Don Williamson
@donw.bsky.social
Head of Rendering @ Pacific Light & Hologram
~30 games/engines/platforms including Fable, Splinter Cell, Total War, Dauntless, No Mans Sky, DeepMind Lab.
Lionhead/Microsft, Ubisoft, Google/DeepMind, SEGA, etc.
https://donw.io
https://github.com/Celtoys/
~30 games/engines/platforms including Fable, Splinter Cell, Total War, Dauntless, No Mans Sky, DeepMind Lab.
Lionhead/Microsft, Ubisoft, Google/DeepMind, SEGA, etc.
https://donw.io
https://github.com/Celtoys/
Ah, nice, yet another "wrote a huge chunk of the bloody engine" credit gets marked up as "additional programming." As a contractor/consultant you have much better financial control over your future but don't ever expect to be part of the team. If you want legitimate credit: put it in your contract.
November 24, 2025 at 11:00 AM
Ah, nice, yet another "wrote a huge chunk of the bloody engine" credit gets marked up as "additional programming." As a contractor/consultant you have much better financial control over your future but don't ever expect to be part of the team. If you want legitimate credit: put it in your contract.
It's coming up on 10 years since I added Global Illumination to UE4 for a client and I still feel immensely sad when colourful games don't attempt the same. They lose out on so much warmth and grounding, and also making lighting artist' life much easier.
(this particular one was voxel cone tracing)
(this particular one was voxel cone tracing)
November 19, 2025 at 9:34 PM
It's coming up on 10 years since I added Global Illumination to UE4 for a client and I still feel immensely sad when colourful games don't attempt the same. They lose out on so much warmth and grounding, and also making lighting artist' life much easier.
(this particular one was voxel cone tracing)
(this particular one was voxel cone tracing)
Reposted by Don Williamson
This is Sektori! A twin-stick shooter I've been making (and documenting the journey) since April 2021. And it finally launched TODAY on Steam, PS5 and Xbox! Here's a fresh launch trailer, all shares highly appreciated. More game info in replies.
#indiegame #ps5 #xbox #steam #indiedev #gamedev
#indiegame #ps5 #xbox #steam #indiedev #gamedev
November 18, 2025 at 10:49 AM
Reposted by Don Williamson
New blog post about the development of Radical Pie:
terathon.com/blog/radical...
terathon.com/blog/radical...
November 1, 2025 at 10:32 PM
New blog post about the development of Radical Pie:
terathon.com/blog/radical...
terathon.com/blog/radical...
Took me AGES to dig this up, I knew I preserved it but I have so many backups. This my first reviewed Shareware game from early 1997 (aged 16). I'd love to frame it but it does look a bit gaudy 😂
November 10, 2025 at 10:48 PM
Took me AGES to dig this up, I knew I preserved it but I have so many backups. This my first reviewed Shareware game from early 1997 (aged 16). I'd love to frame it but it does look a bit gaudy 😂
Looking at my C# code from 15 years ago: it was more verbose but A LOT less noisy. Trying to get to the bottom of it but there's a lot more scoping and brackets these days, with increased use of properties.
November 7, 2025 at 12:15 PM
Looking at my C# code from 15 years ago: it was more verbose but A LOT less noisy. Trying to get to the bottom of it but there's a lot more scoping and brackets these days, with increased use of properties.
Reposted by Don Williamson
I am excited to announce the release of Radical Pie, version 1.0! This is the professional equation typesetting application that I've been working on for the last year. See the website for details.
radicalpie.com
radicalpie.com
October 28, 2025 at 10:39 PM
I am excited to announce the release of Radical Pie, version 1.0! This is the professional equation typesetting application that I've been working on for the last year. See the website for details.
radicalpie.com
radicalpie.com
I never got on with the later levels of Doom 1/2. The earlier levels were a master class in level design, while the later ones were a bit boring for me.
Just played Doom 2 Master Levels, though, and OH MY GOD they are a revelation. Incredibly well made and super fun!
doomwiki.org/wiki/Master_...
Just played Doom 2 Master Levels, though, and OH MY GOD they are a revelation. Incredibly well made and super fun!
doomwiki.org/wiki/Master_...
Master Levels for Doom II
The Master Levels for Doom II were released on December 26, 1995 by id Software as an expansion pack for Doom II. It was also included as a bonus on the Doom 3: Resurrection of Evil Xbox game disc in ...
doomwiki.org
November 3, 2025 at 10:57 AM
I never got on with the later levels of Doom 1/2. The earlier levels were a master class in level design, while the later ones were a bit boring for me.
Just played Doom 2 Master Levels, though, and OH MY GOD they are a revelation. Incredibly well made and super fun!
doomwiki.org/wiki/Master_...
