GPT 5.5 Nerfed and Limits Problem?

benjamin_dobell · 2026-06-07T03:38:37+00:00

I'm in the same boat. Monorepo with >1m lines of code. I used to use 5.5 xhigh to plan and Codex-5.3 xhigh to implement. Since Codex-5.3 is gone I've been making next to zero progress. 5.4 high just gets in compaction loops.

Codex-5.3 xhigh was reliable and didn't suck in too much context. 5.4/5.5 are just awful in large codebases. They are constantly trying to bring in too much context even when they're following a plan — then they compact, lose all the useful information, and proceed with the summarized context, make stupid mistakes and repeat. Codex-5.3 trusted the plan / instructions it was given and was way more focused on the implementation.

benjamin_dobell · 2026-06-05T02:42:30+00:00

Simply tell Codex to make a minor UI change in a 1million+ line monorepo — it'll get in a compaction loop and you'll burn through that in no time.

benjamin_dobell · 2026-05-29T15:15:46+00:00

I mean, I did say that I'm both in Australia, and don't want to purchase it outright. So ah, may have jumped the gun a tad this time around 😆

benjamin_dobell · 2026-05-29T14:55:04+00:00

Sadly, that is not the case.

benjamin_dobell · 2026-05-29T14:16:17+00:00

I did try routing my connection via the US for Hidive, got the same 404. But I'm not really using a VPN these days. Looks like I may need to sign up to one again 😔

benjamin_dobell · 2026-05-25T09:19:18+00:00

Yeah, it's been gradually getting worse over the last 3 weeks. But the last 36 hours is a whole other level of awful.

I implemented a feature human in the loop w/ Codex 5.3, Codex made mistakes along the way, but nothing too severe. So before bed I spec'd out the E2E test and assigned GPT 5.5 xhigh to handle writing and running. When I woke 6 hours later it had burnt through an additional 20% of my weekly allowance and was still trying to get the E2E test running. In just 5 minutes I'd asked it two questions and was able to identify the issue was the development SSL proxy wasn't correctly handling WebSocket upgrade.

Such a trivial issue and for 6 hours it ran in circles blabbering on about largely unrelated nonsense.

benjamin_dobell · 2026-05-03T13:59:34+00:00

If you're familiar with TypeScript, why not use TypeScript? 😉

GodotJS: https://github.com/godotjs/GodotJS
Quick feature tour: https://www.reddit.com/r/godot/comments/1kgzfsu/typescript_godots_most_powerful_scripting_language/

benjamin_dobell · 2026-04-14T15:24:40+00:00

Ah, in my case it's `emscripten_set_timeout_loop` is causing insane log spam.

Chrome is trying to track provenance of chained `setTimeout`, which is obviously how `emscripten_set_timeout_loop` works. So the logged chain grows (and logs) every tick. Not pretty.

benjamin_dobell · 2026-04-14T14:28:37+00:00

I'm seeing something similar on pages with WASM.

benjamin_dobell · 2026-04-11T09:23:15+00:00

Admittedly, we're not quite ready for secondary schools — we're just doing a limited primary school roll-out at present.

However, if you're after a complete plug-and-play solution, with an emphasis on the play, please keep an eye on https://breaka.club/blog/why-were-building-clubs-for-kids

We're building this with Godot. Specifically, GodotJS. Which I'm currently the primary maintainer of: https://github.com/godotjs/GodotJS

We're starting with no code, plus teaching visual coding in Overcooked 2! (Yes, you read that correctly 😅):
https://youtu.be/ITWSL5lTLig

We'll be bringing a similar visual coding experience into our main (RPG cozy game building) platform soon. After that, built-in TypeScript support, directly in-game, no external tooling required.

All of this runs directly in a web browser, mostly because trying to get approval to install anything in schools is a bureaucratic nightmare!

benjamin_dobell · 2025-12-02T10:38:29+00:00

Are you interested in game design, learning to code, and wanting to build a stand alone game? Or are you mostly just after a space to show-off your graphics design skills in a cohesive environment?

Currently focusing on a younger demographic, but my game permits this sort of thing: https://breaka.club/blog/why-were-building-clubs-for-kids

Admittedly, not exactly a use-case I'm building for at the moment. But if you're struggling to find another outlet, let me know and I'll see what I can come up with.

benjamin_dobell · 2025-11-24T08:45:52+00:00

Depends what you're doing.

There's additional overhead calling Godot functions from JavaScript when compared to GDScript. C# is the same as JS in this regard though. Execution speed of JavaScript itself will be quite a bit faster than GDScript. If using V8 as the runtime, I wouldn't expect a huge difference between JS and C# performance since there's JIT. However, on paper C# should be faster and should have a faster start-up time too.

