract) works well enough for my purposes, since I was going to wrap most things in Kotlin anyway.
+
+The first triangle was fairly straightforward.
+
+{{ image(src="/assets/6months/triangle.png", alt="A window displaying a rainbow triangle", caption="hello triangle") }}
+
+And I guess it just spiraled out of control from there. Instead of making a game I've been making a game framework.
+
+I find the SDL GPU API (~~wow that's a lot of caps~~) to be a lot easier to reason about than OpenGL was.
+Trying to learn OpenGL was difficult because everything was State Soup and some totally unrelated code somewhere else 
+would interfere with whatever I was trying to do, because I wasn't being careful enough.
+
+At least with SDL I have some idea what's actually going on.
+
+{% note() %}
+The lack of tutorials for SDL GPU was a little bit frustrating.
+Being extremely new, there's not much to go off other than [some examples](https://github.com/TheSpydog/SDL_gpu_examples/blob/main/Examples/ComputeSpriteBatch.c#L305)
+and the (actually fairly decent) [documentation](https://wiki.libsdl.org/SDL3/CategoryGPU).
+
+Also, [RenderDoc](https://renderdoc.org/) my beloved...
+{% end %}
+
+So let's see, after 6 months what have I got...
+
+### Sprite Batching
+Most everything is based around a compute-shader based sprite batcher. 
+It was loosely inspired by [this example](https://github.com/TheSpydog/SDL_gpu_examples/blob/main/Examples/ComputeSpriteBatch.c#L305).
+I don't have a great way to benchmark performance, but it handles tens of thousands of sprites with no problem on my laptop, 
+so it's more than fast enough.
+
+It does have the annoying limitation that all sprites must come from the same atlas texture, and it won't automatically batch sprites from a bunch of different ones.
+I should probably change that at some point.
+
+### Box2D
+I didn't really want to write my own physics. 
+Thanks to [Box2D](https://box2d.org/) 3.0+ being a C library, it was pretty easy to generate bindings for it.
+
+Unfortunately there's now a `conversions.kt` file that looks like
+```kotlin
+internal fun AABB.b2AABB(arena: Arena): MemorySegment {
+	val a = b2AABB.allocate(arena)
+	b2AABB.lowerBound(a, this.min.b2Vec2(arena))
+	b2AABB.upperBound(a, this.max.b2Vec2(arena))
+	return a
+}
+```
+just to convert to and from Box2D's types, but eh, it's fine. 
+I wrapped the callbacks with my own event system and it seems to be working well.
+
+### Lighting Experiments
+I am *very* new to graphics programming, all things considered, and trying to implement [radiance cascades](https://radiance-cascades.com/) was probably ill-advised.
+
+I did get some cool screenshots before I realized my game wouldn't even benefit from this kind of lighting in the first place.
+I probably could have figured it out if I'd spent a little more time, but I was getting bored.
+
+{{ image(src="/assets/6months/idk.png", alt="Very broken scene", caption="yeah I don't even know lmao") }}
+
+{{ image(src="/assets/6months/brokenrc.png", alt="Very broken scene", caption="significantly closer") }}
+
+{% note() %}
+It wasn't helped by the fact that my test scene was almost entirely text and thin debug lines left over from messing with Box2D.
+Even a correct RC implementation would probably struggle with that.
+{% end %}
+
+I might revisit this later. We'll see.
+
+### 3D Experiments
+After so much 2D stuff I was getting a bit bored. 
+My game is 2D, and there's no way I'll be writing a competent 3D engine, but I wanted to mess around a little. 
+If I could draw the pig with OpenGL, maybe I could do something similar with what I'd built.
+
+It went... about as well as could be expected.
+
+{{ image(src="/assets/6months/brokenfox.png", alt="A fox with extremely broken textures", caption="biblically accurate fox or something idk") }}
+
+I did eventually unbreak the fox and get a cubemap skybox mostly working.
+
+It was pretty fun overall, even if not *useful*. 
+I learned about [gamma correction](https://blog.johnnovak.net/2016/09/21/what-every-coder-should-know-about-gamma/) 
