Why? Genuinely asking, this topic is very interesting to me.

My working thesis is that UIs are basically video games. Just a gut feeling I can't really 100% put in words.

But essentially they're the same thing: Read input, update model, render view.

What is your thesis then? What is UI?

It's a single HTML file, not minified, without dependencies, so you can just inspect the source code. It's just raw JS and WebGL shaders. No assets, everything is procedurally generated.

For each cell, I draw a single quad using instanced rendering. To create a nice organic wobble, I use SDF (Signed Distance Fields) to draw a circle (or another base shape), which is then distorted by adjusting the radius using multiple overlapping sine waves. I explain this visually here. [1]

To get the cells to stretch dynamically based on their velocity, I use a technique called Domain Warping. Basically in the fragment shader, the fragmentPosition is adjusted inwards/outwards depending on the current velocity, which squashes/stretches the entire coordinate system of the quad in either direction. Gives it a very organic look. I explain this in more detail here. [2]

Physics are also custom, on the CPU using position-based dynamics (PBD). This is currently the weak point of the engine, and with lots of cells, it's CPU constrained. I might move this to the GPU later or switch to a different approach. Not sure yet.

The infinite zoom mechanic works by dynamically rendering only the two currently visible layers. Physics are currently simulated all the time for all layers, although I could potentially also pause layers that are not currently visible.

All of this uses data-oriented design (DOD) techniques to keep most of the data structures in flat typed arrays for fast iteration and to minimize allocations in the main game loop.

I'm planning to build this engine out into a full incremental game with some light automation elements (think a microscopic Factorio, but much shorter). If you're interested in following the dev process, I post highly technical deep-dives on YouTube [3], or you can enter your email here [4] to get source code updates (super low volume).

Let me know what you think! Happy to answer any questions.

[1] https://youtu.be/VChlSt6gVSo?t=380 [2] https://youtu.be/VChlSt6gVSo?t=516 [3] https://youtube.com/@philomatics [4] https://philomatics.com/cell-game

Comments URL: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49057276

Points: 3

# Comments: 1

I'd also be very interested in SwiftKey alternatives, since MS already almost killed it once.

https://youtu.be/q_Rqvd1ayUE

The parent post's worry is warranted, IMO.

To answer your question: I would immediately get rid of guard.

Also, I think the complexity and interplay of structs, classes, enums, protocols and now actors is staggering.

Imagine a Premiere plugin where you could say "remove all scenes containing cats" and it'll spit out an EDL (Edit Decision List) that you can still manually adjust.

I would've thought no, because of the knowledge cutoff in whatever model you use to download it.

Jonathan Edwards (Subtext lang) has a lot of great research on this.

I'd love to see someone do this, or a similar task, live on stream. I always feel like an idiot when I read things like this because despite using Claude Code a lot I've never been able to get anything of that magnitude out of it that wasn't slop/completely unusable, to the point where I started to question if I hadn't been faster writing everything by hand.

Claiming that software is now 90% cheaper feels absurd to me and I'd love to understand better where this completely different worldview comes from. Am I using the tools incorrectly? Different domains/languages/ecosystems?