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Ask HN: Most interesting tech you built for just yourself?

1901 points l2silver | 3 comments | 27 Apr 23 15:04 UTC | HN request time: 1.36s | source

Maybe you've created your own AR program for wearables that shows the definition of a word when you highlight it IRL, or you've built a personal calendar app for your family to display on a monitor in the kitchen. Whatever it is, I'd love to hear it.
1. Waterluvian ◴[28 Apr 23 13:36 UTC] No.35741119[source]▶
I make a lot of tech for myself for learning, none of which being novel, so maybe this doesn’t exactly fit.

I made a raycasting engine to learn more about it and I’m in love. It’s the most clever thing ever. I can’t believe I have a 3D effect without using a single trig function. The math is so simple you could run it on a 286. Raycasting feels like a magical hack. It has no business being so ridiculously simple for what you get!

I’m taking it a step further and integrating a real-time map editor so you can modify a map as you play.

I’m not sure where to go beyond that, but I’m having a ton of fun.

replies(1): >>35741501 #
2. kiawe_fire ◴[28 Apr 23 14:14 UTC] No.35741501[source]▶
I’ve been wanting to play around with raycasting as well - I found myself with a sudden interest in so-called boomer shooters and would love to make my own (just for learning and messing around).

Any resources that you particularly liked when learning, or is the stuff I will find when Googling “raycasting engines” all good enough?

replies(1): >>35742040 #
3. Waterluvian ◴[28 Apr 23 14:55 UTC] No.35742040[source]▶
I used this one: https://lodev.org/cgtutor/raycasting.html (note this is just chapter 1 of 4 related chapters)

It's decent. In some cases it's a bit clumsy when they try to explain mathematics in natural language, but we can't always have pretty Latex-rendered math functions and graphics. =)