+and some [neat tricks](https://www.saschawillems.de/blog/2016/08/13/vulkan-tutorial-on-rendering-a-fullscreen-quad-without-buffers/) for fullscreen render passes, so it wasn't a complete waste of time.
+
+
+### Audio
+I initially tried plugging an opus decoder more or less directly into an `SDL_AudioStream`, but it turns out that was a bad idea.
+So for now, I'm using [miniaudio](https://miniaud.io/).
+
+{{ image(src="/assets/6months/audio.png", alt="debug ui for audio, with volume, pitch, and pan options", caption="little sound ui thing I made with Dear ImGui") }}
+
+It supports basically everything I want to do anyway, like audio streaming, looping, pitch and pan modification, and more.
+
+Getting it to compile was bit of a headache because it's not designed to be built as a shared library, but I don't exactly have any other option to use it from Kotlin. 
+CMake makes me go insane...
+
+{% note() %}
+I've been using stuff from [the FTL soundtrack](https://benprunty.bandcamp.com/album/ftl) and [ESCISM](https://radicaldreamland.bandcamp.com/album/escism-esc-original-soundtrack) 
+as test tracks, which are therefore forever burned into my head. There are worse problems to have.
+{% end %}
+
+### User Interface
+I know basically nothing about UI, and trying to research how other people handle it proved kind of useless.
+
+"Just draw a bunch of textured rectangles! It's easy!"
+Yeah, okay, but where and what and why and aaaaaaaaa I don't even know.
+I was almost tempted to try to use [Dear ImGui](https://github.com/ocornut/imgui) for game UI, but the lack of theming made that impractical.
+
+I figured drawing [9-slices](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/9-slice_scaling) would be a good place to start, using the sprite batch code I'd written earlier.
+
+{{ image(src="/assets/6months/brokenui.png", alt="Extremely broken 9-slice drawing", caption="Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa") }}
+
+I decided to try to decouple the layout and the functionality a little, keeping the logic in Kotlin and the layout in [HOCON](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/JSON#HOCON). 
+
+Why HOCON? I don't know. The syntax is nice and [Hoplite](https://github.com/sksamuel/hoplite) provides nice error messages when I mess something up.
+
+It looks like this:
+```js
+{
+    // some stuff (theme declarations, etc.) omitted for brevity
+    rootElement = {
+        type: PaddingContainer
+        padding: {
+            left = 30f
+            right = 30f
+            top = 20f
+            bottom = 20f
+        }
+        child = {
+            type: HorizontalListContainer
+            children = [
+                {
+                    type: SizeConstraintContainer
+                    max_width = 100f,
+                    max_height = 100f,
+                    child = {
+                        type: NinePatchContainer
+                        id: "test-button-1"
+                        child = {
+                            type: Label
+                            font_size = 48f
+                            text = "1"
+                        }
+                    }
+                },
+                {
+                    type: SizeConstraintContainer
+                    max_width = 100f,
+                    max_height = 100f,
+                    child = {
+                        type: NinePatchContainer
+                        id: "test-button-2"
+                        child = {
+                            type: Label
+                            font_size = 48f
+                            text = "2"
+                        }
+                    }
+                }
+            ]
+        }
+    }
+}
+```
+
+There are lots of other container types like `AlignmentContainer`, `ClippingContainer` and I'll probably need to add a few more,
+like `ScrollContainer`.
+
+The Kotlin side looks like this, where the `ButtonBehavior` handles mouse presses and the hovered/pressed/released state.
+```kotlin
+val gui = Gui(Game.colorTarget, Core.gameDir.resolve("assets/test_ui.conf")).apply {
