Making Graphics Like it's 1993: Building the Catlantean 3D Retro Engine
Original: Making Graphics Like it's 1993
A deep dive into building Catlantean 3D, a retro software rendering engine under 1993 hardware constraints.
This post kicks off a series on building Catlantean 3D, a retro engine replicating 1993 graphics technology. The author bypasses modern GPUs to implement pure CPU software rendering, fixed-point math, and 256-color palettes. It offers a fascinating look into early 3D algorithms like raycasting and affine texture mapping, serving as an educational resource for low-level graphics.
In modern 3D graphics technology, we're used to powerful tools like WebGPU, DirectX 12, and Unreal Engine 5, where GPUs handle almost all rasterization, shading, and depth testing. However, in 1993 (the year Doom was born), 3D drawing was an extreme sport performed on extremely limited hardware.
Free shows the 3-line summary; Pro unlocks the full deep summary (~300 words) so you never have to click through.
See Pro plans →Want the original English / full article?
Read on Hacker News (AI keywords) →Summaries are AI-generated; the original article is authoritative.