Wookash Podcast

Mark Healey, veteran game developer and Media Molecule co-founder known for LittleBigPlanet, Dreams and Black & White. He recounts his Commodore 64 roots, prototype-driven studio culture, and the leap from Ragdoll Kung Fu to pitching playable demos. Conversations cover evolving UGC platforms, Dreams’ ambitions and limits, AI and handmade creativity, and his return to hands-on indie and art-directing Masters of Albion.

Anton Mikhailov, a software engineer and graphics/game developer who built a personal C++ framework and SVG/triangulation tools circa 2008. He walks through his old codebase, explaining design choices and compilation headaches. They dig into geometry, vector design, tessellation and SVG parsing, OpenGL helpers, and demoing a retro Cosmos project.

Arseny Kapoulkine, a software and graphics engineer behind MeshOptimizer and gltf tools. He breaks down mesh vertex quirks, cache-friendly index ordering, meshlet and mesh shader workflows, mesh compression versus runtime cost, quantization trade-offs, and Nanite-style cluster LOD approaches. Short explanations of tools, metrics, and practical pipeline choices.

Mike Turitzin, graphics programmer behind the WebGPU SDF Engine and former Figma renderer, talks about signed distance fields and why they matter for dynamic geometry. He explains sphere tracing, contrasts SDFs with triangle meshes, and why meshes are still used for physics. He also covers using WebGPU, avoiding engine bloat, and plans for making a game with his engine.

A celebratory deep-dive into why someone started long-form technical conversations. Topics include building tumor ablation medtech software, moving from high-level languages to low-level systems, and influences from game dev thinkers. There are stories about podcasting logistics, studio setup, and memorable recording mishaps. Personal moves, hobby projects in graphics, and plans for more hands-on teaching are also covered.

Filip Pizło, systems programmer and creator of Fil C who builds capability-based memory safety for C/C++; Casey Muratori, performance-oriented systems coder known for Handmade Hero and low-level insight. They discuss what memory safety really means. They explain weird execution and historical exploits. They outline Fil C’s pointer-capability approach, compatibility and porting challenges, runtime tradeoffs, and optimization paths.

Delaney Gillilan, a software engineer behind Datastar who builds ultra‑fast web tooling, talks about questioning web defaults. He explores hypermedia vs SPA trends, Datastar’s plugin‑first, spec‑driven approach, sending HTML instead of JS for performance, SSE streaming, and real-world migrations from React. Short, technical, and focused on practical web architecture ideas.

Alex Evans, an engineer and open-source hardware maker behind projects like the Plinky Synth, walks through building electronics from idea to manufacturing. He covers part selection, KiCad workflows, USB-C placement, RP2040 layout, routing and ground planes, adding audio and battery management, and preparing BOMs and manufacturing files. Practical, hands-on design and tooling tips throughout.

Chuck Jazdzewski, veteran UI and framework designer behind TurboVision, TypeScript origins, WPF/XAML, and Jetpack Compose, discusses reinventing UI paradigms. He tells stories about moving from Pascal/Delphi to modern declarative UI, choosing functions over classes, compiler instrumentation for composition, performance tricks for Android, and designing APIs that play well with AI.

Anton Mikhailov, a software engineer and game-engine developer focused on state management and memory-friendly data structures. He demos a large-arrays-of-things approach and live-coding. Topics include why typical C++ entity designs fail, replacing pointers with indices to avoid invalidation, intrusive lists/trees stored in arrays, slot-map style pools with nil sentinels, and practical trade-offs for performance.