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Creating a Doom-style 3D engine in C

3 videos recommended on HN
YouTube
3 HN users recommended this tutorial5 months2015–2019 score 7
Years with an HN recommendation, 2007–2026

A favorite on Ask HN lists of programming YouTube channels, praised for mind-blowing systems and graphics programming and a watchable coding style.

Bisqwit builds a Doom or Duke Nukem 3D style software-rendered 3D engine in C from scratch, supporting non-Euclidean geometry. It covers vector rotation and portal rendering with sped-up, tool-assisted coding.

“My favourite programming YouTuber by a long stretch.” (HN, 2019)

4 strong recommendations · 1 recommendations · 1 citations · Tutorials · intermediate

6 Hacker News comments

From the HN archive; up to 20 kept per video, favoring different commenters. Recommendations first.

@petercooper Aug 2015 Strongly recommends
on HN thread The Strange Appeal of Watching Coders Code
This is why I love bisqwit's videos on YouTube. He takes a middle ground between "typing it in" and pondered narration. The typing effect is sped up and faked and done at just the right speed to 'follow along' with his thought process. Example: [this video]
Sped-up coding that follows the thought process well.
@petercooper Oct 2016 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Ask HN: What is your favorite YouTube channel for developers?
[link] is by far my favorite and I've spent many hours watching him. He does things like create a Doom-style engine from scratch: [this video] .. create a NES emulator: [link] .. work back from a C++17 example to show why new C++ standards are needed: [link] .. and even building a Tetris clone in GW-BASIC: [link] .. Right now, he's doing a series on cracking 80s videogame passwords: [link] Sirajology - [link] - is another interesting one. He moves a bit too quickly for me, but does things like explain machine learning in 5 minutes or how to generate music with systems like Tensorflow.
Bisqwit builds engines, emulators and more from scratch.
@iwakura Jan 2018 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Ask HN: What is your favorite YouTube channel for developers?
Bisqwit's video focusing on systems and graphics programming are total gems. [link] Not particularly useful for web developers which is what most programmers are nowdays, they will still blow your mind though. [this video]
Systems and graphics programming that will blow your mind.
@petercooper Jan 2019 Strongly recommends
on HN thread Let’s Create a Speech Synthesizer in C++17 [video]
Agreed. My favourite programming YouTuber by a long stretch. If anyone is unfamiliar with him and wants to watch some of the "classics" I'd recommend these: His "cracking videogame passwords" series: [link] Creating a Doom-style 3D engine in C: [this video] Creating a Rogue-like game in C++11: [link] Creating a PIC16 emulator and NES music player: [link] Creating a NES emulator: [link] Creating a DOS VGA raytracer: [link]
Classic Bisqwit video building a Doom-style 3D engine.
@rpeden Aug 2017 Recommends
on HN thread Ask HN: Best coding related YouTube channels?
I'm a fan of Bisqwit: [link] Mostly because he does fun things that are outside of the kind of programming I usually do, so it helps me broaden my horizons a bit. One of my favourites is the video where he sets out to make a basic 3D game engine in C, but starts by prototyping it in Basic: [this video]
Builds a basic 3D engine in C, prototyped in Basic.

Citations, criticism and jokes

@TazeTSchnitzel Jan 2019 Cites it
on HN thread Non-Euclidean Worlds Engine [video]
As was Duke Nukem 3D. Here's a video about making a simple demo engine based around the concept, which shows off a little non-Euclidean geometry: [this video]
Simple demo engine showing non-Euclidean geometry.

Video list and Hacker News comment labels from HackerTube (prompted by @karpathy), released under ODC-By 1.0, built on the open-index/hacker-news archive. Hacker News data is provided by Y Combinator; comments remain the work of their authors. Video titles, channel names and thumbnails belong to their creators and are shown via YouTube. HackerTube Watch is an unofficial edition. Data export of 2026-10-31.

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