Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

edw.is

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 268 posts

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#11

Post by galangalalgol »

jsheard wrote: post #5
archermarks wrote: post #3

Really nice article! I have some OpenGL familiarity and tried out Vulkan but bounced off of it due to all of the up-front complexity just getting something running. Might give it another shot now!

It's not quite as bad as it used to be, various later additions to Vulkan like dynamic rendering have eliminated some of the complexity it originally had. Figuring out which subset you should be using is a challenge in itself though, especially since there's a lot of outdated introductory resources floating around which still promote the ultra-verbose Vulkan 1.0 way of doing things. If a tutorial tells you to use ren…

Interesting, for a while the guidance for a while was to learn webgpu instead unless you needed all that extra control. Do you think these changes modify that guidance?

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#12

Post by Hendrikto »

spicyusername wrote: post #10

Lots of good advice in this article. One that stuck out to me: Don’t implement something unless you need it right now This is a constant battle I fight with more junior programmers, who maybe have a few years of experience, but who are still getting there. They are often obsessed with "best-practices" and whatever fancy new tool is trending, but they have trouble starting with the problem they need to solve and focus…

> They are often obsessed with "best-practices"

Tell them YAGNI is also a best practice :D

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#13

Post by jsheard »

galangalalgol wrote: post #11
jsheard wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not quite as bad as it used to be, various later additions to Vulkan like dynamic rendering have eliminated some of the complexity it originally had. Figuring out which subset you should be using is a challenge in itself though, especially since there's a lot of outdated introductory resources floating around which still promote the ultra-verbose Vulkan 1.0 way of doing things. If a tutorial tells you to use ren…

Interesting, for a while the guidance for a while was to learn webgpu instead unless you needed all that extra control. Do you think these changes modify that guidance?

WebGPU (or Metal if you're in Apple land) still has a much gentler learning curve. The simplifications to Vulkan weren't really aimed at making it easier to use, just streamlining parts of the API which turned out to be needlessly complex, so the parts that are complex for a reason are still just as complex.

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#14

Post by jokoon »

I think vulkan is great, but its only purpose is to take full advantage of advanced GPU features. It also leads to better performance when using advanced GPU features compared to OpenGL.

Generally, I feel OpenGL is the recommended route if you don't really aim for advanced rendering techniques.

There are plenty 2D /lowpoly/ps1-graphics games right now, and those don't need to use vulkan.

Vulkan is an example of how the AAA gaming industry is skewed towards rendering quality and appearance. AAA game studios justify their budget with those very advanced engines and content, but there is a growing market of 2D/low poly game, because players are tired and realized they want gameplay, not graphics.

Also if you are a game developer, you don't want to focus on rendering quality, you want to focus on gameplay and features.

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#15

Post by bashmelek »

jsheard wrote: post #5
archermarks wrote: post #3

Really nice article! I have some OpenGL familiarity and tried out Vulkan but bounced off of it due to all of the up-front complexity just getting something running. Might give it another shot now!

It's not quite as bad as it used to be, various later additions to Vulkan like dynamic rendering have eliminated some of the complexity it originally had. Figuring out which subset you should be using is a challenge in itself though, especially since there's a lot of outdated introductory resources floating around which still promote the ultra-verbose Vulkan 1.0 way of doing things. If a tutorial tells you to use ren…

Do you have any recommendations for sources? I’ve used Vulkan Tutorial, which is a bit stale but I suppose still good for exposure. I’ve also used Vulkan Guide, before its latest overhaul. That one was educational. Not sure if I’ll be able to do their new guide, my laptop can’t run some of the more recent versions of Vulkan

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#16

Post by BearOso »

jsheard wrote: post #5
archermarks wrote: post #3

Really nice article! I have some OpenGL familiarity and tried out Vulkan but bounced off of it due to all of the up-front complexity just getting something running. Might give it another shot now!

It's not quite as bad as it used to be, various later additions to Vulkan like dynamic rendering have eliminated some of the complexity it originally had. Figuring out which subset you should be using is a challenge in itself though, especially since there's a lot of outdated introductory resources floating around which still promote the ultra-verbose Vulkan 1.0 way of doing things. If a tutorial tells you to use ren…

Unfortunately, dynamic rendering didn't come about until "recently". Many devices are stuck on Vulkan 1.1. Go to http://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/listextensions.php and search for dynamic_rendering. It's only supported on about 28% of reports.

If you want to support those other devices you have to have a non-dynamic rendering path, and then at that point dynamic rendering is just more code. VK_EXT_shader_object is even better, but availability is that much worse.

Edit: If you are able to find a tutorial using dynamic rendering, learn with that. Render passes obfuscate what's going on, and with dynamic rendering you can see exactly what's happening.

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#17

Post by junon »

spicyusername wrote: post #10

Lots of good advice in this article. One that stuck out to me: Don’t implement something unless you need it right now This is a constant battle I fight with more junior programmers, who maybe have a few years of experience, but who are still getting there. They are often obsessed with "best-practices" and whatever fancy new tool is trending, but they have trouble starting with the problem they need to solve and focus…

Yep. I attribute YAGNI to a lot of my quickest prototypes and some of my best code.

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#18

Post by ChadNauseam »

jokoon wrote: post #14

I think vulkan is great, but its only purpose is to take full advantage of advanced GPU features. It also leads to better performance when using advanced GPU features compared to OpenGL. Generally, I feel OpenGL is the recommended route if you don't really aim for advanced rendering techniques. There are plenty 2D /lowpoly/ps1-graphics games right now, and those don't need to use vulkan. Vulkan is an example of how t…

A middle ground is webgpu. It is much less verbose than Vulkan and is guaranteed to run anywhere, including the browser. At the same time, it has access to "modern" features like compute shaders which would not be available in webgl. It also doesn't have much legacy cruft leading to multiple ways of doing the same thing, unlike opengl. The main advantage is that it's new, so there are many fewer tutorials available for it, and that is a very serious disadvantage.

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#19

Post by galangalalgol »

jsheard wrote: post #13
galangalalgol wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting, for a while the guidance for a while was to learn webgpu instead unless you needed all that extra control. Do you think these changes modify that guidance?

WebGPU (or Metal if you're in Apple land) still has a much gentler learning curve. The simplifications to Vulkan weren't really aimed at making it easier to use, just streamlining parts of the API which turned out to be needlessly complex, so the parts that are complex for a reason are still just as complex.

Thanks! Other than a project not running as fast as necessary, do you have any advice on how to know when/if I need to switch to vulkan?

Re: I learned Vulkan and wrote a small game engine with it

#20

Post by jsheard »

BearOso wrote: post #16
jsheard wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not quite as bad as it used to be, various later additions to Vulkan like dynamic rendering have eliminated some of the complexity it originally had. Figuring out which subset you should be using is a challenge in itself though, especially since there's a lot of outdated introductory resources floating around which still promote the ultra-verbose Vulkan 1.0 way of doing things. If a tutorial tells you to use ren…

Unfortunately, dynamic rendering didn't come about until "recently". Many devices are stuck on Vulkan 1.1. Go to http://vulkan.gpuinfo.org/listextensions.php and search for dynamic_rendering. It's only supported on about 28% of reports. If you want to support those other devices you have to have a non-dynamic rendering path, and then at that point dynamic rendering is just more code. VK_EXT_shader_object is even bett…

You really have to think of Vulkan on PCs and Vulkan on mobile as separate things, if you only care about running on the former then you can easily count on things like dynamic rendering always being available as long as your users drivers are up to date. If you need to target Android though, my condolences.
Post reply on HN