AAA Failures 🤖, Graphics APIs 🧵
🎮 Big-Picture Gaming & Industry Trends
Why AAA Games Keep Failing: Player Fantasy, Budgets, and AI
Industry veteran Benson Russell (Uncharted, The Last of Us) explains why modern AAA keeps missing the mark: spiraling budgets, misaligned production methods, and a chronic neglect of “player fantasy.” He argues that great mechanics can’t save a game if players don’t want to live in its world, and outlines a fantasy-first approach to focus teams and reduce waste. Russell also explores how AI, portfolio strategy, and even recycling failed projects could help rebuild a sustainable, player-centric AAA landscape.
Joypad OS: One Firmware to Connect Any Game Controller to Any System
Joypad OS is an open-source universal controller firmware designed to make any controller work with any system. It handles input and output translation, offers modular firmware apps, and supports flexible routing and passthrough on a hardware-agnostic foundation. With support for USB and Bluetooth pads from Xbox, PlayStation, Nintendo, and more obscure devices, it’s ideal for both retro and modern setups. The project also positions itself as a platform for accessibility and assistive play.
🧱 Technical Tricks & Engine Wizardry
Cheap, Stable Non‑Convex Collisions in Unity with Composite Colliders
Unity’s convex MeshCollider restriction makes soft bodies and deforming meshes hard to handle convincingly, but this open-source project offers a practical workaround. Johann Hotzel outlines three composite collider strategies—surface spheres via Poisson-disc sampling, voxel-based box volumes, and mesh decomposition into convex chunks—all built on Unity’s native physics. Each approach trades accuracy, stability, and performance differently, covering organic, solid, and highly detailed meshes. It’s a transparent, lightweight alternative to costly black-box physics assets.
How One Tech Artist Faked Directional Destruction Without Killing FPS
VFX & Tech Artist Mohanad Ibrahim built a Houdini-to-Unreal destruction system that reacts to impact direction without relying on heavy real-time physics. Instead of Chaos, he pre-simulates four destruction variants—one per cardinal direction—and rotates them to match hit angles, staying within ±45° to avoid obvious artifacts. The setup runs in a single frame with no ongoing CPU cost, uses GPU hardware filtering to halve texture lookups, and streams only active variants into memory.
🖥️ Graphics APIs & Rendering Evolution
From DirectX to Vulkan: How Graphics APIs Shaped Modern Gamedev
Ever wondered whether you should learn Vulkan, DirectX 12, or just stick with Unreal Engine? This article answers by unpacking 40 years of graphics history: from direct hardware pokes, through the DirectX–OpenGL rivalry, to today’s low-level APIs and massive engines. It shows how DX12/Vulkan trade ease and stability for control, and why most devs are better off mastering high-level engines and shading tools. The author ends with sharp speculation on ray tracing’s rise and what future graphics APIs might look like.