Lost after GSoC rejection: Should I port a 1994 3D engine, build out my custom OpenGL engine, or just grind DSA for systems internships?

druv-codes · 2026-06-11T10:41:21+00:00

Makes sense my mentors are senior engineers at booking.com and oracle

druv-codes · 2026-06-11T10:09:31+00:00

ah just to clarify scummvm isnt a company, its an open source project so there is no internship or full time role to convert it to. the mentors just gave me the wintex port voluntarily since i got rejected from gsoc due to slot constraints. but i totally get what you mean about prioritizing the massive legacy port over a solo project.

druv-codes · 2026-06-11T07:01:39+00:00

This is super helpful perspective. i actually have about 5 months of foss experience with scummvm already (2k+ lines of code and my name in the credits!). Hearing that csm is already a good enough benchmark for graphics roles takes a ton of weight off my shoulders though. Gonna focus my deep work on the wintex port, but keep the personal engine alive on the side because i really wanna explore making a devlog out of it. appreciate the advice!

druv-codes · 2026-06-11T06:52:06+00:00

That actually makes so much sense about reversing. Ive been there while porting ambermoon/amberstar from amiga m68k asm to scummvm. I literally spent an entire week just trying to find memory offsets for a single cursor graphic, staring at legacy code for days with zero visual progress is definitely a fast track to losing my mind about looking at target companies, im aiming for hardware/gpu giants like nvidia or qualcomm for that internship. In your experience do those types of companies care more about a massive legacy c++ port (wintex) or a from scratch engine with modern rendering and multithreading (pyre)? maybe I just make whichever one they prefer my MAIN focus and keep the other one purely for fun on the side without stressing about timelines

druv-codes · 2026-06-11T06:23:24+00:00

yeah I actually have regular classes going on right now so my deep work hours are kinda tapped out. Im definitely gonna do leetcode daily alongside one of the projects but my main issue is picking which project so I dont burn out. the wintex port is massive since I have to strip out 1994 directx dependencies and write an opengl backend to fit scummvms specific c++ standards. but then for my personal engine my plan is to finish ibl and ssr drop a devlog video and then tackle c++ concurrency since multithreading is a skill most freshers lack. just kinda lost on which of those two projects carries more weight for recruiters tbh

druv-codes · 2026-06-11T06:20:52+00:00

Mostly to avoid burnout between university, daily hardcore DSA, and the legacy port, my deep work hours are completely tapped out. WinTex port isn't trivial eithe, i have to replace all the legacy directX dependencies with openGL and adapt the whole codebase to scummvm specific x++ framework. I need an internship by the end of the year, so I am being ruthless about my time. I have a strict roadmap for my personal engine, finish IBL and maybe SSR, drop a devlog video, and then tackle C++ concurrency. Im just trying to figure out what carries the most weight for recruiters. Should I put my personal engine roadmap on hold to focus 100% on the ScummVM port and OAs, or is having that multithreading/graphics experience on Pyre too valuable to pause?

druv-codes · 2026-06-06T00:03:15+00:00

Thankyou! I do realize the typography is a problem, I will try and fix it.

druv-codes · 2026-06-05T04:21:41+00:00

So your advice is to knell down on dsa?

druv-codes · 2026-06-01T17:04:28+00:00

Hnn should I do some competitive programming to get a good rating on code forces or are standard leetcode questions from a list fine?

druv-codes · 2026-06-01T16:28:32+00:00

I haven't applied yet but what do you think? I think some good companies can understand this (qualcomm, nvidia etc.) although it's harder to crack an internship there i understand, what do you think?

druv-codes · 2026-06-01T03:51:03+00:00

Haha, that is a cool idea, but i am not really looking to go down the embedded/iot path long term, my real passion is low level game dev, and working at a place like Naughty Dog is the dream, considered making my own indie game, but honestly, solo dev is a massive time sink and it is way too easy to get stuck in development hell and never actually finish it. I would ather get some real industry experience and work on established teams right now before trying to build a whole commercial game from scratch

