Ray Tracing: Expectation Vs. Reality

The left side shows all the fancy modern game development tools - Unreal Engine, Unity, powerful programming languages, and sophisticated 3D modeling software. Meanwhile, on the right side, there's just "6502 Assembly" - the programming language from the 1970s used in ancient systems like the Atari and Commodore 64. It's like comparing Olympic shooters - the one on the left has access to every cutting-edge tool in game development, while the one on the right is basically coding on a calculator with a rusty nail. And yet somehow that Assembly programmer still ships games that people actually finish playing instead of waiting for 50GB day-one patches.

Oh. My. GOD. The ABSOLUTE NIGHTMARE of game development on Windows! 😭 That poor game dev is being CRUCIFIED by the unholy scattered mess of Windows save directories! Is your game data in Documents? AppData? User folder? Program Files? WHO KNOWS?! It's like Microsoft intentionally designed a scavenger hunt that NOBODY asked for! The struggle is TOO REAL when you're trying to find where that ONE critical save file decided to hide itself. And don't even get me started on the THREE different AppData folders! Local? LocalLow? Roaming? PICK A LANE, WINDOWS!

Unreal Engine out here acting like your helicopter parent, telling you your beast of a machine with an RTX 5090 and 14900KF isn't good enough to run at 1440p 60fps because it insists on strangling everything through a single thread. Meanwhile, id Tech Engine is the cool uncle who shows up and says "use ALL the cores, kid" and delivers billion FPS on a toaster. The difference? id Software actually knows how to write multithreaded code that doesn't make your CPU cry. They've been optimizing game engines since Carmack was writing assembly in his sleep. Unreal just keeps adding more AI-upscaling band-aids instead of fixing the fundamental performance issues. It's 2024 and we're still dealing with engines that can't properly utilize modern hardware. id Tech proves it's possible, but everyone else would rather blame your GPU than admit their engine is running like it's 2005.

The GPU upgrade cycle strikes again! On the left, we have the poor souls who panic-sold their RTX 4090 graphics cards before the 5090 launch, sitting in a dark, depressing cave view. Meanwhile, the smug gamer on the right who held onto their 4090 is enjoying a gorgeous sunset vista. Classic case of tech FOMO backfiring. Turns out the "free upgrade" to 5090 was just Nvidia's marketing department playing 4D chess with our wallets again. Those 4090s are still absolute beasts, and now the sellers are stuck with regret and probably a lighter bank account. The circle of GPU life continues: buy expensive card, panic when new one is announced, sell at a loss, repeat until retirement fund is depleted.

Ah, the eternal graveyard of half-finished projects. That last panel perfectly captures the existential rage when someone suggests you actually complete something instead of starting yet another shiny new endeavor. The audacity of suggesting we confront our digital skeletons! Making a game or learning SQL? Those are just future abandoned projects waiting to happen. But finishing what we started? That's the real horror story. The developer's GitHub is basically a cemetery of repositories last updated 3 years ago with commit messages like "initial commit" and "will finish tomorrow."

Remember when AMD was the affordable alternative to NVIDIA's wallet-destroying GPUs? Well, that fairy tale just died a fiery death. The 9060 XT at $299 for a measly 8GB is AMD's villain origin story – they've crossed to the dark side of premium pricing. It's like watching your favorite indie band sign with a major label and suddenly charge $200 for nosebleed seats. The betrayal is palpable. Gamers everywhere are dramatically screaming "NOOOOOO" into the void while their credit cards weep silently in their wallets.