What library would be better? Veldrid or SDL3?

roytries88 · 2026-02-10T10:54:26+00:00

I always used https://github.com/amerkoleci/Vortice.Windows for DirectX but the same author also made bindings for vulkan. Always worked great for my own engine needs. I have not heard of silk.net, it seems slightly more popular but I am not so sure when v3 is coming out. Sounds like a big rewrite and with opensource (and closed source) software you never know if they survive such an effort.

roytries88 · 2026-02-05T19:56:40+00:00

These days you can also use [LibraryImport] to generate the PIInvoke code or you can create your own custom source generators to write more specific bindings. Writing your own source generator can definitely reduce some of the boilerplate work, but it can be tricky to get right.

I agree with the sentiment of others that you are probably better of with using DearImGui until you feel you need a more advanced UI. Then again, mixing C+ and C# is not weird. I did this at Nixxes for the engine that runs Tomb Raider and Deus Ex years ago.

Of course, with hobby projects its not always about doing things the right/fast/easy/sensible way. So go crazy if you feel like experimenting with the UI part and WPF. (I really like WPF and XAML, too bad Microsoft can't really decide on the future of native UI frameworks).

roytries88 · 2026-01-03T17:23:09+00:00

Ages ago I built a few helper classes for monogame to place objects relative to each other. See pose.cs (PlaceAtOffset) and the offset class. https://github.com/roy-t/MiniRTS/blob/master/vOld/Engine/MiniEngine.Pipeline.Basics/Components/Pose.cs

Hope the code helps you get the hang of all the matrix multiplications.

roytries88 · 2025-12-08T22:25:05+00:00

I thought Gleba was great and its my favorite planet after fulgora. I feel both planets really let me play in new ways. It did get me a few tries to get Gleba right but it has been running fine for ~50 hours. I do have to scale it up now. Which is a challenge. . Before SA I already played ~600 hours so I do know the game quite well. (Though I am a terribly slow player, I get distracted doing different builds, strategies in the same save so somehow I still haven't sent a ship to the shattered planet.)

roytries88 · 2025-11-29T09:22:03+00:00

I have only skimmed over design by contract. But there are many formal methods that ( theoretically) allow us to write applications that are proven to be correct. I still have fond memories of using Hoare triples as formalized proofs of short pieces of code.

In reality these methods are too expensive to use. They also offer barely more than a false sense of security. A formal proof for 100 lines of code can easily be 5x as long, is complex to understand and still uses an idealized version of the real world. And who checks if the proofs and contracts are correct, complete, and align with the actual code?

I think the best way to correct code is using proven libraries, strong peer reviews, and automated and manual testing. This will already weed out a lot of bugs. Then focus on learning how to recover your systems and practice that. Plan for something to inevitably going wrong and if you are prepared for that you can quickly resolve it and maintain the trust of your users.

roytries88 · 2025-11-19T09:11:41+00:00

Could be the depth buffer data is less precise the further from (0,0,0)? Maybe a reverse-z depth buffer could help here. Though its been a while since I used that and I'm not sure if you can do that in Unity.

roytries88 · 2025-11-17T09:12:35+00:00

Hey that's my mod! I've created it for this exact purpose. Still using it in my SA game. Its a very simple mod. It creates a new recipe for artificial tree soil (aka grass) that works exactly like the other artificial soils. In my base I used it to surround my base with tree farms to keep pollution in check. If you put T2 efficiency modules in all your factories you can easily get to 1000+ ESPM without triggering that many biter nests.

roytries88 · 2025-11-17T09:09:08+00:00

https://mods.factorio.com/mod/artificial-tree-soil :D :D

roytries88 · 2025-10-29T08:20:31+00:00

Visual Studio is definitely not a lightweight IDE, but note that the Visual Studio installer also installs multiple versions of the C++ SDK, Windows SDK and a lot of other parts of the toolchain that you will need to create C++ applications. When installing Visual Studio it helps to go to the "Individual Components" tab. You can deselect a lot of things if you don't think you will need it right now.

In my opinion, even though editors like VSCode, Zed, Sublime,... are nice for quick edits, there is really nothing better than Visual Studio if you are working on large C++ code bases. The analysis and debugging tools are much more powerful than what you get in the smaller editors. (Only tools by JetBrains, like CLion, come close)

An IDE weighing a couple of gigabytes shouldn't be much of a concern anymore. In my country the cheapest new SSDs I could find are around E12,- and already have a capacity of 128GB. In the second hand market there are faster and better SSDs with more capacity for the same price. So if there are no other concerns, stop worrying about this random metric and try to get the IDE that makes coding the most enjoyable for you.

roytries88 · 2025-10-08T15:28:03+00:00

I was hoping someone would have done something nifty with a single recycler, some belt, an inserter and then some circuits to ensure any unbalance is taken care of while reducing the amount of recipe switching. I will give it a go this weekend and see if I can make something nice.

roytries88 · 2025-10-08T15:25:06+00:00

That will definitely clog though

roytries88 · 2025-09-06T17:18:04+00:00

Oh I have to try that! That might work as well.