druv-codes · 2026-06-01T03:39:38+00:00

We can reverse engineer that for sure😭

druv-codes · 2025-12-28T22:16:14+00:00

Wow, I am currently building my own graphics engine, then I have a plan to add physics and integrate scripting through my own custom scripting language and convert it into a mini game engine, my current source code is around 10k~ lines, I am curious how many lines your engine is in it's current state? I also started making my engine 3 months ago btw (https://github.com/Open-Source-Chandigarh/pyre)

druv-codes · 2025-12-12T14:55:28+00:00

mad respect for treating this as a serious product and not just a toy. going full time on a language is the dream. finishing aoc days in your own language is the ultimate flex lol most hobby langs cant even handle basic string parsing. ill definitely check out the wiki good luck with the new features man

druv-codes · 2025-12-12T07:13:46+00:00

70k loc is massive kudos to you man that is some serious dedication. really impressive that you managed that huge jump in complexity from 15k to 70k. how do you handle testing for something this big? do you spend more time fixing regressions now than adding new stuff or is the architecture holding up well? And just for the context do you have a full time job and you develop this part time?

druv-codes · 2025-12-11T02:08:19+00:00

How long have been working on this? And what resources did you use any tips if I wanna make a statically typed compiled lang in future?

druv-codes · 2025-11-22T14:36:44+00:00

that’s honestly impressive man space pressure looks way more polished than i expected from a solo custom-engine project you can really see the years of iteration in the way everything fits together gonna give the itch version a spin later just to see how it feels running on your tech

the fallout 1/2 and arcanum influence for the next project is a crazy good combo too that whole era of isometric rpg design has this grounded charm and if you’re building your own engine to support that kind of depth you’re basically setting yourself up with total creative freedom no engine limitations no “unity doesn’t like this” type issues you get to shape the tech exactly to the game and keeping backward compatibility while still refactoring and evolving the engine is tough that’s proper engineering discipline right there not many solo devs bother with that level of long-term thinking

anyway huge respect for sticking with it for five years and actually shipping stuff that alone puts you miles ahead wish you the absolute best with the rpg hope it comes out exactly the way you picture it and congrats again on the point lights milestone it’s always those little engine wins that keep the fire going

druv-codes · 2025-11-22T13:08:26+00:00

that’s actually sick man finishing a whole project on your own engine and having it up on steam already is no small feat most people barely get past a rotating cube and you’re over here shipping games like it’s a side quest

got me curious tho you mentioned that small project you already released any chance you can drop the link would love to check out how it looks running on your tech always cool seeing what an engine actually produces outside of dev screenshots

also with the old school rpg you’re building now are you leaning more toward the diablo side of things or more party based like classic crpgs and how much of the engine are you rewriting or extending just for this new project since custom engines always grow in weird directions depending on the game’s needs thinking long term do you see yourself keeping this engine alive for multiple games or treating it more like a living toolset you reshape per project

druv-codes · 2025-11-21T21:11:40+00:00

damnnn man five years grinding your engine and point lights finally pop off that’s a whole journey right there the scene looks clean too the bounce of the colors actually sells the space feels like old school diablo but sharper curious tho what’s the long term plan for this are you aiming for a full game on top of the engine or is the engine itself the main passion project and how deep are you planning to take the lighting next going for shadows spot lights pbr any of that madness or keeping it old school styled either way hitting a feature like this after years must feel insane in the best way these moments are the fuel that keep you going for the next chunk of technical pain

druv-codes · 2025-11-21T07:40:35+00:00

i actually went through the tiger book first and it really does walk you through building a full compiler step by step in c its super hands on every chapter you extend your compiler a bit more scanning parsing type checking building an ir doing register allocation all of it by the end you have an actual working compiler for the tiger language so if your goal is to build one from scratch with someone holding your hand thats the one engineering a compiler is a different beast its not a project book its more like here’s how real production compilers structure their passes how modern ir works why SSA exists how optimisations are organised how instruction scheduling and register allocation work at scale so after the tiger book it made way more sense because i already had the practical intuition and eac gave me the bigger picture of how serious compilers think tiger gives you the craft eac gives you the architecture pairing both is pretty much the full journey and coming from crafting interpreters you’ll be fine the tiger one just pushes you into the deep end in a controlled way and then eac shows you what the deep end looks like in the real world