+	addBehavior(getElementById("test-button-1"), ButtonBehavior().also {
+		it.onMousePress += {
+			println("Button 1!")
+		}
+	})
+
+	addBehavior(getElementById("test-button-2"), ButtonBehavior().also {
+		it.onMousePress += {
+			println("Button 2!")
+		}
+	})
+	show()
+}
+```
+
+I don't think this will scale particularly well, but my game is fairly UI-light so it should be Fineeee™ for now at least.
+It's significantly better than just spamming `Batch.draw()` a bunch.
+
+I don't know how I'm going to handle more complex UI elements, like scroll bars and tab groups. HOCON makes it easy to include 
+other files with `include required(file("/path/to/thing.conf"))` so maybe I could try to make some templates for things like that.
+
+One of the hardest parts was dealing with `Batch`'s aforementioned everything-must-be-from-the-same-texture limitation.
+For now, I'm just generating a separate texture atlas for each UI at runtime, which doesn't feel great.
+
+Text is handled through [SDL_ttf](https://github.com/libsdl-org/SDL_ttf)'s GPU text engine, which does most of the hard work with FreeType and HarfBuzz for me.
+All I have to do is keep track of different font styles.
+I tried using FreeType directly, and just about went insane on the spot.
+Text rendering [is not a rabbit hole I want to go down](https://faultlore.com/blah/text-hates-you/), and this is probably good enough
+for everything I'll want to do. 
+
+### Shader Hot-Reloading
+There's not much to say about it, other than that it works!
+It took too long to get the file watching working properly because Java's `WatchService` is a little weird.
+
+In the future I want to be able to hot-reload textures, though that's a little harder because the texture atlases would have to be rebuilt.
+
+### Misc
+There are some other things that I worked on that aren't really worth their own sections, like:
+- An overcomplicated asset management system
+- Remappable keybind handling
+- Most of a [glm](https://github.com/g-truc/glm)-esque math library from scratch
+
+## The Future
+This is now my biggest project ever in terms of LoC, which is ...concerning? ...fun?  I don't know. Let's go with [fun](https://dwarffortresswiki.org/Fun&redirect=no).
+
+I'm sure any professional engine devs are... what's the equivalent of "rolling in their graves" for people who are still alive? 
+Whatever. That. They're probably doing that.
+I don't really know what I'm doing, and I guarantee there are a bunch of horrible design decisions that will come back to bite me later.
+To be honest though, I don't really care. I'm having fun and learning a lot, which is what I set out to do.
+
+Once I get a little further along, I want to make the core framework open-source. 
+Not because I think anyone should use it, (please no, spare yourself) but because I wouldn't have gotten nearly this far without all the example code on the internet,
+and if my project can be of any help as a reference for someone else, I'd like that.
+
+I've experimented with adding the [Fleks](https://github.com/Quillraven/Fleks) ecs (not to be confused with [flecs](https://github.com/SanderMertens/flecs)) and I've been very happy with the results so far.
+It seems like a good way to structure the game itself, though I'm not quite sure how to cleanly tie Box2D's physics in.
+
+Here's some things I might work on soon:™
+- Shader caching? (probably not necessary, but might be fun to do)
+- Getting it running on Windows (90% done already, shouldn't be too hard)
+- Basic [i18n](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internationalization_and_localization) maybe
+- Despaghettify the UI code
+- Figure out a name for this mess (I'm terrible at naming things)
+- **Start working on the actual game!**
+
+That last one is the main thing. It's about time I stop messing around and start actually making my game.
+If I want to make the core framework better, I have to try using it, and see what walls I run into.
+I'm sure there will be plenty.
+
+Anyway, that's it for now, see you in another six months!

