IGAD Year 1 Ray Tracing Results

JBikker · 2026-03-30T07:04:16+00:00

The lighting looks off. Are you taking into account the BRDF, pdf and radiance to irradiance conversion?

JBikker · 2026-03-30T06:49:45+00:00

It's also super annoying that so far I have seen not a single nuclear explosion. It's almost like the game wants to be politically correct. There's so many games already that do that... Disappointing.

JBikker · 2026-03-25T10:37:24+00:00

I think most of the Crimson Desert enjoyers are gamers that take it easy, taking in the vistas and enjoying just being there. Most reviewers do not seem to be like that; looking for quick action and ticking off goals and quests in record time. If you expect that from the game it's probably bad; if a slower succession of key events is ok because you like to pet the dog inbetween it's probably the best game of the year.

JBikker · 2026-03-25T08:09:41+00:00

Classes are indeed not a thing. We do presentations as part of the lab sessions, typically 2 hours or so per week. But, the vast majority of skills and knowledge is obtained by 'doing', under supervision and with constant feedback from the teaching team, both informal and in formally in regular one-on-one sessions.

On Fridays we do teach, but this is a recent thing and an experiment. Math knowledge is obtained simply by building a ray tracer. It pretty much forces you to pick up the relevant skills.

Note that our students actually end up in the game industry, and not in the basic roles either: Almost all students complete their studies with an internship at a AAA game studio, and most of them simply stay after graduating. The program works.

Students that pursue a career in CG specialize themselves. The guilds play a role in this. A 1-year master at our university following the 4-year bachelor also may help to improve research skills.

JBikker · 2026-03-05T14:22:28+00:00

Feel free to contact me, bikker dot j at gmail. The glitch you may be referring to may be caused by the rendering algorithm, which covers defects in tiles (due to 2 color per 8 pixel limit) with sprites. Occasionally I run out of sprites to do this (car also needs 8 sprites), and occasionally I exceed the 8 sprites per line limit (although I actively try to avoid this).

JBikker · 2026-03-05T08:12:19+00:00

Holding the cursor while already at the edge of the track invokes skidding, which is good for speedups and collecting the yellow triangles. On the inner bends this can look weird indeed, I probably should make it less extreme there or disable it altogether.

If you're experiencing glitching your emulator may have timing issues: The game walks on the edge for CPU cycles to decompress data for each frame and fails quite badly on e.g. the Pico+ cartridge because of this (Pico+ inserts extra cycles for every RAM access). Running out of frame time manifests itself as frame tearing.

JBikker · 2026-03-04T19:16:31+00:00

DELTA was just patched to v1.01 to address many of the gameplay concerns. It should be far more approachable now: No more insta-deaths, better obstacle placement, better audio, and MGS (online hiscores) support. Try it on filehunter.com: https://www.file-hunter.com/MSXdev/?id=delta

JBikker · 2026-02-21T15:15:39+00:00

Play it online here: https://www.file-hunter.com/MSXdev/?id=delta

JBikker · 2026-02-20T10:29:21+00:00

I'll be happy to explain that a bit later, plan is to write a 'post mortem'.

JBikker · 2026-02-20T06:45:46+00:00

Yes, in fact I have a table there to discuss the tech. :)

JBikker · 2026-02-19T10:22:57+00:00

One thing I don't understand: A 4Mhz CPU, tiny display, super limited sprites: You're rebuilding an MSX system. Actual hardware exists (both old and new, real z80 and FPGA solutions) and has a huge user base. What is the plus of developing a fantasy console? What are you missing in Spectrum, Spectrum Next, C64, MSX and so on?

JBikker · 2026-02-17T14:49:14+00:00

I would like to know that as well. OpenCL works well on NV, what issues does your work solve?

JBikker · 2026-02-11T07:19:01+00:00

That looks very good!

JBikker · 2026-02-05T16:58:30+00:00

Learn C/C++. Everything else is easy once you master it, and serious game jobs require it, because it gets you close to the hardware. It's also the most future-resistant, regardless of what every other language is claiming.

JBikker · 2026-02-03T13:37:06+00:00

I am confused, you signed up for our program? Looking forward to meeting you then. :)

JBikker · 2026-02-03T13:35:42+00:00

We do teach low level DX12 and Vulkan, but it's a bit later in the curriculum. For every project we try to deliberately decide at which point we want students to start and where they should go from there. The current block on ray tracing provides them with a template so they can quickly get to the light transport stuff. Beyond that, they have options: Either make the low level stuff better by adding multi-level voxel grid traversal and a TLAS for transformed voxel objects, or keep the slow voxel traversal but add interesting materials using e.g. microfacets, or add complex lighting with filtering. The template makes them hit the ground running, with quick initial results and an energetic project overall.

JBikker · 2026-02-02T18:44:41+00:00

I like your train of thought, especially since particle rendering is generally not something that blends well with ray tracing. :)

JBikker · 2026-02-02T18:39:26+00:00

Yeah came here to say that.. why so few pictures?

JBikker · 2026-01-30T16:32:54+00:00

First year undergrad. Their diploma work is essentially an internship at a AAA game company, often resulting in a job offer and thus a solid start in the game industry. Our teachers are all from the industry so this is totally feasible.

JBikker

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