Linkblog/2025/04/04

Anime.js v4, Xash3D FWGS, Tom's Personal Tools, Why so many camera RAW formats?

@animejs.com‬ - After 5 years in the making, I’m very happy to finally release Anime.js v4

New Anime.js release!

Xash3D (pronounced [ksɑʂ]) FWGS is a game engine, aimed to provide compatibility with Half-Life Engine and extend it, as well as to give game developers well known workflow.

Alan over on Bluesky is working on a cool project using Xash3D.

The textures / vibe made me sort of think it was Quake/GoldSrc based, but honestly I wasn’t fully sure until I saw it posted by Alan in the Map Center Discord!

Very cool.

Tom MacWright - Personal Tools

I used to make little applications just for myself. Sixteen years ago (oof) I wrote a habit tracking application, and a keylogger that let me keep track of when I was using a computer, and generate some pretty charts.

I’ve taken a long break from those kinds of things. I love my hobbies, but they’ve drifted toward the non-technical, and the idea of keeping a server online for a fun project is unappealing (which is something that I hope Val Town, where I work, fixes). Some folks maintain whole ‘homelab’ setups and run Kubernetes in their basement. Not me, at least for now.

But I have been tiptoeing back into some little custom tools that only I use, with a focus on just my own computing experience. Here’s a quick tour.

Tom has many nice tools.

I want to get more on the small tool train.

Antonio G. Di Benedetto - We asked camera companies why their RAW formats are all different and confusing

When you set up a new camera, or even go to take a picture on some smartphones, you’re presented with a key choice: JPG or RAW?

JPGs are ready to post just about anywhere, while RAWs yield an unfinished file filled with extra data that allows for much richer post-processing. That option for a RAW file (and even the generic name, RAW) has been standardized across the camera industry — but despite that, the camera world has never actually settled on one standardized RAW format.

While I would be pro-standardization in this space, I do feel like its not as easy as just adopting the spec for these camera manufacturers, with regards to how their existing systems and even hardware are built around their own formats.

I think this will stay a problem to be solved in software, as a Lightroom Classic user, my software makes the RAW format invisible to me, which I’m a fan of.