Home page of Sean Barrett, dysfunctional programmer.

my games source code on github: stb_image.h: public domain C image loading library stb_vorbis.c: public domain C ogg vorbis decoding library stb_truetype.h: public domain C truetype rasterization library etc. Greatest hits: gamedev: 2011-09-19: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project gamedev: 2021-08-01: Progressive Tiling 2D Blue Noise Point Sets Encoded as Images gamedev: 2011-10-22: Herringbone Wang Tiles, multiple papers and source code regarding a variant on Wang Tiles gamedev: 2011-12-25: Computing Skylight for 2D Height Fields by Finding 1D Height Field Horizons in Amortized Constant Time 100,000 plot summaries from Wikipedia my twitter my music my edited NIN videos (2009) my first remixed OK Go 'WTF' video (2010); my better second remixed OK Go 'WTF' video a mirror of Erik Ray's mostly-one-man mostly-humorous sci-fi "radio play" Lambda Expressway; although he was a friend of friends, I never met Erik before he died in 2008 at the mere age of 38 (apparently from complications of an accident involving him on a bike and a 93-year old lady in a car). I congealed as much as was possible in this merciless heat and slid into the Mondrian van sleeping soundly on the driveway. Minutes later it was barreling down the highway through rippling mirages at near-death speeds -- hundreds of metal pieces spinning, pulling, crashing beneath the weight of a bouncing ton -- sucking fluids through tubes to soothe the pain -- working feverishly at the decree of pedal-to-floor to go ever faster. The van had crossed a hundred thousand miles without too much trouble -- there were occasional instances of... rebellion: oil and transmission fluid leaks; a blown rod; exploding ignition coil; wheels falling off -- but these were minor inconveniences and just added to the excitement of our myriad road adventures. This time was different, however. The car wanted to die. miscellaneous long-term computer-related projects I'm working on (currently sGAR, a monome-controlled music creation system) free C source code on github -- I have placed all this code in the public domain, so you can use it in any way. (To be explicit: I am the sole author of these works and I disavow any copyright claim over them; or I was the sole author of the original version of the work, and every contribution from other persons has had its origins vetted and the contributor explicitly assigned his contribution to the public domain as well.) stb_truetype.h: public domain truetype font rasterizer stb_vorbis.c: public domain Ogg Vorbis audio decompression stb_image.c:   public domain JPEG decompression   public domain PNG decompression   public domain BMP, TGA, PSD loading   public domain ZLIB decompression stb_image_write.h: public domain very-limited image writers for PNG, BMP, TGA stb.h: my personal archive of "snippets" of C code that fix gaps/oversights/inconveniences in the standard C libraries stretchy_buffer.h: a tidy little C implementation of stretchy buffers / dynamic arrays / aka C++ vectors - declare an empty buffer with something like 'mytype *myarray = NULL', and then use the sb_*() functions to manipulate; read/write individual elements by indexing as usual. Warning: gcc strict-aliasing optimization breaks this, which is too bad. Just Say No to strict aliasing optimizations in C, which should be the sane systems programming language. (See also this.) There's a separate "repository" of stuff that is an early/incomplete/experimental stage here Other programs and source code: imv(stb), a Windows image viewer based around stb_image QMAP, a software-renderer for Quake 1 levels in 2000 lines of code zip file of a number of simple Windows command-line utilities that I've written over the years and find handy The Indie Game Jam game development & rendering: 2011-09-19: The 3D Software Rendering Technology of 1998's Thief: The Dark Project 2011-10-22: Herringbone Tiles, an unfinished paper about a variant on Wang Tiles 2011-12-25: Computing Skylight for 2D Height Fields by Finding 1D Height Field Horizons in Amortized Constant Time 