Oliver Franzke
@p1xelcoder.bsky.social
I'm making colored pixels for Double Fine Productions. Lead Programmer of Broken Age. Also worked on Keeper and the remastered versions of Grim, DotT, FT and Monkey Island.
Reposted by Oliver Franzke
Advent of optimisations! Start now and you'll be ready for the fastest Christmas Day ever.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-Bw...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-Bw...
[AoCO 0/25] The Advent of Compiler Optimisations
YouTube video by Matt Godbolt
www.youtube.com
December 24, 2025 at 5:37 PM
Advent of optimisations! Start now and you'll be ready for the fastest Christmas Day ever.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-Bw...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-Bw...
I got sick just in time for the holidays (sigh) and as the fever prevented from sleeping last night I realized that the Christmas Carol has a lot of unfortunate sub-tones. My brain conjured this up because we recently read the book to the kids and watched the Muppet interpretation. (cont.)
December 24, 2025 at 2:11 PM
I got sick just in time for the holidays (sigh) and as the fever prevented from sleeping last night I realized that the Christmas Carol has a lot of unfortunate sub-tones. My brain conjured this up because we recently read the book to the kids and watched the Muppet interpretation. (cont.)
Reposted by Oliver Franzke
Wooooooo! Keeper is one of @engadget.com's Favorite Games of 2025!
🎉🎉🎉
Always an honor to be named alongside so many other excellent games from some really talented studios. Check out the whole list, it's solid:
www.engadget.com/gaming/engad...
🎉🎉🎉
Always an honor to be named alongside so many other excellent games from some really talented studios. Check out the whole list, it's solid:
www.engadget.com/gaming/engad...
Engadget's favorite games of 2025
It was another incredible year for video games.
www.engadget.com
December 19, 2025 at 9:09 PM
Wooooooo! Keeper is one of @engadget.com's Favorite Games of 2025!
🎉🎉🎉
Always an honor to be named alongside so many other excellent games from some really talented studios. Check out the whole list, it's solid:
www.engadget.com/gaming/engad...
🎉🎉🎉
Always an honor to be named alongside so many other excellent games from some really talented studios. Check out the whole list, it's solid:
www.engadget.com/gaming/engad...
Over the past two months, I’ve been diving into the Essence morph tech we built for Keeper - how we got here, how it works and some neat-looking results. I’m really proud of this system (and the game in general), and I hope you’ve enjoyed learning more about it. :)
December 19, 2025 at 8:15 PM
Over the past two months, I’ve been diving into the Essence morph tech we built for Keeper - how we got here, how it works and some neat-looking results. I’m really proud of this system (and the game in general), and I hope you’ve enjoyed learning more about it. :)
The morph of the week is the "nightmare bridge". Nick did the initial pass and I tweaked the morph to make it more weird and "tentacely". This whole sequence is one of my favorites in the game.
December 18, 2025 at 7:23 PM
The morph of the week is the "nightmare bridge". Nick did the initial pass and I tweaked the morph to make it more weird and "tentacely". This whole sequence is one of my favorites in the game.
One aspect of Keeper's morph tech I'm fairly proud of is the fact that I wrote more than 50 pages of documentation and recorded about an hour of tutorial videos for this system.
December 17, 2025 at 9:34 PM
One aspect of Keeper's morph tech I'm fairly proud of is the fact that I wrote more than 50 pages of documentation and recorded about an hour of tutorial videos for this system.
Reposted by Oliver Franzke
DOOM: The Dark Ages won @digitalfoundry.bsky.social 's "Best Graphics of 2025"!
Awesome achievement for our small group of idTech folks!
youtu.be/nZ7pc4M-Uuk?...
Awesome achievement for our small group of idTech folks!
youtu.be/nZ7pc4M-Uuk?...
Digital Foundry's Best Game Graphics of 2025 - PC/PS5/Xbox/Switch 2 - Another Amazing Year
YouTube video by Digital Foundry
youtu.be
December 17, 2025 at 2:05 PM
DOOM: The Dark Ages won @digitalfoundry.bsky.social 's "Best Graphics of 2025"!
Awesome achievement for our small group of idTech folks!
youtu.be/nZ7pc4M-Uuk?...
Awesome achievement for our small group of idTech folks!
youtu.be/nZ7pc4M-Uuk?...
