paniq

NOIR: A Neatly Optimal Intermediate Representation

By Leonard Ritter (25.9.2024, last update 6.1.2024)

NOIR is a high-level function-scope intermediate representation for programs, extending SSA Form but omitting basic blocks in favor of a simple acyclic dependency structure that is simpler to evaluate, analyze, canonicalize and optimize, particularly in the context of concurrent and iterative execution, and offers different lowering strategies.

In order to render a function-level IR fully functional, we only need five things: instructions, ordering, branches, merges and loops. In the following sections, we will introduce and describe each element.

As an introductory example and for overview, here is an iterative fibonacci procedure expressed in NOIR pseudocode:

d7samurai

Minimal D3D11 part 2

Follow-up to Minimal D3D11, adding instanced rendering. As before: An uncluttered Direct3D 11 setup & basic rendering primer / API familiarizer. Complete, runnable Windows application contained in a single function and laid out in a linear, step-by-step fashion. No modern C++ / OOP / obscuring cruft.

The main difference here is that the hollow cube is rendered using DrawIndexedInstanced (which saves a lot of vertices compared to the original, so model data is now small enough to be included in the source without being too much in the way), but also all trigonometry and matrix math is moved to the vertex shader, further simplifying the main code.

Each instance is merely this piece of geometry, consisting of 4 triangles:

..which is

raysan5

CUSTOM GAME ENGINES: A Small Study

A couple of weeks ago I played (and finished) A Plague Tale, a game by Asobo Studio. I was really captivated by the game, not only by the beautiful graphics but also by the story and the locations in the game. I decided to investigate a bit about the game tech and I was surprised to see it was developed with a custom engine by a relatively small studio. I know there are some companies using custom engines but it's very difficult to find a detailed market study with that kind of information curated and updated. So this article.

Nowadays lots of companies choose engines like Unreal or Unity for their games (or that's what lot of people think) because d

d7samurai

Minimal D3D11

Minimal D3D11 reference implementation: An uncluttered Direct3D 11 setup + basic rendering primer and API familiarizer. Complete, runnable Windows application contained in a single function and laid out in a linear, step-by-step fashion that should be easy to follow from the code alone. ~200 LOC. No modern C++, OOP or (other) obscuring cruft. View on YouTube

Other gists in this series:

• Minimal D3D11 part 2