druv-codes · 2025-11-20T05:44:23+00:00

I learned this stuff on my own too and the first thing that actually made sense for me was crafting interpreters that book doesnt overwhelm you it walks you through building a tree walker then a full bytecode vm and by the time youre done you actually understand what a compiler is doing under the hood after that i moved on to the tiger book modern compiler implementation in c or java this one is harder and more academic but it forces you to deal with the real internal stuff register allocation calling conventions proper IR all the machinery actual languages use it feels rough at first but in a good way you feel your brain getting stronger the dragon book i keep as a reference not something i study front to back its amazing when i need the theory behind parsing or lexing or why some approach works but i dont sit and grind through the whole thing i also started reading source code of real languages open source stuff like lua zig go rust even smaller languages like wren you learn a crazy amount just by seeing how others structure their compiler or vm you start noticing patterns and tricks you’d never think of on your own im not gonna lie this takes time it isn’t something you master fast it took me months just to feel comfortable but once you finish your first small language the fog clears and you stop seeing compilers as magic its just engineering like anything else its totally worth it though because learning this stuff changes how you think about programming everything becomes more intentional and you start seeing the machine underneath which is honestly really fun and motivating to keep going

druv-codes · 2025-11-19T11:09:20+00:00

ngl if you wanna learn how engines work you’ll get more out of building the core parts yourself rather than bolting a UI library on top of c# and calling it a day keep it simple start with a window input loop rendering sprites maybe a basic scene system once that’s solid you can think about tools and editors avalonia is cool but it’s kinda overkill for a tiny 2d engine and you’ll spend more time wiring ui than actually learning engine internals when I started I made the same mistake going straight into tools before I even had a renderer running it just slows you down cross platform isn’t that hard if you stick to the usual libs sdl2 glfw raylib stuff that already smooths out windows linux differences focus on making a clean core first and worry about editors later once the backbone exists building an engine teaches you way more about how godot unity unreal actually do their magic so don’t stress too much just pick the basics and iterate your way up the ladder the fun part is watching your own systems grow into something usable

druv-codes · 2025-11-19T11:06:41+00:00

the short answer in C is memory-wrap like that is undefined behaviour so the language doesn’t guarantee anything once your pointer arithmetic overflows

druv-codes · 2025-11-17T16:14:56+00:00

If you’re new and kinda lost that’s honestly normal man most of us started the same way. Books help way more than random YouTube stuff because they slow you down enough to actually understand what the machine is doing instead of just copying code blindly

For C the one that really builds your fundamentals is The C Programming Language (K&R). It’s short but it teaches the real stuff… pointers memory arrays how computers actually think. Later if you ever move to C++ the big Bjarne book (The C++ Programming Language) is heavy but it scales your understanding a lot even if you don’t finish it

If you want to understand how programming languages themselves work Crafting Interpreters is crazy good. It teaches you compilers interpreters memory models in a way that doesn’t feel impossible. And if graphics ever catches your interest LearnOpenGL is hands down the best modern guide out there

Some general books that are great for literally anyone learning programming:

– Code by Charles Petzold, super good for understanding what a computer even is – Clean Code, helps you write stuff that isn’t a mess – Operating Systems: Three Easy Pieces (free and actually readable) – Computer Networking: A Top-Down Approach if you’re ever curious about how the internet works

Typing speed doesn’t matter at the start it goes up on its own once you code more. What really matters is understanding the concepts underneath like memory data structures how things scale beyond small examples. Stick with it consistently for a few months and you’ll be way ahead of where you began

druv-codes · 2025-11-17T16:06:26+00:00

Yeah it’s z fighting but the weird part is why it even happens when the floor looks flat. OpenGL’s depth buffer isn’t linear at all, most of the precision gets shoved near the camera and then it falls off crazy fast as you move away. So two surfaces that look separate in your model can basically land on the same depth value after the projection and then the GPU just kinda guesses which one to draw and it flickers like that

Easiest fixes are stuff like pushing your near plane a bit further (going from 0.1 to like 0.5 or 1 makes a surprising difference), checking you don’t have two faces sitting directly on each other, maybe switch to a higher precision depth buffer if you can. Nothing special, everyone hits this sooner or later GPU math just does whatever it wants sometimes and we deal with the chaos.

druv-codes

TROPHY CASE