Reposted by Oliver Franzke
My "No Graphics API" blog post is live! Please repost :)
www.sebastianaaltonen.com/blog/no-grap...
I spend 1.5 years doing this. Full rewrite last summer and another partial rewrite last month. As Hemingway said: "First draft of everything is always shit".
www.sebastianaaltonen.com/blog/no-grap...
I spend 1.5 years doing this. Full rewrite last summer and another partial rewrite last month. As Hemingway said: "First draft of everything is always shit".
No Graphics API — Sebastian Aaltonen
Graphics APIs and shader languages have significantly increased in complexity over the past decade. It’s time to start discussing how to strip down the abstractions to simplify development, improve pe...
www.sebastianaaltonen.com
December 16, 2025 at 6:52 PM
My "No Graphics API" blog post is live! Please repost :)
www.sebastianaaltonen.com/blog/no-grap...
I spend 1.5 years doing this. Full rewrite last summer and another partial rewrite last month. As Hemingway said: "First draft of everything is always shit".
www.sebastianaaltonen.com/blog/no-grap...
I spend 1.5 years doing this. Full rewrite last summer and another partial rewrite last month. As Hemingway said: "First draft of everything is always shit".
You can make things really weird by stacking a symmetry or twist operator on top of the fractal warp.
December 16, 2025 at 7:50 PM
You can make things really weird by stacking a symmetry or twist operator on top of the fractal warp.
As I mentioned before the Mandelbulb alien in Annihilation was a big inspiration, so now you know where that inspiration went. :)
bsky.app/profile/p1xe...
bsky.app/profile/p1xe...
December 16, 2025 at 9:04 AM
As I mentioned before the Mandelbulb alien in Annihilation was a big inspiration, so now you know where that inspiration went. :)
bsky.app/profile/p1xe...
bsky.app/profile/p1xe...
Reposted by Oliver Franzke
Computing the exact bijection of the optimal transport (OT) problem between very large point sets is completely untractable…
In our SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 paper: “BSP-OT: Sparse transport plans between discrete measures in log-linear time” we get one with typically 1% of error in a few seconds on CPU!
In our SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 paper: “BSP-OT: Sparse transport plans between discrete measures in log-linear time” we get one with typically 1% of error in a few seconds on CPU!
October 1, 2025 at 1:55 PM
Computing the exact bijection of the optimal transport (OT) problem between very large point sets is completely untractable…
In our SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 paper: “BSP-OT: Sparse transport plans between discrete measures in log-linear time” we get one with typically 1% of error in a few seconds on CPU!
In our SIGGRAPH Asia 2025 paper: “BSP-OT: Sparse transport plans between discrete measures in log-linear time” we get one with typically 1% of error in a few seconds on CPU!
This will be me Fractal Con!
bsky.app/profile/p1xe...
bsky.app/profile/p1xe...
December 15, 2025 at 8:18 PM
This will be me Fractal Con!
bsky.app/profile/p1xe...
bsky.app/profile/p1xe...
My absolute favorite (and hands-down the most used) spatial warp in Keeper is the fractal. Our morph tech supports both Mandelbulb and Quaternion fractals. It's addictively cool and I could play with this all day long. :)
December 15, 2025 at 7:43 PM
My absolute favorite (and hands-down the most used) spatial warp in Keeper is the fractal. Our morph tech supports both Mandelbulb and Quaternion fractals. It's addictively cool and I could play with this all day long. :)
Reposted by Oliver Franzke
Short summary video showcasing what we are making during my free 3D Art and Blueprints YT game dev course.
youtu.be/ut0rskJ-F4I
I wrapped up the tuts last month. Any help spreading the word is appreciated!
These took months to make and sadly algos haven't been very generous. Hope people enjoy it.
youtu.be/ut0rskJ-F4I
I wrapped up the tuts last month. Any help spreading the word is appreciated!
These took months to make and sadly algos haven't been very generous. Hope people enjoy it.
December 14, 2025 at 6:55 PM
Short summary video showcasing what we are making during my free 3D Art and Blueprints YT game dev course.
youtu.be/ut0rskJ-F4I
I wrapped up the tuts last month. Any help spreading the word is appreciated!
