All stories*
67 quick stories on the rack · #gaming · TechHow Game Engines Fake Volumetric Light Beams
Game engines use clever shortcuts to fake god rays and light shafts. Here's exactly how they decide what to ca…
How Game Engines Decide Which NPCs to Simulate
Game crowds use a layered LOD system to fake thousands of characters without melting your GPU. The seams are i…
How Game Engines Handle Ambient Sound Loops
Game engines split ambient audio into loops and one-shots using deliberate mechanical rules. The logic behind …
Why Game Engines Delete Your Bullet Holes
Decals vanish under memory pressure, not on a timer. Engines run a quiet cost-benefit calculation, age, distan…
Game Engines Pick Which Bones to Simulate
Ragdoll physics runs on a strict budget. Engines rank every bone by visual importance and simulate only what y…
How Games Fake Infinite Mirror Reflections
Games can't render true infinite mirror loops. The trick engines use to decide where to stop is more interesti…
How Game Engines Fake Water Caustics
Real-time water caustics would melt any GPU if done honestly. This is the approximation trick engines actually…
Game Engines Animate Wind-Blown Trees Without Physics
Vertex shaders, painted weights, and invisible wind zones do the heavy lifting, no physics simulation required…
Game Engines Fake Grass Animation Brilliantly
No game simulates every blade of grass. Engines use culling, sine waves, and LOD tricks to fool your eyes at a…
Game Engines Blending Overlapping Character Animations
Sprinting and reloading at once? The engine splits the skeleton, weights dozens of joints, and outputs one pos…
Why Game Engines Struggle to Render Transparent Surfaces
Transparency in 3D games breaks in specific, predictable ways. The sorting tricks engines use, and why none of…
Game Engines and the Logic Behind Layered Footstep Sounds
From terrain weight maps to secondary raycasts, game engines run a fast, intricate query every footfall, and w…