Dr. Pavel Vlašánek

Last week, we built rotating cube using rasterization. Now, we’re building a ray tracer from scratch. You might be surprised to learn that ray tracing is actually more elegant and requires fewer lines of code than the rasterization we used before!

In the next video, we turn a flat circle into a 3D sphere using nothing but a quadratic equation and a dot product. Forget “RTX On.” Let’s build it ourselves!

See you on Thursday!


- Pavel

2 days ago | [YT] | 12

Dr. Pavel Vlašánek

In the next video, we’re going to break down 3D graphics from the ground up - just vertices, edges, and a bit of math. Using a Rubik’s Cube as a visual aid, we’ll explore rotation, backface culling, and perspective, step by step with clear code examples.

See you on Thursday!
- Pavel

1 week ago | [YT] | 18

Dr. Pavel Vlašánek

We are going to talk about a topic I see people struggle with all the time: “I want to be a developer, but programming is too difficult, I’ll never be able to do it, I must be dumb.”

Next video is a real, honest talk about why that feeling is so common and why it’s almost never about intelligence, languages, or syntax. It’s about how we approach learning, how we think about problems, and why getting stuck, confused, and frustrated is actually part of the process. If you’ve ever opened your editor, stared at the screen, and wondered if this just isn’t for you, THIS ONE IS FOR YOU.

See you on Friday!

— Pavel

2 weeks ago | [YT] | 8

Dr. Pavel Vlašánek

For over 30 years, we’ve been playing by the rules. We scrounged for medikits, hid from Imps, and let the game decide when we died.

Well, I think it's time we changed it! We are going to compile the DOOM from scratch and rewrite the game logic to suit us.

666 Health. Blind monsters. A Cyberdemon on steroids.

See you on Friday!

— Pavel

3 weeks ago (edited) | [YT] | 10

Dr. Pavel Vlašánek

I finally fixed Duck Hunt!

For many years, he laughed at us. Every time we missed, he was there mocking us. Well, payback time is coming.

We are going to build a game mashup in C++ from scratch with one specific goal: To combine Duck Hunt with Doom and finally give that dog what he deserves.

Infinite ducks. Shotgun. No mercy.

See you on Friday!

— Pavel

4 weeks ago | [YT] | 12

Dr. Pavel Vlašánek

We’re going for text and movies again! In the next video, we build a TRON Light Cycle game using nothing but C++ and the Windows API. No engines, nothing fancy. You’ll learn how to hijack the console to bypass screen flickering with double buffering, implement a "Square Pixel" rendering, and code a shuffling AI opponent that actually tries to outsmart you.

See you on Friday!

— Pavel

1 month ago | [YT] | 9

Dr. Pavel Vlašánek

There will be no new video this week BUT I am preparing a 2025 overview of the topics we have discussed so far. In the meantime, you can join the Discord server I started recently to stay in touch!

discord.gg/7uCXxhHRBh

See you there 🙂

- Pavel

1 month ago | [YT] | 5

Dr. Pavel Vlašánek

Want to build the Matrix rain from scratch? Next video is a C++ text-mode deep dive. We’ll take a look at manual console control, animated streams, glowing heads, and flickering symbols. I’ll walk through every step and explain the why behind the code as always.

See you on Friday!

— Pavel

1 month ago | [YT] | 15

Dr. Pavel Vlašánek

Math isn’t just numbers and formulas, it can draw! In the next video, I show how a few simple equations can create some amazing visuals using a pixel shader.

We’ll look at:
The Batman Logo - using pixel-by-pixel logic to fill in the shape
Phyllotaxis Spirals - the golden angle behind sunflower patterns
The Mandelbrot Set - the classic fractal, colored by iteration
Plasma Effects - layered sine waves that animate organically
Clifford Attractors - chaotic, fractal-like structures from simple rules

Along the way, I also talk about how different UV mappings make each shader look totally different.

See you on Friday!

— Pavel

2 months ago | [YT] | 15