Rendering pipeline

A game draws each frame in five stages. The game's state becomes geometry. The geometry becomes calls. A device turns the calls into pixels and shows them. A 3D card of 1997 took over only the fourth stage. So a game that ran on a software renderer and on a card gave both the same calls, and only the device changed.

Move the square below and watch every stage change. The numbers in stage 2 and the calls in stage 3 are what a port must match exactly. The three pictures in stage 4 come from the same calls. The guide The rendering pipeline explains each stage, where it ran on each machine, and how to build a port the same way.

Where each stage ran

Pick a machine to see who did each stage, what crossed the seam between the game and the device, and what to check.

One frame, three devices

Everything here is drawn in your browser from a texture made by the page. No game's files are used.