A 3D voxel game engine written in APL | Hacker News Reader

A 3D voxel game engine written in APL

github.com

157 pointssph14 comments

APL game engine is indeed an unusual thing. I don't know much about APL, and never used it (toyed with J back in the days though). I am really interested in the development process and the challenges posed by using APL for that kind of project.

Also, I really appreciate that the ReadMe file doesn't try to sell this project as something more than it actually is - a buggy passion project. Such honesty is, I feel, relatively rare nowadays.

The author has written two blog posts about their game (the latter is more about APL than the game itself though). You may find these interesting

https://homewithinnowhere.com/posts/2026-03-06-voxel-game.ht...

https://homewithinnowhere.com/posts/2026-05-10-one-line.html

Oh, nice, thank you!

Sweet, thank you! Don't know why they didn't post this, it's the bit I'm most interested in.

Author here. A video of me presenting this will be uploaded in a week or so, will reply with it here if it’s of use.

It’s crazy what people make games out of. When I was in a game design university program, one of my classmates used to make complete games (including a JRPG style adventure game) using excel formulas. Not even VBA, which would still be insane… just a bunch of formulas.

Is this what programming has become? We no longer admire the technical achievement itself and we only admire honesty.

Because any technical achievement is easily replicated by AI.

I wouldn't agree that "any technical achievement is easily replicated by AI," but porting software from one language or platform to another certainly qualifies. Who cares if something is written in Rust or APL or whatever? If you don't like the language it's written in, just ask for a rewrite.

(That said, LLMs don't tend to be hip to Brainfuck, so I'd steer clear of that one.)

APL is sufficiently different to Rust that a direct port is less viable

Rust programs usually have very deep dependency hierarchies, a gamedev project can legit have 500+ dependencies. It makes no sense to port them individually (though maybe LLMs actually make this dumb approach viable)

APL programming.. isn't like that. It isn't just a different language, it has a different shape

Rust and Javascript are interchangeable in some domains (and not interchangeable in others). You can convert between them more or less automatically

But APL? You would need some taste to implement in APL what the game needs, even if the actual coding is done by a LLM

A voxel world is a pretty good sales pitch for APL: the weird-looking part is the notation, not the model.

It would be nice to know how fast it is in comparison to a similar voxel engine written in a language like C++ or Rust.

> This started off as a bet with myself that APL notation would provide an easier way to make a voxel game.

Did you win the bet?

shameless plug, been working a a voxel editor to create voxels that you could use to decorate a home for a a little creature you have to take care of(a la sims). if anyone has some feedbacks, would be happy to take them!

https://kamio.ai/studio

Why not make a Show HN? In this thread, it feels a bit misplaced, even though it looks cool.

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