Hello! I’m Gabriel Gambetta.

I’m a Senior Software Engineer in Zürich; the author of Computer Graphics from Scratch; and an actor/filmmaker.

My recent work experience includes 7 years at Google Zürich (in various SWE and SRE teams) and 4 years at Improbable in London (joined as employee #30, wore a lot of hats). In the more distant past I founded and ran a small indie game dev studio for almost a decade (leading to the Fast-Paced Multiplayer articles). I also taught Computer Graphics at university level (leading to Computer Graphics from Scratch).

To get in touch, just send me an email or connect on LinkedIn.

Here are some of the things I’ve made over the years.

Tech

• Computer Graphics from scratch: A book about 3D rendering, covering rasterization and raytracing, based on the lectures I gave during my teaching years. You can buy the book, published by No Starch Press.

  • ZX Spectrum Raytracer: A simplified version of the CGFS raytracer, written in ZX Spectrum BASIC.
  • Tiny Raytracer: The CGFS raytracer, with lighting, shadows and reflections, written in 912 bytes of JavaScript.

• Fast-Paced Multiplayer: A series of articles about Client-Side Prediction, Server Reconciliation, Entity Interpolation, and the architecture of fast-paced client-server multiplayer games. These articles have become one of the main references on the topic found on the Internet.

  • Client-Server Game Architecture | Client-Side Prediction and Server Reconciliation | Entity Interpolation | Lag Compensation | Live Demo
  • Also available in Korean and Russian (links inside).

• Pathfinding Demystified: A series of articles about pathfinding, focusing on the A* algorithm.

  • Generic Search | Search Strategies | A* Demystified | Practical A*
  • Also available in Russian (links inside).

• Emulator-Backed Remakes: A proof of concept of a revolutionary way to make remakes of old games.

• libz80: An emulator of the Z80 processor (C library).

• Mystery Studio: The game development startup I founded and ran from 2002 to 2011.

Writing & Filmmaking

• The Golden Seed: a thriller novel. The Da Vinci Code meets Jason Bourne.

  • Buy on paperback or ebook.

  • Some notes about my creative and technical process.

    • How I wrote my first novel during my daily commute.
    • How I wrote my novel using only open source tools.

• Opt-in: an hour-long, no-budget feature film I wrote, produced, directed, and edited; made with a tiny, all-volunteer cast and crew.

  • “An idealistic engineer lands his dream job at the biggest social media company in the world. But when he discovers the dark side of the business, he must decide whether to stay silent or risk everything to expose the truth.”.

  • Watch it on Amazon Prime Video.

  • More info on IMDb.