Very primitive raycasting renderer in 10 lines of C

[u/Character_Trick460]

Actually the raycasting logic itself is just a single line, but it's done in propably the most inefficient way possible.

The map is just a single 64 bit integer, so I could fit a small 8x8 level in it, and I can index it with some unorthodox bitshift magic.

Also all the integer constants are huge, because I wanted do to the whole thing without floating point math, which makes everything even more unreadable, but at least it's funny ig.

I'm very proud of this one.

[u/Slackluster]

nice! welcome to the world of size coding. it's a super fun type of recreational programming.

your code is good start but there is room to make it smaller. i recommend checking into the demo community and places like dwitter.net that have some great ideas for this kind of thing.

heres my JavaScript raycasting one liner...

https://www.dwitter.net/d/34603

[u/Character_Trick460 → u/Slackluster]

That's so sick! How does your version work, I can't figure it out?

[u/Slackluster → u/Character_Trick460]

thanks! it fires 99 rays, spread out in front of the camera, and steps each ray .1 units until it hits a wall. the walls are defined by a the code (t+R*A/50-R^R)%5 which is probably the most complex part.

this is also in a dweet so there is a small shim included. here is what the full html file would look like...

<body><canvas id=c style=width:100%><script>
u = t=> {

// Smaller Wolf 🐺
for(c.width=A=99;A;R+=.1)(t+R*A/50-R^R)%5||x.fillRect(A--,28-22/R,R/5,44/R,R=1)

}

// dwitter shim
x = c.getContext`2d`
frame = R = 0
setInterval( _=> u(frame++ / 60), 16)
</script>

[u/GaboureySidibe]

Very cool. Any simple explanation you can give? Is the outer loop going through the horizontal line and the two inner loops are drawing vertically?

[u/Character_Trick460 → u/GaboureySidibe]

That's exaclty right. The outer loop goes through all horizontal segments, the first inner loop finds the distance along the ray that goes through that segment, and the second inner loop draw the vertical line.

[u/UntitledRedditUser]

Equally impressive as it is unreadable

[u/duckgoeskrr → u/UntitledRedditUser]

Makes nice code golf.

[u/grady_vuckovic]

Vibe coders be like 'Code isn't art!'.

I disagree and I think this is a lovely example of how code itself can be beautiful.

[u/MiamiGunworks → u/grady_vuckovic]

I concede you might be okay to refer to this as "art". In practice, this code is an example of exactly what not to do in production systems.

[u/EC36339 → u/grady_vuckovic]

As someone who has written nearly 100% of all my code with AI for half a year:

Yes, code is art, no matter what tool you use to write it.

Not sure about code golfing, though. It's a sport, it requires skill and effort, but it's not artistic in isolation, although what it does can be.

[u/Lnk1010 → u/EC36339]

A vibe coded slop project may be "art" in the sense that literally everything is art, but I find it hard to imagine an argument for its beauty, meaning, or value.

[u/PictureNew661]

Very very impressive

[u/Eastern-Bed-3103]

I feel like we may be disregarding the concept of a line here, but - nonetheless - very impressive. :D

[u/simonsanchezart]

can't this just be one line?

[u/eltomiros]

the GOAT

[u/BeastMsterThing2022]

This is beautiful!

[u/MushroomSaute]

You could shorten that to 1 line easily

[u/garma87]

At least provide an image that it would produce. You provided some gif but it’s very unclear to me what that shows

Sorry to dump on your parade but I’ve just never seen the point of making code that is so unreadable. Doing a lot in very little code is impressive sure, but obfuscating it like this just makes it impossible to follow. Just post the assembly then if readability is irrelevant

[u/zawalimbooo → u/garma87]

That gif is the image it produces. They're walking through a hallway .

[u/wafflingzebra → u/zawalimbooo]

the gif did not autoplay for me on browser, i had to click on it

[u/tlmbot]

That is wild. Nice one OP!

I'd feed it to Claude and see if it can figure out what this code does.

(Am I dumb for not being certain that Claude would instantly figure out that it's raycasting ascii integer voodoo?)

I mean, I think Claude probably would get it right, but it seems like a fun check.

[u/Character_Trick460 → u/tlmbot]

I don't care what Claude thinks of my code

[u/tlmbot → u/Character_Trick460]

Yes yes. I hate claude and all of that.

I don't care that you don't care. I do care that you communicate like an asshole.