BLIT386 (@blit386.bsky.social)

BLIT386

@blit386.bsky.social

I (@vancura.bsky.social) build a palette-first retro engine for the browser. Change what color 3 means: water flows, the sky goes dark, nothing redrawn. TypeScript, WebGPU.

19 followers 7 following20 posts

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BLIT386

@blit386.bsky.social

8 Aug

Modern engines gave up indexed color. That is the one thing I wanted back, so I built BLIT386. Draw with palette indices – change what color 3 means, and water flows, the sky goes dark, nothing redrawn. TypeScript, WebGPU, Canvas 2D fallback. blit386.dev #gamedev

blit386.devBLIT386A palette-first WebGPU retro engine for TypeScript, with an automatic Canvas 2D software fallback.

BLIT386

@blit386.bsky.social

BLIT386 1.8.0 – the sprite release. Sprites flip, turn, scale, stretch, and stand on a pivot, pixel-identical on WebGPU and Canvas 2D. Plus grid tiles, nine-slice panels, and renderAt for any frame on demand. blit386.dev/blog/sprites... #gamedev #WebGPU #pixelart

blit386.devBLIT386 - BLIT386 1.8.0 - a sprite can turn aroundThe sprite release - flips, turns, scale, stretch, and pivots for drawSprite, grid tiles, nine-slice panels, and deterministic frame seeking with renderAt.

BLIT386

@blit386.bsky.social

New game, made in #BLIT386! Lasermania (port from Atari 8bit, L.K. Avalon 1990, public domain), ported by Michal Hotovec: demo.michalhotovec.com/lasermania/ #gamedev #WebGPU

BLIT386

@blit386.bsky.social

Many bunnies. But still no game :) demos.blit386.dev/bunnymark You can also try the software-rendered version, which has no #WebGPU bunny limit: demos.blit386.dev/bunnymark?em... #ScreenshotSaturday

demos.blit386.devBLIT386 Demo – BunnymarkSpawn bouncing bunnies and count the quads WebGPU skips past its sprite cap.

BLIT386 reposted

Václav Vančura

@vancura.bsky.social

23 Sept

Nine months on one game engine. 320×200, 256 colors. Still no game. I wrote about why I built BLIT386 anyway, and why the constraints that make it fun to use are the same ones keeping it from rotting. vancura.dev/articles/all... #gamedev #webgpu

vancura.devVáclav VančuraDesign engineer at Red Hat. Previously led Visual Studio for Mac at Microsoft. Writing about AI-assisted UI, developer tools, and game engines.

BLIT386

@blit386.bsky.social

11 Sept

BLIT386 1.7.0 – the performance release. The engine's hot paths no longer allocate per frame; the Canvas 2D fallback now clears a frame 69× faster. Plus reduced motion support, window.BT for devtools, and F9 to screengrab a frame. blit386.dev/blog/perform... #gamedev #WebGPU #a11y

blit386.devBLIT386 - BLIT386 1.7.0 - nothing left to collectThe performance release - the per-frame allocations are gone from the engine's hot paths, plus reduced motion, window.BT, and F9 frame capture.

BLIT386

@blit386.bsky.social

1 Sept

BLIT386 1.6.0 – the plumbing release. Every scaffolded game now talks to a live docs MCP server instead of guessing from stale baked-in docs. Plus a CSP nonce on the site and a symlink hole closed in the kit. blit386.dev/blog/mcp-rel... #gamedev #WebGPU #AI

blit386.devBLIT386 – BLIT386 1.6.0 – a live line to the docsThe MCP release – a live docs server wired into every scaffolded game, a website CSP nonce, and a symlink hole closed in the kit.

BLIT386

@blit386.bsky.social

20 Aug

Check this out. The loop rotating the hypercube never stops. Edit a method body and BLIT386 swaps it into the running game – ticks, camera, palette, palette effects all survive the swap. Only touching init() or the constructor forces a re-init, otherwise this gets hot-reloaded. #gamedev #hotreload

BLIT386

@blit386.bsky.social

15 Aug

I’ve been working on BLIT386 for a couple of months now – a palette-first retro engine for the web. The idea: you draw with numbered colors instead of RGBA, so redefining what color 3 means recolors everything drawn in it, instantly. #screenshotsaturday #gamedev #indiedev #webdev #TypeScript #WebGPU

A port of the classic macOS Flurry screensaver – 800 particles spiraling around twelve invisible gravity wells that trace slowly drifting figure-eight paths. Since BLIT386 has no additive blending for glow, it’s faked entirely through palette animation. demos.blit386.dev/flurry

demos.blit386.devBLIT386 Demo – FlurryA retro screensaver port of the classic macOS Flurry: particle physics driving palette animation.

BLIT386

@blit386.bsky.social

15 Aug

Docs and blog are at blit386.dev, the rest of the demos at demos.blit386.dev. Follow along – there’s a lot more coming :)

blit386.devBLIT386A palette-first retro game engine for the web. Change what a color means, and everything drawn in it changes at once.

A rotating tesseract – a four-dimensional cube projected down to a 256×256 canvas, Fez-style. Grab it with mouse or touch and spin it like a trackball. The four line colors drift slowly around the hue wheel as it turns, so nothing ever looks static, even at rest. demos.blit386.dev/hypercube

demos.blit386.devBLIT386 Demo – HypercubeA Fez-style rotating tesseract: watch a four-dimensional cube turn on a 256x256 PICO-8 sized canvas.

BLIT386

@blit386.bsky.social

15 Aug

Swapping the active palette recolors the whole sprite at once. All four palettes keep the sprite’s colors at the same slot numbers, so the swap is a single paletteSet() call – no per-pixel work, no re-indexing. demos.blit386.dev/palette-swap

demos.blit386.devBLIT386 Demo – Palette SwapSwitch the active palette at runtime to recolor an entire scene without touching the drawing code.

No redrawing, just a palette swap. Water starts flowing, day turns to night, all from a few bytes. WebGPU with a 2D canvas fallback when the browser doesn’t have it. Check out some demos: demos.blit386.dev‬

https://demos.blit386.dev‬https://demos.blit386.dev‬

BLIT386

@blit386.bsky.social

11 Aug

BLIT386 1.5.0 – the random release. Seeded PRNG, coordinate hashes, three kinds of noise: same seed, same world, every time. Plus every easing curve and a palette fade that behaves like a camera iris. blit386.dev/blog/random-... #gamedev #WebGPU #proceduralgeneration

blit386.devBLIT386 – BLIT386 1.5.0 – the same world, every timeThe random release – a seeded PRNG, stateless coordinate hashes, three kinds of noise – plus the full easing curve library, a splash that doubles as a loading screen, and an exposure-curve palette fad...

BLIT386

@blit386.bsky.social

2 July

Hello world! We just launched the BLIT386 website! blit386.dev #gamedev #webgpu

blit386.devBLIT386A palette-first WebGPU retro engine for TypeScript, with an automatic Canvas 2D software fallback.

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