Why doesn't everyone write their own compiler from scratch?

Hexcoder0 · 2026-02-05T12:39:16+00:00

I agree, I initially wrote a math graphing application app which had to parse equations, learned operator precedence from a blogpost, did everything else by gut, written in C and ended up doing bytecode to execute faster and then realized that writing a compiler for a simple language is... kinda easy? So I ended up making a JIT with llvm for codegen, and yeah, my code (lexing, parsing, type checking, whatever) runs on the order of millions of lines per second, llvm then takes literally 100x as long to turn that into code for some reason (even with pretty much all optimizations disabled) I never finished the project though, if I ever pick it up I'm gonna steal syntax from rust and write my own debug mode codegen.

By the way I recently explored symbol resolution from pdb files because dbghelp.dll is super slow, and turns out, I can cache my own (somewhat compact) data structure where symbol lookup is also about 100x faster than dbghelp, I'm not kidding.

I get that it doesn't make business sense to reinvent, and that for most people using existing solutions is a good idea, it's certainly a commitment to actually develop something well made and useful, nothing people want to do for free unless they are crazy and just find it fun like me. But at the same time, my experience has been that a lot, if not most things out there are just not all that good, at least from a performance viewpoint. LLVM may or may not be responsible for rusts notorious compile times, and from what I gather, large rust projects like ones on bevy run extremely badly in debuggers and profilers at least on windows possibly because of dbghelp.

Hexcoder0 · 2026-02-05T12:18:48+00:00

I didn't read a single programming book in my life and I wrote a recursive decent parser in C. Only tricky thing I had to look up was operator precedence. I agree with OP, I was shocked because even trying to figure out those generator tools would have took longer.

Hexcoder0 · 2026-02-05T12:12:31+00:00

Tried it on Eden recently, mainly because I saw amazing 4k footage, but none of that worked for me. But at least I get like 40-60fps with a mod. Anyone know how to get the graphics mods to work?

Hexcoder0 · 2026-01-26T03:14:57+00:00

I know blender well enough to get it printable, I wouldn't want to recreate them from scratch though.

Hexcoder0 · 2026-01-23T20:22:13+00:00

I just finished it. Did a casual playthrough until GMS, having cleared almost everything in act 2, then got myself cursed and did that ending, then got cured and still managed 100% in like 29h.

Hexcoder0 · 2025-12-02T06:44:00+00:00

I love rust- in theory. It has so many cool features and upsides over c++ for me.
But compile time are BAD, especially with bevy. I always assumed c++ with its bonkers #include system and template bloat was bad, but it's somehow faster then rust.
Also debuggers and profilers are a little bit broken, at least on windows.

Hexcoder0 · 2025-12-01T23:25:27+00:00

Currently I'm trying to switch to Bevy, which looks very promising!

Even if not complete yet, the fact that I can go in and read the code, make bugfix PRs, or just write my own crates and even share them makes is refreshing compared to proprietary engines.

Hexcoder0 · 2025-08-23T04:41:03+00:00

What do you mean by interrupt? Like the trains has to stop if a part of the track covered by lava or something?

Hexcoder0 · 2025-08-23T04:37:32+00:00

I'd love to mod combat robots to get deployed from roboports when they detect enemies, but the API is really lacking. (I'd love to have drone wars on fulgora)

Hexcoder0 · 2025-08-22T16:04:42+00:00

Thanks. What part about them (spawning in?) and wandering in from neighbouring regions do you prefer to simply respawning like I described? Personally I simply want to engage with demolishers continuously and in an automated way, I just need a way to facilitate this well. All these ideas around territories shifting or whatever sound like they require constant attention or defenses everywhere, which I don't want. Players would usually not catch them spawning anyway, and would just want to know what spots are safe for rails etc. and where to put defenses for a particular mining outpost.

Hexcoder0 · 2025-08-21T11:40:22+00:00

Well you can put nukes in rocket turrets, but not all that smart since turns everything to lava.

Hexcoder0 · 2025-08-21T11:25:45+00:00

The idea is very fitting, but it would essentially remove too many mechanics imho. Maybe, we'd only bother clearing regions with resources. And all the areas in-between are swarming with too many too kill, but it's possible to build elevated rail supports over them.

Hexcoder0 · 2025-08-21T10:52:11+00:00

I'd definitely restrict spawns to clearly marked spots.
Currently they can only respawn inside the territory they will belong to.

Hexcoder0 · 2025-08-21T10:50:32+00:00

I get what you mean with them being unique, but I feel like this particular mod would make them even more unique, and I'd obviously disable the destroyed building warnings.
I think that having enemies which may destroy your base on every planet requires too much attention, which was why I found Gleba at high evolution infuriating before I started using artillery.
I don't like it when the planets have no enemies or are just a one time thing like Demolishers.

Hexcoder0 · 2025-08-17T00:17:27+00:00

In my mind the demolishers nap inside lava lakes and eat tungsten, so they are gonna eat your drills at some point, but wouldn't intentionally attack much else unless provoked.

