The best Hacker News stories from Show from the past day
Latest posts:
Show HN: Server-rendered multiplayer games with Lua (no client code)
Hey folks — here’s a small experiment I hacked together over the weekend:<p><a href="https://cleoselene.com/" rel="nofollow">https://cleoselene.com/</a><p>In short, it’s a way to build multiplayer games with no client-side game logic. Everything is rendered on the server, and the game itself is written as simple Lua scripts.<p>I built this to explore a few gamedev ideas I’ve been thinking about while working on Abstra:
- Writing multiplayer games as if they were single-player (no client/server complexity)
- Streaming game primitives instead of pixels, which should be much lighter
- Server-side rendering makes cheating basically impossible
- Game secrets never leave the server<p>This isn’t meant to be a commercial project — it’s just for fun and experimentation for now.<p>If you want to try it out, grab a few friends and play here:
<a href="https://cleoselene.com/astro-maze/" rel="nofollow">https://cleoselene.com/astro-maze/</a>
Show HN: Circuit Artist – Circuit simulator with propagation animation, rewind
Hello,<p>Circuit Artist is a game about drawing digital circuits as pixel art — like MS Paint, but pixels are wires and little triangles are NANDs. Hit play and the simulation runs in real time. It's fully white-box: every wire's state is visible.<p>I launched it last year with a unit-delay simulation that ran until convergence on each update. It worked, but I realized it had some fundamental problems:<p>(i) It hid what was actually happening. Players couldn't tell the difference between a ripple carry adder and a look-ahead adder — everything just resolved instantly.<p>(ii) Design bugs became "game bugs." When players had non-converging wires (like A = not(A)), the game couldn't explain why or where the error was.<p>(iii) Layout didn't matter. A NAND on one side of the map would instantly propagate to the opposite side, making spatial decisions meaningless. Unit delay probably works better for schematic-based simulators like Logisim, not a layout-focused game like this.<p>(iv) Propagation visualization couldn't be added on top of the unit-delay engine — there was no notion of direction or distance.<p>So I rebuilt the engine with variable-delay event-based simulation using an adaptation of Elmore delay. The delay for each wire depends on distance and fanout — longer wires are slower, higher fanout adds delay, branching wires are faster.<p>For the implementation: I compute Elmore delay over wire trees. Each pixel has resistance and capacitance, with NAND inputs as nodes to account for fanout. For non-tree wire graphs, I build a Dijkstra-based spanning tree (driver as root) and interpolate for edges outside the tree. I calculate the delay for each node and project it back to the image so every pixel has a distance.<p>This lets me animate propagation with a glow effect during simulation. The shader knows when each wire was triggered, the current time, and the Elmore distance of each pixel, so it resolves state per-pixel in real time.<p>On top of that:<p>- Time rewind: the simulation is now delta-based, so players can freeze and scrub backwards to debug. Super useful for cyclic circuits.<p>- Layers: since timing matters now, I added up to 3 layers. NANDs only go on the bottom layer, upper layers propagate faster (lower capacitance). Lets you route wires above dense NAND areas.<p>The game has a campaign for learning from scratch, though it's still incomplete and in progress. I'm working toward Steam Workshop support so people can create their own campaigns to teach different concepts or cover more advanced topics.<p>GitHub (full source): <a href="https://github.com/lets-all-be-stupid-forever/circuit-artist" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/lets-all-be-stupid-forever/circuit-artist</a><p>Steam: <a href="https://store.steampowered.com/app/3139580/Circuit_Artist/" rel="nofollow">https://store.steampowered.com/app/3139580/Circuit_Artist/</a>
Show HN: A simulator for engineers transitioning from IC to management
Hi HN,<p>I’m a former C++ dev turned Product Manager.<p>I’ve noticed many engineers struggle with the "politics" side of things when they become Leads. To help with this, I’m building a text-based simulator.<p>It is NOT an AI chatbot. It is a hand-crafted, branching narrative (logic tree) based on real experiences.<p>I just launched the first scenario: "The Backchannel VP."<p>The Setup: Your VP Engineering is bypassing you and giving tasks directly to your juniors, causing chaos.<p>Your Goal: Stop the backchanneling without getting fired.<p>It’s a short, specific puzzle. I’d love to know if you think the "Correct" path I designed matches your real-world experience, or if I’m off base.<p>Link: <a href="https://apmcommunication.com/scenario/backchannel-vp" rel="nofollow">https://apmcommunication.com/scenario/backchannel-vp</a>
Show HN: Tailsnitch – A security auditor for Tailscale
Show HN: DoNotNotify – Log and intelligently block notifications on Android
Why - I got sick of apps abusing notifications on my Android phone. While the OS does give you the ability to switch off notifications based on channels, most apps either don't use it or abuse it intentionally. In my case, I live in a gated society that uses an app called MyGate to allow visitors, and the app intentionally pushes ads through the same channels since you cannot block them.<p>What - DoNotNotify is an app that logs all incoming notifications, and displays them grouped by app. It also captures the action behind the notification, which can be triggered from the app itself. From this log, you can create rules to whitelist/blacklist notifications from apps depending on their notification content. These filters can even be regex expressions, which allows for more complicated use-cases. The app ships with some pre-defined rules for popular apps like Facebook, Amazon, Instagram, Netflix, TikTok, Reddit etc.<p>Where - The website is at <a href="https://donotnotify.com/" rel="nofollow">https://donotnotify.com/</a>.<p>Would also like to call out that the app runs purely on your device, never communicates with anything on the Internet, and only requires notifications access to work. It is completely free, and there is no advertising or hidden gotchas.
