Archives

Archives / 2023 / December
  • Secrets of the Grey Beards: drawing circles with additions and shifts

    A long time ago, before GPUs, before multicore processors and gigabytes of RAM, clever algorithms were the only way to render complex graphics in real-time. Those algorithms are now mostly forgotten as nobody needs them or is interested in them. Nobody? Well, almost. I like to reverse-engineer the clever tricks programmers of that era were using (in fact, I was one of them), and I hope you'll follow me on this exploration.