These took months to make and sadly algos haven't been very generous. Hope people enjoy it.
youtu.be/ut0rskJ-F4I
I wrapped up the tuts last month. Any help spreading the word is appreciated!
These took months to make and sadly algos haven't been very generous. Hope people enjoy it.
Since I haven't done much in terms of Blender extensions I fully embraced "vibe coding" tonight as an experiment. It's actually pretty impressive how far one can get with this. I have no illusions that this wouldn't scale, but still... crazy stuff.
December 13, 2025 at 10:19 PM
Since I haven't done much in terms of Blender extensions I fully embraced "vibe coding" tonight as an experiment. It's actually pretty impressive how far one can get with this. I have no illusions that this wouldn't scale, but still... crazy stuff.
Reposted by Oliver Franzke
A long time ago in - what feels like another lifetime - I worked on several point-and-click adventure games and made this presentation to share more about the tech that drives these games.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=38kp...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=38kp...
From Monkey Island to Broken Age - A (very) short history of adventure game tech.
YouTube video by p1xelcoder - Oliver Franzke
www.youtube.com
December 12, 2025 at 8:52 PM
A long time ago in - what feels like another lifetime - I worked on several point-and-click adventure games and made this presentation to share more about the tech that drives these games.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=38kp...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=38kp...
The morph of the week is this little peek-a-boo window. I love the fractal warp used for the tell and as always VFX made this look 1000 times better with the additional elements like the bugs.
December 11, 2025 at 8:04 PM
The morph of the week is this little peek-a-boo window. I love the fractal warp used for the tell and as always VFX made this look 1000 times better with the additional elements like the bugs.
Reposted by Oliver Franzke
Ari and I both said a lot of words on stage at #UnrealFest Stockholm, and I think these are the most important. How to think about profiling, how to read the unicorn barf that is Unreal Insights, and tips for looking at GPU captures.
How do we profile games at Epic Games? Check out this presentation where @mattoztalay.bsky.social and I examine perf captures from Arctic Hazard's "NORSE: Oath of Blood" and show you how to use Unreal Insights and PIX.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-Aj...
www.youtube.com/watch?v=C-Aj...
Profiling with Purpose: Performance Lessons from a Real Unreal Project | Unreal Fest Stockholm 2025
YouTube video by Unreal Engine
www.youtube.com
December 11, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Ari and I both said a lot of words on stage at #UnrealFest Stockholm, and I think these are the most important. How to think about profiling, how to read the unicorn barf that is Unreal Insights, and tips for looking at GPU captures.
Reposted by Oliver Franzke
A modernized Utah Teapot model with interior! You can see/customize/download it, along with historical versions on the official teapot page:
graphics.cs.utah.edu/teapot/
graphics.cs.utah.edu/teapot/
December 11, 2025 at 5:34 AM
A modernized Utah Teapot model with interior! You can see/customize/download it, along with historical versions on the official teapot page:
graphics.cs.utah.edu/teapot/
graphics.cs.utah.edu/teapot/
Spatial warps can be stacked in Keepers morph tech, but of course the order matters. For example applying the symmetry operator to something that is twisted looks quite different than twisting an object that was first warped by symmetry.
December 10, 2025 at 7:16 PM
Spatial warps can be stacked in Keepers morph tech, but of course the order matters. For example applying the symmetry operator to something that is twisted looks quite different than twisting an object that was first warped by symmetry.
Reposted by Oliver Franzke
Ideas always emerge from unpredictable places. The idea of a walking lighthouse originally came from an early mission document I wrote for a different game idea. Here's the first page of that, plus the very first lighthouse concept that I did.
December 9, 2025 at 9:21 PM
Ideas always emerge from unpredictable places. The idea of a walking lighthouse originally came from an early mission document I wrote for a different game idea. Here's the first page of that, plus the very first lighthouse concept that I did.
By now it should be obvious that I'm a big fan of implicit surface representations. At the extreme, they let you tear objects apart and turn them inside out. While we didn't use these (stamp and repeat) warp types in Keeper it was straightforward and fun to prototype them.
December 9, 2025 at 7:43 PM
By now it should be obvious that I'm a big fan of implicit surface representations. At the extreme, they let you tear objects apart and turn them inside out. While we didn't use these (stamp and repeat) warp types in Keeper it was straightforward and fun to prototype them.