content/blog/website-v3.md

@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
++++
+title = "Another Redesign"
+date = 2025-04-17
++++
+
+I feel like I just did this [a few months ago](/blog/website-v2).
+
+I didn't change as much this time, mostly just the CSS. 
+Apparently I've become slightly obsessed with the color purple, so... yeah... the whole site is purple now.
+
+Other changes:
+- Added the [random stuff page](/stuff).
+- Added some 88x31s to the home page, because why not?
+- Fixed the code block font and some other small things.
+- The [RSS (well, atom) feed](/blog/atom.xml) should finally work now.

static/assets/88x31/credits.txt

@@ -0,0 +1,9 @@
+yeah to be honest I have no idea where most of these come from
+I grabbed a few from aggregator pages like:
+https://cyber.dabamos.de/88x31/index.html
+https://www.88x31.nl/index.html
+https://capstasher.neocities.org/88x31collection-page1
+etc.
+
+If you really care about proper attribution for every single 88x31, go find a better hobby/hyperfixation please.
+HOWEVER if you made one of them and want credit (or for me to remove it) just let me know!

static/main.css

@@ -8,7 +8,8 @@ Not AI though, just me! :3
 
 :root {
     --color-accent-1: #af8cff;
-    --color-accent-2: #77aef2;
+    --color-accent-2: #74cded;
+    --color-links: #77aef2;
 
     --color-note: var(--color-accent-1);
     --color-warning: #ed9a5f;
@@ -77,7 +78,7 @@ header {
         }
 
         a:hover {
-
+            color: hsl(from var(--color) h s 30%);
         }
 
         a {
@@ -120,12 +121,22 @@ footer {
         color: var(--color-accent-2)
     }
 
-    a:link, a:visited {
+    code {
+        font-family: "JetBrains Mono", monospace;
+        font-size: smaller;
+    }
+
+    /* Color only inline code blocks */
+    code:not([class^=language-]) {
         color: var(--color-accent-2);
     }
 
+    a:link, a:visited {
+        color: var(--color-links);
+    }
+
     a:hover {
-        color: hsl(from var(--color-accent-2) h s 85%);
+        color: hsl(from var(--color-links) h s calc(l + 10));
     }
 }
 
@@ -150,6 +161,13 @@ footer {
     background-color: hsl(from var(--color-important) h 35% 15%);
 }
 
+#post-list {
+    color: var(--color-accent-1);
+}
+
+hr {
+    color: var(--color-accent-1);
+}
 
 blockquote {
     border-left-width: 4px;
@@ -172,7 +190,10 @@ figure {
 figcaption {
     width: 100%;
     text-align: center;
-    margin: 5px auto;
+    margin: 5px auto 20px;
+    color: var(--color-accent-2);
+    font-size: smaller;
+    font-family: "JetBrains Mono", monospace;
 }
 
 /*

templates/atom.xml

@@ -0,0 +1,49 @@
+<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
+<feed xmlns="http://www.w3.org/2005/Atom" xml:lang="{{ lang }}">
+    <title>{{ config.author }}</title>
+    {%- if config.description %}
+    <subtitle>{{ config.description }}</subtitle>
+    {%- endif %}
+    <link rel="self" type="application/atom+xml" href="{{ feed_url | safe }}"/>
+    <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="
+      {%- if section -%}
+        {{ section.permalink | escape_xml | safe }}
+      {%- else -%}
+        {{ config.base_url | escape_xml | safe }}
+      {%- endif -%}
+    "/>
+    <generator uri="https://www.getzola.org/">Zola</generator>
+    <updated>{{ last_updated | date(format="%+") }}</updated>
+    <id>{{ feed_url | safe }}</id>
+    {%- for page in pages %}
+    <entry xml:lang="{{ page.lang }}">
+        <title>{{ page.title }}</title>
+        <published>{{ page.date | date(format="%+") }}</published>
+        <updated>{{ page.updated | default(value=page.date) | date(format="%+") }}</updated>
+        {% for author in page.authors %}
+        <author>
+            <name>
+                {{ author }}
+            </name>
+        </author>
+        {% else %}
+        <author>
+            <name>
+                {%- if config.author -%}
+                {{ config.author }}
+                {%- else -%}
+                Unknown
+                {%- endif -%}
+            </name>
+        </author>
+        {% endfor %}
+        <link rel="alternate" type="text/html" href="{{ page.permalink | safe }}"/>
+        <id>{{ page.permalink | safe }}</id>
+        {% if page.summary %}
+        <summary type="html">{{ page.summary }}</summary>
+        {% else %}
+        <content type="html" xml:base="{{ page.permalink | escape_xml | safe }}">{{ page.content }}</content>
+        {% endif %}
+    </entry>
+    {%- endfor %}
+</feed>