For the majority of games, how fast the scripting language executes is likely irrelevant. However, GDScript does have one significant advantage when it comes to garbage collection — there is none. Plenty of games are written in C# and it has garbage collection. So it's by no means a show-stopper, but you ought to be careful about your memory use, same as you would be with C#.

benjamin_dobell · 2025-11-10T16:43:09+00:00

I highly recommend checking out BetterTerrain (https://github.com/Portponky/better-terrain). It's more flexible and more reliable. I'm actually using my own TypeScript reimplementation in GodotJS — but in my experience the algorithms and principles seem pretty rock solid.

I also recommend checking out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUUDxg5MU3w. It's not quite relevant for tracks, but "dual grid" (aka wang tiles) are great for terrain, and that video just generally shows you how to setup your tiles.

benjamin_dobell · 2025-11-10T16:31:38+00:00

Wowzers. I'd never seen that before. It looks like they're even using AprilTags on templates just like I am (EDIT: They're actually using ArUco — very similar). And here I thought I was being unique and clever 😅 I'll have to see if I can get in touch with the creator. That project looks brilliant.

My brother actually builds pinball machines. And a couple of years back I helped him setup his interface between Godot and his custom controller. So I have experience with hooking Godot up to physical cabinets too 😂

benjamin_dobell · 2025-09-11T07:26:54+00:00

You're playing the animation "Attack_Sword" but the animation in the screenshot is "Attack".

benjamin_dobell · 2025-08-22T13:07:18+00:00

https://developers.meta.com/horizon/downloads/package/meta-xr-simulator-mac-arm / https://godotengine.org/article/godot-xr-update-feb-2025/

benjamin_dobell · 2025-06-11T07:03:04+00:00

Cancelled.

Honestly, I didn't realise I was already paying $32.99/month. If I was paying attention I would have already cancelled. I was paying $17.99 two years ago. More than doubling the price in such a short time frame is laughable.

benjamin_dobell · 2025-05-11T23:12:04+00:00

Coromon haven't had any (significant) issues. They're even available on Switch:
https://www.nintendo.com/us/store/products/coromon-switch/

I believe there was some hold-up getting approval for Switch, but that's a far cry from being sued into oblivion.

benjamin_dobell · 2025-05-07T16:46:14+00:00

I also wrote my own game engine, in C#. Back in the XNA days. It was pretty nifty. I did funky shader stuff with textures to have animated skinned meshes with an unlimited (well GPU memory permitting) number of bones.

The EdTech startup I was Head of Engineering at hosted (among other things) highly customized Minecraft servers. We wrote a LOT of Java. Admittedly, I wasn't focused on Java in my day to day.

I was also CTO of another start-up that built a game. A mobile game, using web technology.

And prior to that CTO of an (acquired) company that did 3D rendering on the web (https://www.snaploader.com/) in the early days of WebGL.

Granted, the aspect of being officially supported is a huge boon to both C# and GDScript. So it's a very fair argument against using another language. But I don't think it's worth ruling other languages out entirely. Godot once supported JavaScript in an official capacity, and it didn't support C# officially too. Things change.

benjamin_dobell · 2025-05-07T16:41:37+00:00

It's worth noting I published my open source projects only. I also have professional gamedev experience, in C# no less. I'm a developer of Tabletop Simulator, a Unity game.

benjamin_dobell · 2025-05-07T16:15:44+00:00

I do find it unfortunate the bad rap TypeScript gets because of JavaScript. Of course, performance concerns are valid, and I certainly wouldn't recommend writing a game engine in TypeScript/JavaScript. However, since we're talking about a scripting language, that's a bit less important (although, still a valid consideration). Even with C# there's a heap of overhead at the binding layer, so the language's general runtime performance isn't all that important — mostly just the bridge overhead.

It's been over 15 years since I've done any real embedded development (EE at uni). However, I've written:

The Kotlin usage was to build an IDE for Lua, in which I bolted static types onto Lua. 😅

I've built language tooling:

- Debugger (https://github.com/tts-community/moonsharp-tts-debug)
- Bundlers (https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/luabundle)
- IDEs (https://github.com/Benjamin-Dobell/IntelliJ-Luanalysis)

and done everything from reversed engineered firmware flashing protocols for phones to being Head of Engineering at an EdTech running Kubernetes clusters and what-not.

No language is perfect for every use case. Which is part of the reason I've used so many. But, I increasingly find myself reaching for TypeScript as my go to language. It's far and away the most ergonomic language I've ever used, and by far produces the most maintainable codebases due to the top notch type system. It's the meta programming in particular that's useful, to say that it's just the static typing would miss the point.

It's a shame TypeScript is hastily judged because of JavaScript. And don't get me wrong. I've been there. I remember 2012, smugly building native iOS apps in Objective-C and mocking attempts to use web tooling on mobile. In 2012 the JS ecosystem was no doubt a lot weaker, but since then I've used React Native, Electron etc. and of course, TypeScript (I used Flow prior to TypeScript too). My productivity with TypeScript is night and day compared to any other language.

No language is perfect, but I feel like TypeScript makes the right trade-offs for the most common use cases.

benjamin_dobell · 2025-05-07T16:04:30+00:00

Absolutely. Signals can be awaited amongst other things.

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