Following on from the part 2 post a little while ago, I have been continuing work on my graphics engine hotline in Rust. My recent focus has been on plugins, multi-threaded command buffer generation and hot reloading for Rust code, hlsl shader code and pmfx render configs. I have made decent progress to the point where there is something quite usable and structured in a way I am relatively happy with. This leg of the journey has been by far the most challenging though, so I wanted to write about my current progress and detail some of the issues I have faced.

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I have just finished up a linear algebra maths library in Rust and it’s available on crates.io. It contains the usual implementation of vectors, matrices and quaternions but also tons of useful intersection, distance functions, point tests, graphs, utility functions and ergonomic decisions to hopefully make this fun and nimble to use for gamedev and graphics coding. I have been spending small chunks of time writing functions and tests over the summer, it has been quite enjoyable and I have learned a lot more about the Rust programming language, especially going into more detail with traits and trait bounds than I have previously, and also my first real work with macros.

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I have just been going through the process of migrating all of my continuous integration (CI) to use GitHub Actions. The reason for migrating is because one of my previous CI providers, Travis, stopped being free for open source repositories, they gave some free “credits” but they have now been consumed. The pricing plan and website is also now confusing for Travis; they have OSS (Open Source) credits and private credits which were consumed from my OSS projects! The pricing starts at $69 a month, which is a bit steep for me, especially considering there are other free alternatives. So I decided to move entirely to GitHub Actions and the process has really been straightforward and has given me a chance to improve my CI setup.

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Following on from my previous post about building a new graphics engine in Rust, I have made decent progress in implementing a feature-complete Dear ImGui rendering and platform backend using my engine hotline gfx:: and os:: APIs. It has viewports (multiple windows), docking, mouse cursors and input. I haven’t yet looked into improving the front end and making the API more ergonomic to use in Rust, but I thought now would be a good time to cover some of the challenges I faced while they are fresh in my mind.

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In my previous post I gave a high level overview of a new graphics engine project I was undertaking. I have been working quite consistently since then in the evenings and at weekends fleshing out a graphics API frontend called hotline::gfx:: and the first graphics backend hotline::gfx::d3d12 implemented with the assistance of windows-rs.

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It has been a while since I last posted an article. For the past 6 months I haven’t managed to get much coding done in my spare time. Partly due to work consuming most of my effort but also due to the relaxing of lockdown restrictions and making sure to take advantage of the opportunity to see my friends and family in real life. I had remaining holiday days to take from work, giving me 2 weeks off over the Christmas period and I was determined to get stuck into something new. Eventually I settled on building a new graphics engine in Rust. I already have a C++ engine, so this article is about why I am switching to Rust and why you should even build your own tech at all.

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