Just played Doom 2 Master Levels, though, and OH MY GOD they are a revelation. Incredibly well made and super fun!
doomwiki.org/wiki/Master_...
I'm frankly astonished that we still can't tell our x64 CPUs to not add entries to the BTB. We have millions of bounds checks, sanitiser guards, type checks, overflow checks, etc. polluting the BTB. When all we need is a "BTB says no" and a forward branch.
Xbox 360 PPC tw instruction be sad :(
Xbox 360 PPC tw instruction be sad :(
October 23, 2025 at 11:48 AM
I'm frankly astonished that we still can't tell our x64 CPUs to not add entries to the BTB. We have millions of bounds checks, sanitiser guards, type checks, overflow checks, etc. polluting the BTB. When all we need is a "BTB says no" and a forward branch.
Xbox 360 PPC tw instruction be sad :(
Xbox 360 PPC tw instruction be sad :(
It must be every few months I become horrified at C# authors significantly ballooning the surface area of the language. Today I found Primary Constructors and I had to WTF. Each new generation of C# programmer must have fundamentally incompatible styles.
October 17, 2025 at 11:27 AM
It must be every few months I become horrified at C# authors significantly ballooning the surface area of the language. Today I found Primary Constructors and I had to WTF. Each new generation of C# programmer must have fundamentally incompatible styles.
LAPACK/BLAS have a neat vector normalisation trick: find the max axis and divide each component by that before rsqrt and scale. Avoids overflow and gradual underflow due to squaring in the rsqrt. If the max axis is tiny then all axes are tiny so the components can be considered roughly proportional.
October 9, 2025 at 9:58 AM
LAPACK/BLAS have a neat vector normalisation trick: find the max axis and divide each component by that before rsqrt and scale. Avoids overflow and gradual underflow due to squaring in the rsqrt. If the max axis is tiny then all axes are tiny so the components can be considered roughly proportional.
There are days when I look at colourful, cartoony models up close and get annoyed at the polygonal silhouettes. Mainly because a small team in Santa Monica solved this 25 years ago on a Playstation 2 and I love that technology so much (tfrags!) . Using Lisp.
October 7, 2025 at 9:23 PM
There are days when I look at colourful, cartoony models up close and get annoyed at the polygonal silhouettes. Mainly because a small team in Santa Monica solved this 25 years ago on a Playstation 2 and I love that technology so much (tfrags!) . Using Lisp.
Reposted by Don Williamson
Reposted by Don Williamson
The local racists tried to burn down a place of worship. Please give generously ❤️
www.gofundme.com/f/community-...
www.gofundme.com/f/community-...
Donate to Community support for the arson-hit Peacehaven Mosque, organized by Lucy ~
Following the horrendous arson attack on the Peace Community Centre & Mos… Lucy ~ needs your support for Community support for the arson-hit Peacehaven Mosque
www.gofundme.com
October 5, 2025 at 3:27 PM
The local racists tried to burn down a place of worship. Please give generously ❤️
www.gofundme.com/f/community-...
www.gofundme.com/f/community-...
This game is all Glowmade, a crazy-talented team making a game they love. I played a small part on their custom engine, building lots since the WonderWorlds days (e.g. lighting model pretty much the same). This one has my own RHI across PC, Xbox and Playstaion too.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRr0...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRr0...
Beat This Game, Win $250,000
YouTube video by MrBeast Gaming
www.youtube.com
October 4, 2025 at 12:07 PM
This game is all Glowmade, a crazy-talented team making a game they love. I played a small part on their custom engine, building lots since the WonderWorlds days (e.g. lighting model pretty much the same). This one has my own RHI across PC, Xbox and Playstaion too.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRr0...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KRr0...
It's days like this I remember why I wrote Remotery. I'm building a 32-bit app and I recall Total War: Rome 2 being very tight on memory where no existing profiler would run without crashing. I had to write a custom one that ended up being the inspiration for Remotery.
October 3, 2025 at 10:59 AM
It's days like this I remember why I wrote Remotery. I'm building a 32-bit app and I recall Total War: Rome 2 being very tight on memory where no existing profiler would run without crashing. I had to write a custom one that ended up being the inspiration for Remotery.
Today I remember Lua uses 1-based indexing and it threw me into mild depression. Remembering vividly when our industry decided Lua was better and custom languages needed to extinct themselves. Sigh, we could have had so much better.
October 2, 2025 at 9:34 AM
Today I remember Lua uses 1-based indexing and it threw me into mild depression. Remembering vividly when our industry decided Lua was better and custom languages needed to extinct themselves. Sigh, we could have had so much better.
After building a basic CPU and GPU a couple years ago on FPGA, I still wake up thinking how all modern software development is taking an "everything runs all the time everywhere" model and forcing it to serialise. Then slowly increasing parallelism but never quite returning to that original power.
