Varo Castaneda

Mixel — From HaxeFlixel Port to 2D/3D Game Framework

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What Is It? #

Mixel is a 2D/3D game framework for Odin that started as a desire to write Flixel-style games in a systems language and ended up as something much larger. Think HaxeFlixel’s rapid prototyping workflow — sprites, cameras, tilemaps, collisions — combined with a full SDL3 GPU-accelerated 3D layer, physically based rendering, skinned glTF animation, hot-reload that doesn’t crash, and an ImGui editor.

Mixture — iPad Node-Based Compositor & 3D Motion Graphics

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What Is It? #

Mixture is a node-based compositing and motion graphics app that runs entirely on an iPad. Think Nuke or Fusion reimagined for a touch screen — you build visual effects by connecting nodes in a graph, each node performing one operation (a blur, a color grade, a 3D render), and the result flows through the chain in real time.

Kiln & Spark — A C GUI Framework and Flash-Style Animation Tool

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What Is It? #

Kiln and Spark are a GUI framework and a Flash-style animation tool — built entirely from scratch in C, with no app framework, no game engine, no shortcuts.

Think Adobe Animate or the drawing tools in Figma: a canvas where you draw vector shapes with a pressure-sensitive brush, animate them across a timeline, and preview the result with onion skinning. That’s Spark. Kiln is the invisible layer underneath it — the buttons, panels, docking workspace, text rendering, and undo system that make Spark feel like a real application.

OhCAD — Parametric CAD Kernel in Odin

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What Is It? #

OhCAD is a parametric CAD application — think Fusion 360 or SolidWorks, but built from scratch in Odin and running on a custom SDL3 GPU renderer. You sketch 2D shapes on a workplane, apply geometric constraints (horizontal, vertical, coincident, dimensioned distances), extrude them into 3D solids, and cut or combine those solids with boolean operations.

What makes it notable is that everything below the UI is hand-built. The constraint solver integrates SolveSpace’s Levenberg-Marquardt engine through Odin’s FFI. The boolean kernel wraps OpenCascade Technology (the same library inside FreeCAD and KiCad) behind a C wrapper. The renderer runs on SDL3 GPU with Metal shaders. The UI is a custom immediate-mode system drawn through the same graphics pipeline. There is no off-the-shelf CAD kernel, no Unity, no Unreal — just Odin linking against two C and C++ libraries and doing the rest itself.

MIX — A Programming Language Built with AI, From Zero Compiler Experience

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What Is It? #

MIX is a systems programming language I built with zero prior compiler experience, using AI as a pair-programming partner. Think Python’s readability and Odin’s explicitness, translated into a language that compiles to native code — no VM, no GC, no runtime overhead.

The language itself has about 30 keywords, indentation-sensitive syntax (like Python), generics with monomorphization, concurrency primitives (go/wait/shared), region-based memory management via zones, and first-class C interop that can auto-generate bindings from any C header at compile time. The compiler has two backends (LLVM and C), a built-in LSP server, a code formatter, a C binding generator, and a build system. It compiles itself in under a second. What makes it unusual is the story of how it was built — not by a compiler engineer, but by someone who learned the entire pipeline through directed construction with AI.

VFX Houdini Reel

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I spent 20+ years working in visual effects, animation, and technical art across film, television, advertising, and interactive media. This production experience provided firsthand exposure to the workflows, challenges, and tools used by artists in professional environments.

Working closely with creative teams helped shape my interest in building software for artists and content creators. Many of the projects in this portfolio—from animation tools and compositing software to application frameworks and workflow automation systems—are influenced by lessons learned while solving real production problems in visual effects and digital content creation.

Moss — A Lightweight 2D/3D Game Framework in C

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

What Is It? #

Moss is a 2D/3D game framework for C — think Raylib’s simplicity crossed with Flixel’s game-object hierarchy, rendered through SDL3’s GPU API. It’s a single-header library: #include <moss/moss.h> gives you batched 2D rendering with sprite batching, a depth-tested 3D pipeline, a Flixel-style object system with velocity/drag/collision built into every entity, Box2D physics integration, a 32-voice software audio mixer, a tween engine with 13 easing types, and a ref-counted asset manager.

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000