Log inSign up
Elan Ruskin
24.5K posts
Image
user avatar
Elan Ruskin
@despair
Using integers & coding performance at @InsomniacGames. Also @despair on the azure ceiling site and @[email protected]
Burbank, CA
linktr.ee/crashworks
Joined December 2007
312
Following
4,701
Followers
  • Pinned
    user avatar
    Elan Ruskin
    @despair
    Jun 18, 2021
    Normalize checking whether things are true before believing them.
  • user avatar
    Elan Ruskin
    @despair
    Dec 21, 2024
    All this app needs to do is display 200 characters of locally stored text. How can this operation possibly fail at the loading stage. Why do people program like this.
    Image
    1.8M
  • user avatar
    Elan Ruskin
    @despair
    Sep 2, 2024
    I often wonder, what exactly is it doing in that time? A three second stall is enough time for ten billion CPU operations. What are they being used for? What ten billion calculations are happening between my right click and the context window displaying?
    user avatar
    kenneth
    Ona
    @kennethnym
    Sep 2, 2024
    literally nothing on windows happens instantly. you right click? wait a few seconds. open file explorer? feels like it’s downloading the html from a server on the moon. the notification center? yeah go get a coffee first before it loads in the one (1) notification
    404K
  • user avatar
    Elan Ruskin
    @despair
    Apr 22, 2019
    Also from our #GDC19 tech postmortem: the transition into Fisk Tower in #SpiderManPS4's intro mission. The interior space is much larger than the exterior envelope, and too big to hold in memory at the same time as Manhattan. So we use some careful camerawork to hide the swap!
    Image
    00:00
  • user avatar
    Elan Ruskin
    @despair
    Jul 30, 2021
    Image
    Image
    Image
    user avatar
    Matthew Gertz
    @MattGertz
    Jul 30, 2021
    Please don't do this. Provincetown has one of the highest vaccination rates in the country. As vaccination rates increase the percentage of cases that are in vaccinated people NECESSARILY increases.
  • user avatar
    Elan Ruskin
    @despair
    Mar 4, 2024
    Visual Studio stalls for over two minutes whenever I accidentally clicked the "class view" tab, so I used ProcMon to find out what it was doing. It is doing a linear search over a 730GB file. Multiple times. Amazing.
    Screenshot of a ProcMon capture. It depicts devenv.exe doing thousands of ReadFile operations in 8kb increments. The screenshot captures reads from offsets 477,151,232  to 482,213,88.
    253K
  • user avatar
    Elan Ruskin
    @despair
    Jan 19, 2024
    omg games do not need neural networks for any of this. You can do it with a straightforward rules database, procedural triggers, and a writer who knows how to operate Excel. I did a whole talk on it eleven years ago.
    You’re unable to view this Post because this account owner limits who can view their Posts. Learn more
    144K
  • user avatar
    Elan Ruskin
    @despair
    Dec 22, 2024
    Replying to @NikaoHill
    Yeah, as it turns out…
    Image
    89K
  • user avatar
    Elan Ruskin
    @despair
    Dec 22, 2015
    The "Windows" section of every open-source project's "how to compile and install" file:
    Image
  • user avatar
    Elan Ruskin
    @despair
    Dec 22, 2024
    Replying to @hasen_95dx
    Image
    GIF
    100K
  • user avatar
    Elan Ruskin
    @despair
    Mar 10, 2022
    A teacher friend: "One of my students wants to know: what programs or tools do game designers use?" Me: "Microsoft Excel."
  • user avatar
    Elan Ruskin
    @despair
    Dec 22, 2024
    I don’t want to have to reboot my machine every time I need to get out of editing a sticky note
    43K
  • user avatar
    Elan Ruskin
    @despair
    May 9, 2021
    I liked this video so much, I decided to write up all the bugs in it. Maybe other devs can spot things I missed, or speculate likely causes and assignees. (I've omitted repro steps for 280-character brevity.)
    Age-restricted adult content. This content might not be appropriate for people under 18 years old. To view this media, you’ll need to log in to X. Learn more
  • user avatar
    Elan Ruskin
    @despair
    Apr 19, 2019
    This feels like the right time to mention an Easter egg that everyone's passed over so far: these guys don't work on Saturdays!
    Image

New to X?

Sign up now to get your own personalized timeline!

Create account

By signing up, you agree to the Terms of Service and Privacy Policy, including Cookie Use.

Terms·Privacy·Cookies·Accessibility·Ads Info·© 2026 X Corp.
Don't miss what's happening
People on X are the first to know.
Log inSign up
Advertisement
Advertisement