Dev tools · alternatives · 2026
24 alternatives to A PSX/DOS style 3D game written in Rust with a custom software renderer
So, after years of abandoning Rust after the hello world stage, I finally decided to do something substantial. It started with simple line rendering, but I liked how it was progressing so I figured I could make a reasonably complete PSX style renderer and a game with it. My only dependency is SDL2; I treat it as my "platform", so it handles windowing, input and audio. This means my Cargo.toml is as simple as: [dependencies.sdl2] version = "0.35" default-features = false features = ["mixer"] this pulls around 6-7 other dependencies. I am doing actual true color 3D rendering (with Z buffer,…
This is a 3D game built in Rust with a custom software renderer designed to replicate PSX and DOS-era aesthetics. It features true color 3D rendering with Z-buffering, lighting, and triangle rasterization at 320x180… Below are 24 products that do a similar job, ranked by how close each is in meaning and then by launch-day votes.
- 1
"Game" is a stretch, but I put together this repo containing a pure Rust app which uses SDL2 and compiles to WASM (and can be run in a browser). Older resources were a bit out of date and a bit too verbose for my purposes, so here's a minimal working example.
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 2
For the past three years I've been building what I hope will be the next Blender, tackling the lack of any good 2D design or image editing tools outside the Adobe monopoly. This was our first year participating in Google Summer of Code and this Q3 update includes the big payoff from that, covering the most progress we've made so far as a project. If you're a Rust dev, consider getting involved as we apply for the next GSoC in the new year— you could be our intern next summer :) Q3 progress report: https://graphite.rs/blog/graphite-progress-report-q3-2024/
2024 · graphite.rs · its alternatives →
- 3
It's been closed source for a long time while I worked on it on and off as a hobby research project, but yesterday the repo was made public for the first time under the MPL 2.0 license. A feature reel showing its capabilities can be found here: https://ktstephano.github.io/rendering/stratusgfx/feature_re... A technical breakdown of a single frame can be found here: https://ktstephano.github.io/rendering/stratusgfx/frame_anal... It's still in a very beta state (bugs and instability expected), but I felt like it was a good time to make it…
2023 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 4IB
I've been working on an MMORPG that is now in alpha as a solo developer. Here are the major open source technologies that I use: Blender - 3D modeling software for creating the overall environment and every game object. I've gotten a lot of CC and Public Domain assets from https://poly.pizza GLTF - I export assets from blender to the GLTF asset format JSON - I write a JSON config for every game object that describes things like its name, its interactions, its collisions, etc. Node.js exporter - I iterate over the environment and every asset to create a scene hierarchy. I use…
2024 · alpha.reconquer.online · its alternatives →
- 5
Hello HN! We’re a small creative studio specializing in real-time 3D experiences. Netlify approached us to design and build an interactive experience to celebrate reaching 5 million developers. Inspired by the classic game Marble Madness, we created a gamified experience where users control a ball through playful, interactive levels. The goal was to blend marketing content with the look and feel of a game to engage users. The app is built with Three.js [1], using our custom render pipeline and shaders, and uses Rapier for physics simulation [2]. The 2D content is overlaid on the WebGL view…
2024 · 5-million-devs.netlify.com · its alternatives →
- 6
2020 · paytonturnage.gitbook.io · its alternatives →
- 7
Render 3D models (OBJ, glTF, GLB, STL, .vox) as ASCII art — in the browser, in React or Vue, or straight in your terminal. A three.js-style API with no WebGL and no canvas: just text in a single <pre>.
Jun 2026 · glyphcss.com · its alternatives →
- 8MP
I have been working on this game somewhat sparsely for the past three years or so. However, it is still in a very early stage, and there is a lot of work to do. One of my friends encouraged me to post about it here, since he felt people might find interesting how I don’t use any libraries for it. The game can be played on a browser by virtue of WebAssembly. There are native ports using either MiniFB or SDL2, but you have to build those yourself. I decided to write the game in C because I feel like it is a simple language that a lot of people can understand well enough, and I didn’t think I…
2023 · zamfofex.neocities.org · its alternatives →
- 9IR
After 25 years of writing software, I was feeling nostalgic for the kinds of things that got me into programming in the first place: the old DOS demoscene. I spent a weekend seeing if I could recapture some of that INT 13H VGA magic using today's web tech, but with the old-school constraints of doing it from scratch. The result is this portfolio of ten classic effects running in a single HTML file. It's all vanilla JavaScript writing to a element, with no external libraries. It was a fun challenge to implement things like: * The color palette cycling and smooth fading in the Plasma demo. *…
2025 · jdfio.com · its alternatives →
- 10
I’ve been experimenting with Rust lately and wanted a project that would help me explore some of its lower-level and performance-oriented features. Inspired by Sebastian Lague’s videos, I decided to implement my own ray tracer from scratch. The initial goal was just to render a simple 3D scene in the browser at a reasonable frame rate. It evolved into a small renderer that can: • Run locally or on the web using wgpu and WebAssembly • Perform mesh rendering with a Bounding Volume Hierarchy (BVH) for acceleration • Simulate both direct and indirect illumination for photorealistic results • Be…
Nov 2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 11
Render▲318Hey HN, I'm Anurag, founder and CEO of Render, a cloud for application developers. We've just launched Render Workflows, a way to define durable tasks by decorating plain TypeScript or Python functions and running them on Render without operating queues, worker pools, retry logic, and state management. Code example below [1]. The use cases we have in mind include agent loops, ETL/data pipelines, billing flows, and other long-running jobs. The model is simple: mark an existing function as a Task, deploy the repo as a Workflow, then trigger runs from your application code or via our API.…
2019 · render.com · its alternatives →
- 12
How can you make affine transformations (the only ones SVGs are capable of) resemble perspective transformations?