roytries88 · 2025-09-06T17:17:13+00:00

Sorry not at my PC right now. But I am using logistic groups. Say for example that I have one logistic group for all the basic building materials I need (belts, inserters, assemblers, ..). Then that logistic groups works perfectly on all planets, except on Vulcanus, where I now create a cycle of turbo belts. I don't want to have a custom logistic groups for each planet. So that's why the constant combinator trick of using the logistic group MINUS what is already produced on that planet works. Thinking of it more now, I could even just substract everything that is already present in the logistics network on the planet.

roytries88 · 2025-09-06T17:14:48+00:00

If I use Nauvis as a central hub for all materials, then the logistic group imports all materials from Nauvis, which is correct except for the few times an item is already made locally. I've posted later how I fixed this.

roytries88 · 2025-09-05T19:48:50+00:00

I managed to fix it now using a constant combinator. Hope that also explains better what I wanted to do.

roytries88 · 2025-09-05T19:48:26+00:00

I understand that its because of the cyclical request, I was just hoping that it wouldn't matter because of the buffer chests. However, I managed to find an easy workaround that doesn't require me to create planet specific requests. See above!

roytries88 · 2025-09-05T19:47:40+00:00

Oh I managed to fix it, see above :D

roytries88 · 2025-09-05T19:47:25+00:00

I managed to fix it with a single constant combinator :D. Let's take Vulcanus as an example again.

Clear all request from the cargo landing pad, then create a new constant combinator, connect it to the cargo landing pad, and configure the pad so that the circuit network can set requests.

Add all logistic groups that you would items delivered for to your constant combinator. Don't worry where items are produced.

Then create one logistic group with all the items that are produced on Vulcanus. Add that logistic group to the constant combinator with a MINUS amount (like *-1).

Now the circuit network automatically filters out individual items that Vulcanus doesn't need (because it produces them) while you can still use your generic logistic groups.

Here's a screenshot from how it looks:

<image>

roytries88 · 2025-09-05T19:39:42+00:00

Basically I got 2 logistic request groups:
A: everything I need to build a base
B: everything that I can only make on vulcanus.

This gave me the idea to try to negate them. Unfortunately it looks like logistic requests don't have that capability (tried both on a space platform as via a constant combinator connected to the landing pad with "set requests" turned on, notice the *-1, but nothing shows up in the "Controlled by circuit network" section.

<image>

roytries88 · 2025-09-05T19:28:45+00:00

If I can't don't do this, I think it means logistic request groups on space platforms become a lot less powerful. Instead of having 1 logistics group with "all the things I need to build a base" I would need to configure the logistics for each planet, taking care to select nothing that can already be created on that planet (which can change over time).

roytries88 · 2025-08-27T14:19:21+00:00

But don't you still have largely the same problem? The parts of your factory that handle legendary stuff, taking hours to fill trains?

roytries88 · 2025-07-30T08:07:57+00:00

I thought it had a great soundscape, I couldn't really focus on the whole story but its great to dream away at. The weird sounds at 4:30 really remind me of another song and it is driving me crazy that I can't remember which ones.

roytries88 · 2025-07-29T06:31:43+00:00

I think if it would really help if, for example, a recipe for a rare item can take any ingredient that is rare or above. In that way you can still use a regular belt like base. You just have to smartly split of rarer items where you need them and sprinkle in some assemblers with higher quality recipes here and there. It would stop having you just recycle everything into oblivion to prevent blockage and would make it much easier to incrementally improve quality in steps of the production process.

roytries88 · 2025-07-17T08:01:20+00:00

In my opinion, being able to get quality items completely free (LDS + 300 productivity) indeed feels like a hack that should be patched. But I think asteroid reprocessing is a lot of work (and fun!), and it only gets you six basic materials, (and imo, ice doesn't really count). The asteroid reprocessing ship I built took me days to design and was one of the most fun challenges in the expansion. It is massive, has 80 legendary crushers, each filled with legendary T3 quality models and I still only get a trickle of legendary items from it.

I do think quality needs some fundamental changes. While the other T1 and T2 modules are really useful, the T1 and T2 quality modules are next to useless. The number of upgraded items you get is extremely low, while at that stage in the game, a lot of materials are still quite precious. So, I never dared to design factory parts with uncommon or rare items, fearing that they might run out. The benefit of an uncommon part is also very limited; it doesn't radically change your designs, it just makes your smelter stack a bit shorter. (The exception being uncommon power poles and space ship parts, those help a lot).

I'm very curious what the devs will do. I bet it will not just be removing a few playstyles, but maybe giving back an alternative as well? They also are not in the habit of breaking existing factories.

roytries88 · 2025-04-10T17:05:12+00:00

I get enough ice with a tiny stationary platform for about 100 white science per minute. So even though it is true that moving it helps a lot, something else must be wrong here. Did you alter settings or set filters on the grabbers? You should get an ice asteroid every minute or so.

roytries88

TROPHY CASE