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Hacker News
LCD 1 (2022) is an ASCII art project on the same display (by Sharp) of the PlayDate.
by agys
They mentioned that they wrote their own assembly functions for some floating point routines, like sqrtf. Is the ARM floating point unit fast enough that the quake fast inverse square root [1] isn't required?
[1] http://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-quakes-fas...
by kristianp
Remind me of a similar quest of mine from... 15 years ago or so. Porting Quake on a GP2X handheld with no GPU, not even an FPU, run by an ARMv4. I could not compress the textures enough at the time so you could play only for a few seconds before the memory became too fragmented and the game stopped. But I managed to port a few other games. The PlayDate is a supoercomputer compared to an ARMv4 from 15years ago, but that antique GP2X was at least capable of true-color :). Should still have the code somewhere on github, but that's probably completely unusable on any hardware available in 2026. Maybe the "opengl" compatibility layer could still be useful though?
by rixed
This is breathtaking. I did something similar[1] porting a 3D dice roller I wrote to a $60 GBA clone, and I _thought_ that was hardcore already. This is next level.
[1]: https://blog.myli.page/rolling-dice-on-a-60-handheld-08be278...
by tslmy
I love this post because it goes well beyond "can I render 3d graphics on this device" and into "how can i play with the combo of art and rendering tech to get a nice looking scene on this device.
Very cool, thanks for sharing!
by bdickason
Highly relevant:
Surface-Stable Fractal Dithering
by wewewedxfgdf
What an excellent example of designing for the medium instead of trying to make the medium do something it's not good at! Your whole approach shows a real love, like a delicate respectfulness, that I think characterises early games and is less apparent as the systems get better (though I am sure it is still there).
by alex-moon
For anyone who enjoys this sort of thing, I found this postmortem of an Alone in the Dark clone for PICO-8 highly informative:
by busfahrer
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- Hacker News
- LCD 1 (2022) is an ASCII art project on the same display (by Sharp) of the PlayDate.by agys
- They mentioned that they wrote their own assembly functions for some floating point routines, like sqrtf. Is the ARM floating point unit fast enough that the quake fast inverse square root [1] isn't required?
[1] http://betterexplained.com/articles/understanding-quakes-fas...
by kristianp - Remind me of a similar quest of mine from... 15 years ago or so. Porting Quake on a GP2X handheld with no GPU, not even an FPU, run by an ARMv4. I could not compress the textures enough at the time so you could play only for a few seconds before the memory became too fragmented and the game stopped. But I managed to port a few other games. The PlayDate is a supoercomputer compared to an ARMv4 from 15years ago, but that antique GP2X was at least capable of true-color :). Should still have the code somewhere on github, but that's probably completely unusable on any hardware available in 2026. Maybe the "opengl" compatibility layer could still be useful though?by rixed
- This is breathtaking. I did something similar[1] porting a 3D dice roller I wrote to a $60 GBA clone, and I _thought_ that was hardcore already. This is next level.
[1]: https://blog.myli.page/rolling-dice-on-a-60-handheld-08be278...
by tslmy - I love this post because it goes well beyond "can I render 3d graphics on this device" and into "how can i play with the combo of art and rendering tech to get a nice looking scene on this device.
Very cool, thanks for sharing!
by bdickason - Highly relevant:
Surface-Stable Fractal Dithering
by wewewedxfgdf - What an excellent example of designing for the medium instead of trying to make the medium do something it's not good at! Your whole approach shows a real love, like a delicate respectfulness, that I think characterises early games and is less apparent as the systems get better (though I am sure it is still there).by alex-moon
- For anyone who enjoys this sort of thing, I found this postmortem of an Alone in the Dark clone for PICO-8 highly informative:by busfahrer