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Ignacio Castaño🍉

@castano@mastodon.gamedev.place

mastodon 4.6.6

Master swimmer, mountain climber, and stand up coder.
I work on texture processing tools at Ludicon.
Formerly at Roblox, Thekla (The Witness), NVIDIA, OddWorld, Relic, Crytek.

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12 Posts

Joined November 13, 2017

About Me:

https://ludicon.com/castano

Blog:

https://ludicon.com/castano/blog

GitHub:

https://github.com/castano/

strava:

https://www.strava.com/athletes/castano80

Posts

Ignacio Castaño🍉 @castano@mastodon.gamedev.place · Apr 29, 2026

Replying to @TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place

@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place I’ve had many torn pulleys, but not a single wrist problem since I started climbing. I used to have carpal tunnel syndrome back in the day.

Ignacio Castaño🍉 @castano@mastodon.gamedev.place · Apr 25, 2026

Replying to @TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place

@TomF@mastodon.gamedev.place right? Wish I could talk to some of those hw engineers.

Ignacio Castaño🍉 @castano@mastodon.gamedev.place · Apr 24, 2026

Replying to @keiwando@mastodon.gamedev.place

@keiwando@mastodon.gamedev.place @StompyRobot@mastodon.gamedev.place Thanks! Someone at Apple reached out to bump the priority. I'll try calling next if I don't see any progress in spite of that.

Ignacio Castaño🍉 @castano@mastodon.gamedev.place · Apr 24, 2026

Some reading for the weekend:

Implementation details of Apple's lossy texture compression format.
https://www.ludicon.com/castano/blog/2026/04/metal-lossy-compression-format/

Enjoy!

Ignacio Castaño🍉 @castano@mastodon.gamedev.place · Apr 24, 2026

Looks like I'm locked out of both Apple and Google's developer programs.

I let my memberships lapse while dealing with more pressing things, and now I'm trying to restore them, but my Apple account is locked and Google is rejecting my re-enrollment with no explanation.

I opened a support request with Apple two weeks ago and haven't heard nothing. I can't even figure out how to open one with Google.

Does anybody know what avenues I have to resolve this?

Ignacio Castaño🍉 @castano@mastodon.gamedev.place · Apr 15, 2026

Replying to @NohatCoder@mastodon.gamedev.place

@NohatCoder@mastodon.gamedev.place Sigh, counting is hard.

Ignacio Castaño🍉 @castano@mastodon.gamedev.place · Apr 15, 2026

I'm going camping this Thursday, so this week's blog post is out a little early.

Larger ASTC block sizes save bandwidth, but may not save memory at all. I tested many iOS and Android devices to find the actual cost of memory alignment:

https://www.ludicon.com/castano/blog/2026/04/the-true-size-of-astc-textures/

Ignacio Castaño🍉 @castano@mastodon.gamedev.place · Apr 11, 2026

Replying to @thesolidpixel@mastodon.gamedev.place

@thesolidpixel@mastodon.gamedev.place @rygorous@mastodon.gamedev.place @breakin@mastodon.gamedev.place Yeah, my main concern is the driver making different tiling decisions at runtime or after os/driver updates. I'll have to play with it some more, but I think it's worth offering it as an option if I don't run into problems. In Vulkan resource casting already provides most of the benefit, and aliasing is more complex due to device fragmentation, but I think that's the kind of complexity I can absorb if it makes a difference.

Ignacio Castaño🍉 @castano@mastodon.gamedev.place · Apr 11, 2026

Replying to @rygorous@mastodon.gamedev.place

@rygorous@mastodon.gamedev.place My inclination would be to only enable this on known existing devices. Future devices will certainly change, but it’d be good to get some guarantees about devices that are already out.

Ignacio Castaño🍉 @castano@mastodon.gamedev.place · Apr 11, 2026

Replying to @rygorous@mastodon.gamedev.place

@rygorous@mastodon.gamedev.place yeah, would love IHVs to chime in and comment whether there any pitfalls like that in their hardware, otherwise I guess I’ll find out the hard way.

Ignacio Castaño🍉 @castano@mastodon.gamedev.place · Apr 11, 2026

I thought aliasing buffers and compressed textures in order to write to them was a very bad idea, but after playing with it, it actually seems fine?

https://www.ludicon.com/castano/blog/2026/04/writing-to-compressed-textures-in-metal/

Ignacio Castaño🍉 @castano@mastodon.gamedev.place · Aug 08, 2025

Replying to @EricLengyel@mastodon.gamedev.place

@EricLengyel Are you going to be showing it at siggraph?

Ignacio Castaño🍉

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