Show HN: I built an international calling platform for the past 6 months
Show HN: Claude Reflect – Auto-turn Claude corrections into project config
Show HN: Claude Reflect – Auto-turn Claude corrections into project config
Show HN: Replacing my OS process scheduler with an LLM
Show HN: Replacing my OS process scheduler with an LLM
Show HN: An interactive guide to how browsers work
Show HN: An interactive guide to how browsers work
Show HN: Terminal UI for AWS
Show HN: Terminal UI for AWS
Show HN: Offline tiles and routing and geocoding in one Docker Compose stack
Hi HN,<p>I’m building Corviont, a self-hosted offline maps appliance (tiles + routing + search) for edge/on-prem devices.<p>Hosted demo (no install): <a href="https://demo.corviont.com/" rel="nofollow">https://demo.corviont.com/</a><p>Self-host (Docker Compose repo): <a href="https://github.com/corviont/monaco-demo" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/corviont/monaco-demo</a><p>Docs: <a href="https://www.corviont.com/docs" rel="nofollow">https://www.corviont.com/docs</a><p>What’s inside:<p><pre><code> - Vector tiles served locally (PMTiles)
- Routing served locally (Valhalla)
- Offline geocoding/search + reverse (SQLite Nominatim-based index)
- MapLibre UI wired to the local endpoints
</code></pre>
After the initial image + data pulls, it runs fully offline (no external map/routing/geocoding API calls).<p>Next (if people need it): a signed on-device updater for regional datasets (verify → atomic swap → reload).<p>I’d love feedback: where offline maps/routing/search matters for you, and what constraints bite (hardware, fleet size, update windows, regions, deployment style).
Show HN: Offline tiles and routing and geocoding in one Docker Compose stack
Hi HN,<p>I’m building Corviont, a self-hosted offline maps appliance (tiles + routing + search) for edge/on-prem devices.<p>Hosted demo (no install): <a href="https://demo.corviont.com/" rel="nofollow">https://demo.corviont.com/</a><p>Self-host (Docker Compose repo): <a href="https://github.com/corviont/monaco-demo" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/corviont/monaco-demo</a><p>Docs: <a href="https://www.corviont.com/docs" rel="nofollow">https://www.corviont.com/docs</a><p>What’s inside:<p><pre><code> - Vector tiles served locally (PMTiles)
- Routing served locally (Valhalla)
- Offline geocoding/search + reverse (SQLite Nominatim-based index)
- MapLibre UI wired to the local endpoints
</code></pre>
After the initial image + data pulls, it runs fully offline (no external map/routing/geocoding API calls).<p>Next (if people need it): a signed on-device updater for regional datasets (verify → atomic swap → reload).<p>I’d love feedback: where offline maps/routing/search matters for you, and what constraints bite (hardware, fleet size, update windows, regions, deployment style).
Show HN: I used AI to recreate a $4000 piece of audio hardware as a plugin
Hi Hacker News,<p>This is definitely out of my comfort zone. I've never programmed DSP before. But I was able to use Claude code and have it help me build this using CMajor.<p>I just wanted to show you guys because I'm super proud of it. It's a 100% faithful recreation based off of the schematics, patents, and ROMs that were found online.<p>So please watch the video and tell me what you think<p><a href="https://youtu.be/auOlZXI1VxA" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/auOlZXI1VxA</a><p>The reason why I think this is relevant is because I've been a programmer for 25 years and AI scares the shit out of me.<p>I'm not a programmer anymore. I'm something else now. I don't know what it is but it's multi-disciplinary, and it doesn't involve writing code myself--for better or worse!<p>Thanks!
Show HN: I used AI to recreate a $4000 piece of audio hardware as a plugin
Hi Hacker News,<p>This is definitely out of my comfort zone. I've never programmed DSP before. But I was able to use Claude code and have it help me build this using CMajor.<p>I just wanted to show you guys because I'm super proud of it. It's a 100% faithful recreation based off of the schematics, patents, and ROMs that were found online.<p>So please watch the video and tell me what you think<p><a href="https://youtu.be/auOlZXI1VxA" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/auOlZXI1VxA</a><p>The reason why I think this is relevant is because I've been a programmer for 25 years and AI scares the shit out of me.<p>I'm not a programmer anymore. I'm something else now. I don't know what it is but it's multi-disciplinary, and it doesn't involve writing code myself--for better or worse!<p>Thanks!
Show HN: I used AI to recreate a $4000 piece of audio hardware as a plugin
Hi Hacker News,<p>This is definitely out of my comfort zone. I've never programmed DSP before. But I was able to use Claude code and have it help me build this using CMajor.<p>I just wanted to show you guys because I'm super proud of it. It's a 100% faithful recreation based off of the schematics, patents, and ROMs that were found online.<p>So please watch the video and tell me what you think<p><a href="https://youtu.be/auOlZXI1VxA" rel="nofollow">https://youtu.be/auOlZXI1VxA</a><p>The reason why I think this is relevant is because I've been a programmer for 25 years and AI scares the shit out of me.<p>I'm not a programmer anymore. I'm something else now. I don't know what it is but it's multi-disciplinary, and it doesn't involve writing code myself--for better or worse!<p>Thanks!
Show HN: uvx ptn, scan a QR, get a terminal in your phone
Scan QR → web terminal → vibe coding in bed.
Mobile-first terminal via Cloudflare Quick Tunnel. No port forwarding. Feedback welcome.