Show HN: Iron-Wolf – Wolfenstein 3D source port in Rust | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: Iron-Wolf – Wolfenstein 3D source port in Rust

github.com

88 pointsragnaroekX29 comments

The goal is to have a pixel, mod-friendly perfect recreation of Wolfenstein 3D in Rust.

Was this translated automatically from C? I picked a spot totally at random and saw in https://github.com/Ragnaroek/iron-wolf/blob/main/src/act1.rs in place_item_type:

    let mut found_info = None;
    for info in &STAT_INFO {
        if info.kind == item_type {
            found_info = Some(info);
            break;
        }
    }

When typically in rust this is just:

    let found_info = STAT_INFO.iter().find(|info| info.kind() == item_type);

Now I want to go through and feng shui all the code to look more like idiomatic rust just to waste some time on a saturday...

As a non-Rust guy, I keep writing the example above. I didn't even know about the second option!

If you do that, please share a link so I can learn from you! This is awesome!

Look into rust iterators and their associated functions for rust specific implementation. Additionally look into functional programming à la lambda calculus and Haskell for the extreme end of this type of programming if you’d like to learn more about it

Sounds like something an LLM agent might be good at?

It probably would. But this port was mostly done to understand Wolfenstein 3D in detail, not for the source port itself. I could have generated big parts of the code. But I would have learning by doing that.

Yes, the code is _very, very_ close to the C-Code. All over the place.

(equivalent C file: https://github.com/id-Software/wolf3d/blob/master/WOLFSRC/WL... )

> Was this translated automatically from C?

I'll note that when I convert code between languages, I often go out of my way to minimize on-the-fly refactoring, instead relying on a much more mechanical, 1:1 style. The result might not be idiomatic in the target language, but the bugs tend to be a bit fewer and shallower, and it assists with debugging the unfamiliar code when there are bugs - careful side-by-side comparison will make the mistakes clear even when I don't actually yet grok what the code is doing.

That's not to say that the code should be left in such a state permanently, but I'll note there's significantly more changes in function structure than I'd personally put into an initial C-to-Rust rewrite.

The author of this rewrite appears to be taking a different approach, understanding the codebase in detail and porting it bit by bit, refactoring at least some along the way. Here's the commit that introduced that fn, doesn't look like automatic translation to me: https://github.com/Ragnaroek/iron-wolf/commit/9014fcd6eb7b10...

I actually find 1:1 to be helpful when learning a language.

How debug-able is the internals of the rust lambda version?

I will often write the code so I can simply insert a break point for debugging versus pure anonymous and flow-style functions.

C# example:

    #if DEBUG
    const string TestPoint = "xxxx";
    #endif

    var filtered = items.Where(x =>
    {
        #if DEBUG
        if (x.Name == TestPoint)
            x.ToString()
        #endif
        .....
    });

    var filtered = items.Where(x => ....);

Wolfenstein is peanuts compared to writing your own doubly linked list.

Not sure about that, but these are an awesome tutorials on linked list and related exercise problems [1],[2].

It's an old website for C programming from Stanford Uni by Nick Parlante [3].

For full blown treatment on linked list and doubly linked list please check this an excellent book Pointers on C by Kenneth Reek (1998) [4].

[1] Linked List Basics

http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/103/

[2] Linked List Problems:

http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/105/

[3] Essential C:

http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/101/

[4] Pointers on C:

https://archive.org/details/pointersonc0000reek

I think they are likely referring to doubly linked lists in Rust, specifically.

See, for example:

https://rust-unofficial.github.io/too-many-lists/

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22390662

This is cool! Wolfenstein will always have a place in my heart.

You should add it to https://hnarcade.com

Cool! I did an incomplete version in Rust a while back as well. Not a source port, tried to recreate the game from scratch myself, without looking at the C src code

https://github.com/hamzaq2000/wolf3d-reimpl-rs

Game would be considered too politically incendiary if released today.

Or the other way around. Wolfenstein 3D was first banned in Germany in 1994, but unbanned in 2018: https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2018/08/german-ratings-board-...

Wolfenstein 3D was pretty squarely a WWII fantasy shooter. Only later does it get into the alternate history post-war stuff which does get somewhat more squarely political.

I think it cuts both ways. The Wolfenstein franchise has obviously relished in violence against Nazis, but also inadvertently is part of the trend of glorifying them.

The first game has zombies with guns in their chest and a mecha hitler.

Someone's not up to date on the History Channel documentaries about WWII!

Today? It's been criticized for almost a decade

https://steamcommunity.com/app/612880/discussions/0/14708409...

https://www.newstatesman.com/science-tech/2017/06/alt-right-...

Somewhat related: https://github.com/Henrique194/iron-doom

Stein means rock. Wolfenstein is something like Wolf’s rock.

Eisen means Iron. You could name it Wolfeneisen?

Nice job. Couple notes for the web version:

- Once started the shareware game on Chromium browsers seems to flicker like crazy which displays the "B.J. Blazkowicz" face.

- You missed adding the classic code that everyone knows, M-L-I!

The flickering happens in Firefox too.