Cutting a frame from 22 ms to 16 without new hardware
A profiler-led teardown of a stutter I chased for two weeks. Turned out to be a cache-hostile update loop, not the GPU. Numbers, flame graphs and the two-line fix.
Read the write-up →
16.6 msthe whole budget, per frame
game dev blog · szczecin
The unglamorous parts of shipping games, written down.
CodeNook is one developer's notebook on engine internals, gameplay code and tooling — postmortems with real frame times, architecture breakdowns with the actual code, and the mistakes I only understood in hindsight. No listicles. No hype. Just the detail I wish someone had written for me.
- Archive
- 140+ deep-dives
- Languages
- C++ · C# · shaders
- Cadence
- updated most weeks
- Sponsored
- zero, ever
140+deep-dive posts in the archive
4years of write-ups, no gaps
60+downloadable source samples
0sponsored posts, ever
latest
Fresh from the editor
Everything here started as a real problem in a real build. Read them free; members get the source, the project files and the follow-up Q&A.
A hit-detection system that survived contact with players
How I moved from naive per-frame overlap checks to a swept-shape approach that felt fair — including the edge cases players found within an hour of launch.
Read the write-up →
The in-house tool that paid for itself in a weekend
Building a tiny asset-import validator that caught the mistakes our whole team kept making. Small tools, big leverage — and why I stopped waiting for "official" ones.
Read the write-up →
Save systems are harder than the game they save
Versioning, migration and the day a patch corrupted three hours of someone's progress. A design for save data that can change shape without breaking old files.
Read the write-up →grep -r ~/archive
The back catalogue, at a glance
A slice of what's in the archive. Titles are free to read; the src column marks the posts whose source, project files and benchmarks are unlocked with Pro.
| Date | Title | Tags | Read | src |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-07-14 | Cutting a frame from 22 ms to 16 ms | #profiling #engine | 18m | ◆ Pro |
| 2026-06-30 | Hit-detection that survived players | #gameplay #physics | 24m | ◆ Pro |
| 2026-06-12 | The tool that paid for itself in a weekend | #tooling #pipeline | 15m | free |
| 2026-05-28 | Save systems are harder than the game | #serialization #shipping | 21m | ◆ Pro |
| 2026-05-09 | A fixed timestep, explained line by line | #physics #engine | 19m | ◆ Pro |
| 2026-04-22 | Why my entity store got 3× faster | #data-oriented #perf | 17m | free |
140+ more where these came from — four years of write-ups with no gaps and no sponsored posts. Members read the whole thing in one place.
series
Long threads worth following
Some subjects don't fit in one post. These run over several, building on each other — start at part one and read forward.
01
Writing a small engine
From an empty main() to a rendering loop, an entity store and a frame allocator — every decision explained, nothing skipped.
7 parts · code included02
Gameplay feel
Coyote time, input buffering, camera lag and screen shake — the tiny systems that separate stiff from satisfying.
5 parts · with demos03
Shipping on a deadline
Cut lists, bug triage, the last-week freeze and the postmortem — how a project actually crosses the line.
4 parts · real timelines04
Data-oriented, honestly
What actually got faster when I restructured for cache locality — and where the pattern quietly made things worse.
6 parts · benchmarksthis month's deep dive
How a fixed timestep quietly fixed our physics
Our jumps felt different on every machine. The culprit wasn't the physics math — it was tying it to a variable frame rate. This one walks through the accumulator loop line by line, the interpolation that keeps rendering smooth, and the two bugs the change introduced.
- Why your update rate and your frame rate should never be the same number
- The interpolation that removes the judder a fixed step introduces
- Spiral-of-death protection when a machine can't keep up
tail -f ~/members.thread
From the members' thread
Unedited replies from the Pro thread — the working programmers who read the write-ups, pull the source and argue the trade-offs in the comments.
whoami · the author
A programmer who ships, writing between builds
I've spent years on the code side of small and mid-size game teams — gameplay, engine plumbing, the tools nobody sees. CodeNook is where I write down what actually worked, what broke, and the numbers behind both, mostly so I stop relearning the same lessons.
Every post here comes from a real build, not a tutorial project. If I share a fix, I shipped it. If I share a mistake, I made it. The code samples are the ones I'd hand a teammate, cleaned up just enough to read.
// keyboard-first, opinion-second, always happy to be corrected in the members' thread
cat README.md
New here? Read in this order
140 posts is a lot to land on cold. If you're just arriving, this is the path most members say clicked for them — foundations first, then the fun.
- Start with the small engine series. It sets the vocabulary the rest of the blog leans on — loops, allocators, entity stores.
- Then the fixed-timestep deep dive. Once the loop makes sense, this is where physics stops feeling like magic.
- Move to gameplay feel. Coyote time, input buffering, camera lag — the posts people quote most.
- Finish with a postmortem or two. Read how the ideas survive contact with a real deadline.
membership
CodeNook Pro
The writing stays free to read. Pro is for developers who want the working parts — source, project files and a place to ask. One tier, month to month, cancel whenever. Price in Polish złoty.
// codenook_pro --monthly
Pro membership
39 zł / month
- Full archive — every deep-dive, past and future
- Downloadable source samples and project files
- Private members' Q&A thread on every post
- Early access to new write-ups before they're public
- Vote on what I dig into next
What you're actually paying for
Not a paywall on the ideas — those stay open. Pro funds the time it takes to write things properly: to profile twice, to strip the code down to something readable, and to answer the "but what about…" questions in the thread.
"Cancelled after a busy month, came back the next. It was still there, no fuss." — a member
Prefer a year up front? Annual works out cheaper — mention it in the form and I'll set it up.
| What you get | Free | Pro · 39 zł/mo |
|---|---|---|
| Read every article | ✓ | ✓ |
| Downloadable source samples | — | ✓ |
| Full project files & benchmarks | — | ✓ |
| Members' Q&A thread | — | ✓ |
| Early access to new posts | — | ✓ |
| Vote on what I write next | — | ✓ |
| Sponsored posts | never | never |
man codenook
Prefer to talk before you subscribe?
There's a person behind this, not a content team. Read the backstory or send a line — I answer my own inbox, usually within a day.
the changelog
New post? You'll know.
A short email when something goes up — the title, why it might matter to you, and a link. No drip campaigns, no upsells. Unsubscribe in one click.
man codenook · questions
Before you join
The common questions, laid out like a man page — read top to bottom, no clicking to expand.
- Q: Do I need to be an advanced programmer?
- You need to be comfortable reading code. The posts assume you know a systems language and can follow a loop, but I explain the domain — engines, gameplay, tooling — from the ground up. Plenty of members are juniors reading to level up.
- Q: What language are the samples in?
- Mostly C++ and C#, with the occasional shader or script. The ideas travel, though — the reasoning matters more than the syntax, and I try to keep the samples engine-agnostic where I can.
- Q: How often do new posts go up?
- Most weeks, sometimes two, occasionally none if a piece needs more profiling. I'd rather be late than post filler. Members get everything first.
- Q: Can I read a post before paying?
- Yes — the articles are free to read. Pro unlocks the source samples, project files and the members' thread, plus the full back catalogue in one place.
- Q: Can I cancel any time?
- Any time, from your account, no email required. You keep access until the end of the month you've paid for.
- Q: Do you take requests?
- Members vote on upcoming topics and can pitch ideas in the thread. A good chunk of the archive started as someone's question.
git commit -m "joined"
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