templates/base.html

@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@
             <a href="/blog">blog</a>
             <a href="/stuff">stuff</a>
         </nav>
+        <link rel="alternate" type="application/atom+xml" title="RSS" href="/blog/atom.xml">
     </header>
 
     <div class="content">

templates/blog.html

@@ -4,9 +4,10 @@
 <h1 class="title">
     {{ section.title }}
 </h1>
-<ul>
+{{ section.content | safe }}
+<ul id="post-list">
     {% for page in section.pages %}
-        <li>{{ page.date }} <a href="{{ page.permalink | safe }}">{{ page.title }}</a></li>
+    <li>{{ page.date }} - <a href="{{ page.permalink | safe }}">{{ page.title }}</a></li>
     {% endfor %}
 </ul>
 {% endblock content %}

templates/index.html

@@ -3,15 +3,44 @@
 {% block content %}
 
 <br>
-Hey! You found my little personal page!
-
-I'm a professional waster of time, purveyor of useless activities, and chronic avoider of productivity.
+Hey!
+<br>
+You found my little personal page!
+<br>
+<br>
+I'm an expert waster of time, enjoyer of useless activities, and chronic avoider of productivity.
 <!-- br brr brrrrr (bad) -->
-<br>
-<br>
 I also sometimes write bad code for fun and play games.
 <br>
 <br>
 <a href="/about">More about me</a>.
-
+<br>
+<br>
+Since I don't know what else to put here and have to fill the space somehow, here's an 88x31 dumping ground, because why not?
+<br>
+<hr>
+<div>
+    <img src="/assets/88x31/catview.png">
+    <img src="/assets/88x31/gnu-linux.gif">
+    <img src="/assets/88x31/ieburnbtn.gif">
+    <img src="/assets/88x31/javascript-zero.gif">
+    <img src="/assets/88x31/cssdif.gif">
+    <a href="https://catsta.red"><img src="/assets/88x31/squishstare.gif"></a>
+    <img src="/assets/88x31/msoffice97.gif">
+    <a href="https://www.thunderbird.net/"><img src="/assets/88x31/thunderbird.gif"></a>
+    <a href="https://archlinux.org/"><img src="/assets/88x31/arch.png"></a>
+    <a href="https://jellyfin.org/"><img src="/assets/88x31/jellyfin.gif"></a>
+    <img src="/assets/88x31/right2repair.gif">
+    <a href="https://wikipedia.org"><img src="/assets/88x31/wikipedia.png"></a>
+    <a href="https://www.libsdl.org/"><img src="/assets/88x31/sdl.gif"></a>
+    <a href="https://librewolf.net/"><img src="/assets/88x31/anythingbut.gif"></a>
+    <img src="/assets/88x31/nocookie.gif">
+    <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cErgMJSgpv0"><img src="/assets/88x31/webvirus.gif"></a>
+    <a href="https://librewolf.net/"><img src="/assets/88x31/firefox.gif"></a>
+    <a href="https://adoptium.net/"><img src="/assets/88x31/java.gif"></a>
+    <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/"><img src="/assets/88x31/steam.gif"></a>
+    <a href="https://ublockorigin.com"><img src="/assets/88x31/ublock.png"></a>
+</div>
+<p style="font-size: x-small">(If one of these is yours and you want credit, let me know. I just found them Wherever™)</p>
+<hr>
 {% endblock content %}