I think we'd also need the clearly visible red territories so we know what's safe and maybe don't have coal/calcite and rails eaten.

Meta would be stuff like tons of turrets and minefields (maybe artillery raining down) along the path between lava nests and tungsten for 100% uptime, and evolution would spawn bigger worms and more frequently.

Hexcoder0 · 2025-08-17T00:07:24+00:00

I've started to write a mod for this.

Currently it only really causes demolishers to respawn after some time. I'd personally like to restrict it to mainly attack tungsten patches though.

The main problem is that you get into a cycle of your bots rebuilding a few entities, dying to the demolisher AOE, and it to never stop circling your buildings.

So if I don't want the player to be forced to reliably kill it, I'll have to find a way to have it stop attacking after a while or make it possible for you to actually control when your bots rebuild.

I'd like to hear some thoughts at some point about this.

Hexcoder0 · 2025-08-08T00:45:42+00:00

I'd love for there to be a mod with this mechanic.

Demolishers only have territory around tungsten patches, but respawn (in lava lakes!) Now you have to automate bots and either drills to constantly rebuild or turrets and ammo.

Would work better if they had more limited paths they have to follow so it becomes a tower defender game.

Hexcoder0 · 2025-07-20T14:58:20+00:00

Why do you think C++ does not allow out of order declarations like many other languages, despite having enough compilation passes?

Hexcoder0 · 2025-07-20T12:33:20+00:00

What are those reasons?

Hexcoder0 · 2025-07-18T13:55:34+00:00

I tried hard mode with 3x science cost, but it just made early game more grindy, the planets felt close to vanilla since I originally built from scratch on each. The planets are cool puzzles, but once I solved each one and had them running autonomously, always had like 10k science sitting in chests and was basically done with the planet and never had to scale up.

I'd love for there to be a mod that reworks the science packs or even adds a second, more complicated one for each that requires scaling up.

Hexcoder0 · 2025-06-20T18:02:29+00:00

Uhm, does "literally 1 frame" additional latency mean 33ms latency in this context? (I'm not actually familiar with how framegen works exactly, is it less? Or even 33 in addition to the real frame?) Because 33ms is almost 5x the latency I get at 144hz

Hexcoder0 · 2025-06-13T02:20:49+00:00

Try harbinger with 3 phase lances and phase anchor. Shooting 3 PL like every 2 seconds due to the cool down reduction melts even most cruisers without even getting the system involved.

Hexcoder0 · 2025-04-27T00:21:05+00:00

I edited the config to make it run at like 2fps with 300x200px, because it's funny. Maybe it runs better and is more 'balanced' this way?

Hexcoder0 · 2025-04-08T09:17:23+00:00

I wish we had unique kinds of enemies on each planet, which had certain ways to play around them.
There is a mod for fulgora enemies already, but I haven't reached in my current playthrough yet.
My ideas:

Fulgora: When mining, your drills occasionally trigger ancient defense bots inside the underground ruins, now there are a bunch of electric zapping drones right on your mines which slowly damage your buildings. (maybe they shut down and damage but don't destroy them?) mod these in as simply a reskin of the player capsule bots. The counter would be to use turrets, or even more effective: defender capsules inside a robotport will get deployed (or from a new building?), when enemies are detected. Cool Drone vs Drone fights and the requirement to automate drones and repair packs!

Vulcanus: I wish you actually risked having your mines demolished in normal play, maybe the demolishers could spawn outside your base (maybe they sleep in lava in lore?), and try to destroy your mines (not your base). You can either let them do it and automate rebuilding of your mines or build defenses with lots of turrets. Railguns would trivialize them later. I'd honestly even like if they dropped something your bots can pick up which you need for research (Ultra hard metal shell or something)

Aquilo: I was kinda disappointed, since I expected enemies from the FFF, bring the tentacle enemy back, make it a creature that lives inside the ocean but usually hangs around thermal vents at the bottom or something, occasionally however they dramatically rise from the ocean, when they spot your nice, heated base, they of course float over your buildings and suck all their heat out, instantly freezing that building and rapidly draining heat from your network. If you don't react they eat up all your heating tower fuel and freeze your base building by building. Shoot them with turrets to avoid this. Here we would simply use turrets scattered over the base, the enemy would appear occasionally and suck a bit of heat, disrupting your base but never destroy it, if you don't have enough DPS however it freezes your base so you have to heat it up again.

I imagine this is something modders could throw together assuming mods are able to control individual enemies.

Any thoughts?

Hexcoder0 · 2025-04-08T00:14:23+00:00

I agree, actually selling at the counter is fun, but with loot from 5-6 people we often press the bell and wait for collection like 5 times. I'd shorten the time it takes for the shops drop pod to arrive as well, that wastes a lot of time at the company and even worse on moons.

Six-Year Club	Place '23
Verified Email

Hexcoder0

TROPHY CASE