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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif
@longbool.bsky.social
140 followers 190 following 20 posts
Senior Graphics Programmer @ Digital Extremes. Previously ZeniMax Online, WB Blog: https://alextardif.com/eden.html
alextardif.com
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themaister.bsky.social
themaister.bsky.social @themaister.bsky.social · 4d
New blog post: Outlining an alternative path to learn graphics programming.

themaister.net/blog/2025/10...
A case for learning GPU programming with a compute-first mindset – Maister's Graphics Adventures
themaister.net
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Reposted by Alex Tardif
asawicki.info
Adam Sawicki @asawicki.info · 4d
I recommend looking at new Paged Out issue #7 - a free magazine with lots of articles, one page each. This one includes my article "Modern 4K Intros on the Demoscene".
pagedout.institute
Paged Out!
Deeply technical zine. And it's free.
pagedout.institute
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Reposted by Alex Tardif
nicolas-lopez.bsky.social
Nicolas Lopez @nicolas-lopez.bsky.social · 9d
Ray tracing The World of #AssassinsCreedShadows (Siggraph 2025) available on YouTube youtu.be/2K-rwy4aMmU?...
RAY TRACING THE WORLD OF ASSASSIN'S CREED SHADOWS (Advances in Real-Time Rendering SIGGRAPH 2025)
YouTube video by SIGGRAPH Advances in Real-Time Rendering
youtu.be
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Reposted by Alex Tardif
zeux.io
Arseny Kapoulkine @zeux.io · 9d
New blog post! In "Billions of triangles in minutes" we'll walk through hierarchical cluster level of detail generation of, well, billions of triangles in minutes. Reposts welcome!

zeux.io/2025/09/30/b...
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Reposted by Alex Tardif
martinfuller.bsky.social
Martin Fuller @martinfuller.bsky.social · 13d
A little something I've been meaning to write for a while martinfullerblog.wordpress.com/2025/09/26/a...

Thank you to the awesome people at Machine Games and id Software!
Anisotropic Scaling in Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and DOOM: The Dark Ages
While working on Indiana Jones and the Great Circle and later DOOM: The Dark Ages, it became apparent that both titles are particularly sensitive to anisotropic sampling cost on the Xbox Series con…
martinfullerblog.wordpress.com
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · 14d
Advanced Shader Delivery is here devblogs.microsoft.com/directx/agil...
Agility SDK 1.618: Advanced Shader Delivery and 1.716 out of preview - DirectX Developer Blog
We are pleased to announce the retail release of AgilitySDK 1.618, available on Agility SDK Downloads today! This release promotes our 1.716 features out of preview and also introduces support for the...
devblogs.microsoft.com
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · 14d
I have some memory that nointerpolation may (on some hardware at least) cause that export to not be packed with interpolated vertex exports, and depending on how many you have and the way the memory lines up, that could be relevant
Reposted by Alex Tardif
kostasanagnostou.bsky.social
Kostas Anagnostou @kostasanagnostou.bsky.social · 18d
Continuing on the topic of GPU utilisation and performance, as a practical example, I looked a bit deeper into the impact of vertex shader exports on the cost of a drawcall and wrote another blog post with some observations interplayoflight.wordpress.com/2025/09/21/t...
The performance impact of vertex shader exports
Following up on the previous post on GPU utilization and performance, and to provide a practical example, I expanded a bit on a topic discussed in brief: vertex shader exports and their impact on p…
interplayoflight.wordpress.com
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · 25d
Lucky timing for me! Been playing Warframe a bunch too, lightning is striking repeatedly here, and I'm excited to contribute to it :D
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · 25d
And with that last thread ended, I'm so excited to share that tomorrow is my first day at Digital Extremes!

After the project cancellation I finally had the chance to pop open Soulframe after getting access a long time ago, and I got hooked so quickly that I jumped at their job page.
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · 25d
PS: I did end up going with a studio using custom tech. This would have been an easy call years ago, to just keep learning from different ways people write engines, but this time I made this choice knowing I may actually be severely limiting my future opportunities.

I followed my heart though :-)
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · 25d
This remote support is very cool. One I'd like to shout out is this job at Yellow Brick which is still open: yellowbrickgames.ca/job/graphics...

I loved my experience interviewing with them, and their next title is a unique opportunity if you're looking.
Graphics Programmer – Yellow Brick Games
yellowbrickgames.ca
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · 25d
More good news - the amount of remote opportunities as a game graphics programmer are higher than I have ever seen. I counted them in the dozens (40+) at time of application, most of them Unreal-based. Six years ago that number would have been near-zero.
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · 25d
On the flip-side, in the wake of all these layoffs from large corporations, are springs of many new small studios who would otherwise have no chance of making their games without UE5.

Both edges of the sword are sharp!
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · 25d
I think the impacts are both very positive and very negative.

Consolidation is not great, especially when the future relies on the perpetual good graces of one company, which is not usually a good bet. Learning fundamentals may also be diminishing as a result (not enough info)
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · 25d
I haven't written a followup because the reality is (I would imagine) pretty clear, the Unreal takeover is real and the implications are a lot to think about.

UE may ultimately become the tool we're required to know, like artists with their DCCs.
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · 25d
That experience has been shared by a number of people I know who were also on the job hunt at the same time.

Some years ago I wrote a post titled "On the Perceived Inevitability of Unreal" and its impact on the industry from my (limited) perspective --
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · 25d
3 of the studios using UE turned my application down immediately at the front door citing "lack of professional experience with UE5" No screening.

Because I had not worked on a UE5 title specifically, which was formally released less than 4 years ago, three companies felt I was a non-starter
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · 25d
Sharing some details about my job hunt in case it's helpful to someone!

After our project got canned I applied to 12 jobs as a first, and mercifully last, batch.

6 were Unreal-based, 6 were custom tech
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · 26d
this is beautiful
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · Sep 8
Nodding all through "What's Changed For Me Personally"

"Like I mentioned earlier, with bindless you can effectively represent any resource descriptor as 32-bit integer or handle that you store freely in structs"

The simplicity this one thing unlocks on GPU and host side is staggering :D Great post
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · Sep 8
If you work with D3D12, this is the post you want to read!
mjp123.bsky.social
mjp @mjp123.bsky.social · Sep 8
I've got a new blog post for all of you fine folks! It runs through the additions to D3D12 since it was released, and finishes up with some of the things that have changed for me personally in my code.

(And yes it's really been 10 years 👴).

therealmjp.github.io/posts/ten-ye...
Ten Years of D3D12
For those of us that have been using it from the start, it can be hard to believe that Direct3D 12 has been around for nearly ten years now. Windows 10 was released on July 29th 2015, and D3D12 has be...
therealmjp.github.io
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · Sep 4
Silksong :D
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longbool.bsky.social
Alex Tardif @longbool.bsky.social · Aug 30
Love this one Kostas! There are surprisingly few (public) resources on this subject and you cover lots of great examples here.

Especially love the async compute example to show how two workloads that don't compete much for the same resources can be overlapped nicely.

Thanks for writing :-)
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Reposted by Alex Tardif
kostasanagnostou.bsky.social
Kostas Anagnostou @kostasanagnostou.bsky.social · Aug 29
New blog post discussing a few approaches to bottleneck reduction and GPU utilisation and performance increase interplayoflight.wordpress.com/2025/08/29/g...
GPU utilisation and performance improvements
Drill deep into a GPU’s architecture and at its heart you will find a large number of SIMD units whose purpose is to read data, perform some vector or scalar ALU (VALU or SALU) operation on i…
interplayoflight.wordpress.com
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