2025 · seve.blog · its alternatives →
- 13
Here's a project I've been working on for a little while now. Ripl is a JS library that provides a unified API for rendering shapes on both canvas and SVG interchangeably. Over the years I've used D3 extensively to create data visualisations so I figured I'd have a go at making my own version with a slightly more modern API and stricter TypeScript support. I am aware there are already libraries that can draw to multiple contexts interchangeably, but I've added a few little niceties to Ripl that (as far as I know) some other libraries don't have such as CSS-like query selectors, DOM-like…
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 14
To try it out, simply build the project yourself from source, or use attached bootable ISO image of the system (in Releases on Github) and run it in QEMU. https://blog.vxn.dev/rou2exos-rusted-edition
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 15AR
My background project for the last two years has been re-implementing my 2004 C++ shoot'em up game in TypeScript + WebGL, and it's finally done (just in time for the 20th anniversary!) Play the game online: https://nicollet.net/blog/darklaga/darklaga.html Technical article about the remake: https://nicollet.net/blog/darklaga/remake.html I have tested Firefox, Chrome and Edge on desktop and mobile (no access to a device capable of running Safari). It's amazing how much difference 20 years makes: the hardware is so much more powerful, the web…
2024 · nicollet.net · its alternatives →
- 16
Hi all This has been my hobby project for quite a few years now It started as a small engine to serve as a sandbox to try out new 3d graphics ideas After adding many features through out the years and re-writing the entire engine a few times, this is the latest state It currently supports loading models with animations, textures, lights, shadow maps, normal maps, and some other goodies I've also recently added voxel raymarching as an alternative renderer, along with a fun physics simulation :)
2024 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 17PV
2016 · guillaumechereau.github.io · its alternatives →
- 18
I love making small 2D pixel art games, especially using tools that have some constraints. Things like Pico-8 and the Playdate SDK are simple, fun, and allow for focusing on the game idea rather than the technical minutia. Years ago I prototyped an idea for this little game engine, Usagi, but used Rhai instead of Lua. The idea for this little game engine never went away, so I decided to finally dig in and build it. Today I released v1.0.0 of Usagi Engine after making a bunch of small games, getting feedback from developers, and stabilizing the API. It's simple, has a great developer…
May 2026 · usagiengine.com · its alternatives →
- 19
Want to Play I Can Transform? 🕹️ On GamePix You Can Play I Can Transform for Free. Start Playing Now!
2025 · gamepix.com · its alternatives →
- 20
After several years, with a small hiatus in the middle, I've finally got Ripl to the point of being published. Ripl is a library for rendering 2D and 3D shapes to any context (canvas, SVG, WebGPU, and Terminal supported by default) using a single API. The library mimics the DOM as much as possible, replicating the event system, object graphing, CSS-like querying, gradients, and keyframe animations etc. I also built a complete data visualization library using the core package which is available as @ripl/charts. And yes, you can even render the charts to a terminal with about a 2-3 line…
Mar 2026 · ripl.rocks · its alternatives →
- 21RW
Hi HN, I'm Holger, a developer who worked in the lighting industry. I built this to scratch my own itch and put it on crates.io and PyPI where nothing like it existed. The old file formats (EULUMDAT from 1990, IES from 1991) still work fine for basic photometry. But the industry is moving toward spectral data – full wavelength distributions instead of just lumen values. The new standards (TM-33, ATLA-S001) are barely supported by existing tools. So this handles both: legacy formats for compatibility, spectral data for anyone who wants to work with the new standards. Stack: Rust core, then…
Dec 2025 · eulumdat.icu · its alternatives →
- 22
Hi HN, In the past few years I've become more interested in machine learning. Since I'm sure the same is true for many here, I wanted to share this project I've been working on: glowstick uses type-directed metaprogramming to keep track of tensor shapes in Rust's type system and determine which operations are permitted or not at compile time. I find Rust has a lot of strengths when it comes to ML applications, but waiting until runtime to find shape related issues feels a bit strange since normally I don't run the code all that often while developing. Given Rust has fancy types available, I…
2025 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 23
Mobile-first 3D mapping engine with emphasis on user experience - felixpalmer/procedural-gl-js
2020 · github.com · its alternatives →
- 24
Hello HN, I'm sharing a little open-source utility I wrote recently. I'm a huge fan of Brendan Gregg's "BPF Performance Tools" book. However, every time I SSH into a fresh server, most of the diagnostic tools aren't installed there and installing them can be really annoying. I decided to use Nix package manager and LLMs to make this process straightforward. My utility first downloads a "toolbox" of Linux utilities (built with Nix), runs Brendan Gregg's famous "60-second Linux analysis" playbook and then summarizes the results with an LLM. So "60-second Linux analysis" now becomes a single…
Mar 2026 · quesma.com · its alternatives →
Also compare
- A minimal working Rust / SDL2 / WASM browser game alternatives
- Graphite, a Blender-inspired 2D procedural design Rust app alternatives
- StratusGFX, my open-source real-time 3D rendering engine alternatives
- I built an indie, browser-based MMORPG alternatives
- A Marble Madness-inspired WebGL game we built for Netlify alternatives
- Write generative fine art in Rust alternatives
Ranked by how close each launch is in meaning, then by votes. Prices were read from each product’s own site when checked and can change. Refine with your own description →