One of the problems with huge open-world games is that there’s a massive amount of data involved. Moreover, the nature of open world games is that much of the world is mutable — there is an enormous amount of state that can be changed by the player, and that state…

A Metamodern Guide to Politics: Book One, by Hanzi Freinacht I was drawn to this book for a number of reasons. For one thing, politics and philosophy are two of my favorite topics. …

I grew up watching “classic” Star Trek, and have been a fan of the franchise for all of my adult life. In fact, I would even admit that the moral and philosophical lessons of Gene Roddenberry’s vision have shaped my own views of society and politics to a great degree. …

Recently Elon Musk stated that one of his motivations in purchasing Twitter was that he was “against censorship”: By “free speech”, I simply mean that which matches the law. I am against censorship that goes far beyond the law. If people want less free speech, they will ask government to…

A Navigation Mesh or “navmesh” is a data structure used for route planning within virtual environments, and is particularly useful in game development. It consists of a collection of convex polygons representing areas of the map; the edges of the polygons are annotated with additional connectivity information, showing which areas…

Engineering Insights — This is a story told to me many years ago by a buddy who once worked at TRW. TRW, as many of you will recall, was a major military contractor, and this guy had been working with some old computer technology — namely, the guidance computer from a Minuteman I…

Engineering Insights — Part of the reason I became a software engineer is because of an interest in electronic music as a teenager. I built a number of hobby synthesizers in the mid-70s, and that got me into electronics, and eventually, programming. In this, I was inspired by many of the early pioneers…

A Writer’s Guide — As a former game creator, I’ve met many people over the years who wanted to “tell their story” within the medium of computer games. This article contains advice for people who want to do just that. …

In this article, I’ll show you everything you need to know in order to create portals in 3D scenes using the three.js framework. Portals are probably best known because of the game Portal published by Valve software, but they are useful in all kinds of games and graphics. An…