2012-07-27: Failed attempt at Post-Mix Panning for 3D View Changes 2012-09-19: equations for photoshop-style blend modes with destination alpha 2012-10-13: Not very useful observations about Optimal Static Grid Pathfinding 2012-12-13: Corners Don't Look Like That: Regarding Screenspace Ambient Occlusion 2013-08-20: Why stb_truetype.h requires malloc: some reflections on the complexity of API design when it comes to memory usage 2014-04-09: The Compositing Tree: How to Make a 2D Renderer with a Totally Different Performance Profile than a 3D Renderer 2014-06-14: 18 (Slightly) Different Data Structures for Hashing: brainstorming I did in preparation for some experiments on hashing that I never actually carried out 2015-04-18: Intersecting a plane with an eye ray (the PCGPE texture mapping article demystified) 2015-07-15: How the stb_truetype Anti-Aliased Software Rasterizer v2 Works 2021-08-01: Progressive Tiling 2D Blue Noise Point Sets Encoded as Images 2013-05-16: How I Found Myself in the Game Industry my photos my Lisa Germano fan site archive of (other people's) talk.bizarre Fail to Suck Day posts interactive fiction games and tools game writings: To Hell With Johnny: Falling Games - tracing the evolution of gameplay that leads to To Hell With Johnny (2005) Advanced Minesweeper Tactics (1999) capsule reviews of computer/videogames (2001) my Mario 64 playlog from my second playthrough writing about computers Enumeration of Polygon Edges from Vertex Windings, a tiny but convenient trick for code that deals with polygons (rewrite of "Efficient Polygon Edge Enumeration" from Journal of Graphics Tools Volume 10, Number 2) Why the Web Sucks (You Just Don't Know It) (2004) Analyzing Judy: Judy is an engineered data structure as opposed to a compute theoretical one, by which I mean that it has been heavily tuned for actual real-world performance instead of big-O performance. This article looks at how it stands up to a plain old hash table implemented in 1/100th as many lines. (2003) Iteration is Hard (1998): how to iterate dynamic data structures SGREP (1998): sub-linear regular-expression searching robust sharp-edged volumetric fog (2000) in unextended OpenGL 1.0 One of my winning IOCCC entries after the C preprocessor gets through with it (which shows why it won) an old rant about software patents my KnuthBucks general non-fiction writing: Micropayment Barriers, an article that paints a black picture about getting micropayments going Several Species of Small Formal Properties, a brief summary of my comments on Douglas Hofstadter's Le Ton beau de Marot refrigerator magnet poetry fiction and constrained writing Tom Swifties Written By An Author Willing To Go To Any Lengths To Make A Tom Swifty Thus Resulting In Constructions That Often Require More Work For Readers Than For The Author (2012-01) A Snowman Is No Man's Woman, a 50,000 word novel written in a month in 2002 for NaNoWriMo "I" before "E" except after "C" (1998), a study in counter-examples The Twelve Tribes (1993) -- on prejudice word palindrome (1991) Reads identically backwards and forwards--and backwards, identically reads. poem (1992) This poem uses only four-long word bits. Addled Al Enabled (1993), a first-half-of-the-alphabet lipogram Anagrammatic Story of Santa Claus (1991) Code Reuse (1991), a repetitive 150-worder Jabbywocky, by Louis Carroll (1999) and more comics etc. Comic Whispers (by ifMUD denizens and LJ acquaintances) Comic Whispers I - Desintation Peru Comic Whispers II - Zigmond Nebula: Space Psychiatrist Comic Whispers III - Jimmy Olsen's Pal Bob Dylan Versus the Flash Comic Whispers IV - The Carpet Of Anaxoragas (my contribution can be found by using the booze then chatting up the barkeep) Comic Whispers V - The Treasure of Parrot Blackpants (note: I participated in this one under duress, since I thought the form was designed for maximal incoherence, which I don't much like) an unauthorized max and cow adventure Meat Wars, Max Cannon meets George Lucas me: a game development biography a general biography miscellaneous stuff

me circa 1998

my email address is sean at nothings dot org