September 29, 2025 at 10:10 AM
After building a basic CPU and GPU a couple years ago on FPGA, I still wake up thinking how all modern software development is taking an "everything runs all the time everywhere" model and forcing it to serialise. Then slowly increasing parallelism but never quite returning to that original power.
TIL of VD-Dev, despite sharing past franchise titles with Guillaume Dubail and the late Fernando Velez. These guys were proper savants of their time, unlike those that tend to hit popular culture. I'm in complete awe of their work, Asterix & Obelix was mind-blowing.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfOR...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfOR...
PW Hall of Fame: V.D.-Dev (aka Velez & Dubail) | Punching Weight [SSFF]
YouTube video by Stop Skeletons From Fighting
www.youtube.com
September 24, 2025 at 12:04 PM
TIL of VD-Dev, despite sharing past franchise titles with Guillaume Dubail and the late Fernando Velez. These guys were proper savants of their time, unlike those that tend to hit popular culture. I'm in complete awe of their work, Asterix & Obelix was mind-blowing.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfOR...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=rfOR...
Success!
Standard CRT finally bolted in and my custom CRT is no longer necessary.
I can now delete 1000s of LOC that have caused years of pain.
There's a new startup race-condition in there but I'll find that easily enough.
Standard CRT finally bolted in and my custom CRT is no longer necessary.
I can now delete 1000s of LOC that have caused years of pain.
There's a new startup race-condition in there but I'll find that easily enough.
September 22, 2025 at 10:43 AM
Success!
Standard CRT finally bolted in and my custom CRT is no longer necessary.
I can now delete 1000s of LOC that have caused years of pain.
There's a new startup race-condition in there but I'll find that easily enough.
Standard CRT finally bolted in and my custom CRT is no longer necessary.
I can now delete 1000s of LOC that have caused years of pain.
There's a new startup race-condition in there but I'll find that easily enough.
Another target on my list is clReflect. Carrying Clang/LLVM as a dependency has been lunatic-fringe levels of dedication to the cause - a 100GB build folder! The worst part was maintaining a release copy and my own local enhancements.
I have to decide whether to retire it or build a custom parser.
I have to decide whether to retire it or build a custom parser.
September 22, 2025 at 9:42 AM
Another target on my list is clReflect. Carrying Clang/LLVM as a dependency has been lunatic-fringe levels of dedication to the cause - a 100GB build folder! The worst part was maintaining a release copy and my own local enhancements.
I have to decide whether to retire it or build a custom parser.
I have to decide whether to retire it or build a custom parser.
I'm switching over from my homegrown CRT to the MSVC one so that I can shed some maintenance weight. Long overdue.
Getting some funky errors now because of some shortcuts I took, but it's nearly working! Can't wait to delete all that code.
Getting some funky errors now because of some shortcuts I took, but it's nearly working! Can't wait to delete all that code.
September 21, 2025 at 12:52 PM
I'm switching over from my homegrown CRT to the MSVC one so that I can shed some maintenance weight. Long overdue.
Getting some funky errors now because of some shortcuts I took, but it's nearly working! Can't wait to delete all that code.
Getting some funky errors now because of some shortcuts I took, but it's nearly working! Can't wait to delete all that code.
For some reason getting excited for picking up my planetary sandbox again, in spare time. It's been years and the vision appears to be quite unique.
Primarily motivated by a whole bunch of UGC ideas, but heck, I'd love to replace the user C# scripting with Luau.
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
Primarily motivated by a whole bunch of UGC ideas, but heck, I'd love to replace the user C# scripting with Luau.
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
Planetary, Multiplayer Voxel Sandbox - YouTube
www.youtube.com
September 17, 2025 at 10:57 AM
For some reason getting excited for picking up my planetary sandbox again, in spare time. It's been years and the vision appears to be quite unique.
Primarily motivated by a whole bunch of UGC ideas, but heck, I'd love to replace the user C# scripting with Luau.
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
Primarily motivated by a whole bunch of UGC ideas, but heck, I'd love to replace the user C# scripting with Luau.
www.youtube.com/playlist?lis...
I can not express how crazy it feels that my colleagues and I are genuinely inventing something new and redefining the path through graphics history from the late 70s onward.
We get to do go through all the problems our idols of generations past had to and admire their general awesomeness.
We get to do go through all the problems our idols of generations past had to and admire their general awesomeness.
September 12, 2025 at 3:49 PM
I can not express how crazy it feels that my colleagues and I are genuinely inventing something new and redefining the path through graphics history from the late 70s onward.
We get to do go through all the problems our idols of generations past had to and admire their general awesomeness.
We get to do go through all the problems our idols of generations past had to and admire their general awesomeness.