Lewin Kelly Heliodex

Heliodex project update - June 2024

Can't put this one off any longer... you'll see. Here's the update for June, it'll be a long one this time.

Mercury

The Mercury 2 website has been replaced with a memorandum titled "The Future of Mercury 2". The short and not-sweet gist of it is that we ran into a whole host of effectively insurmountable technical issues regarding communication between the client and DLL hooks, and we didn't have the time, resources, experience, or incentive to solve them. Dare I say this is one of the "great filters" of any Revival project – and we've fallen to it.

We made the decision to close down the Mercury 2 website, services, and branding abruptly (as is taskmanager's forte), specifically to avoid the late-stage burnout and neglect that we've seen in other projects. Instead, we'll be using the time and resources we have left to rebuild and rescope the project by splitting it into multiple component parts. We're honing our focus on the eponymous

Heliodex project update - July/August 2024

We're doubling up baby! I didn't have time to write a post last month, so this one will cover both July and August.

Mercury Core

After ~28 months in development, the highly anticipated open-source release of Mercury Core has finally happened. This is (hopefully) the final form of this several-times-recycled codebase, and will continue to be supported by maintainers and by community contributions for some time. However, we're still considering how releases will work, and whether the main branch should be considered stable for production use.

This first release is intended to be only for highly technical users or programmers, though the README does include instructions for easy configuration with the mercury.core.ts file. We're working on a comprehensive video guide to Mercury Core, which includes setup instructions as well as a full tutorial walkthrough of creating your own fully fledged revival project w

Heliodex project update - September 2024

Hello again. Here's another monthly update to show what I've been working on.

Sprig Shooter

The Heliodex/sprig repository includes a set of tools and the Sprig Shooter game for the Hack Club Sprig game console. While the engine was designed to work with tile-based games, Sprig Shooter is a bitmap-based arcade-style game. Shoot enemies and avoid crashing into them to gain score, and the game gets harder as you progress.

The limited capabilities of the Sprig was a fun challenge to work around, and making bitmap graphics and music alongside custom engine behaviour and collision detection was a great learning experience. I've applied to get my hands on the real hardware, and I can't wait to see how the game runs on it.

Heliodex project update – October 2024

Eh. Welcome back, fellow monthly update viewer! Here's the October one.

litecode

litecode is a bytecode interpreter for Luau, modelled after Fiu. It's semi-functional at the moment, though handles a lot of stuff I've thrown at it. Building it ended up being a huge ~~pain~~ learning experience (even though it was still way easier than attempting to embed Luau itself).

Implementing this has given me loads of insight into how Luau works, and interest about what I can use it for as well. It's also given me some crazy ideas like "hey, what if metatables were bad?" and "what if I made tables index starting at 0?" and "what if I made if-conditions only work with booleans?" and so on. I'll see if I can keep those out of my head or if I'll power trip and let them stay there.

	// "GO?
	// WHY THE FUCK
	// IS THIS IN GO?
	// ARE YOU STUPID
	// ???"
	// - taskmanager, 9 January 2024

	// cope harder
	// don't forget da .env

	{
	"applicationSettings": {
	"AndroidSwipeGestureUseStartingPosition": "True",
	"DFFlagAccoutrementWeldingFilteringEnabled": "False",
	"DFFlagAdminServerLogs": "True",
	"DFFlagAllowPackageLinkAncestoryClone": "True",
	"DFFlagAnalyticsNS1BeaconSupportLimitedRobloxUrls": "True",
	"DFFlagAnalyticsReportHttpStatsAtExit": "True",
	"DFFlagAnimatorEnableBone_PlaceFilter": "True;5326950832;5100919959;5064251723;5716845078;5588662702;5550062757;5762960116;5792232897;5796518985;5796546949;5796554295;5790039516;5646917919;5947859215",
	"DFFlagAnimatorOnSteppedKeepAlive": "True",

	-- LOP_BREAK, LOP_COVERAGE and LOP_NOP aren't possible without the C API
	-- Vector constants are supported but need to be commented in and need the ctor renamed
	-- LOADKX and JUMPX support can be commented out
	---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
	-- PREPVARARGS
	local a = "hello world"; -- LOADK
	a,a,a,a,a,a = nil, true, false, 1, 9e9, function() --[[ RETURN ]] end; -- LOADNIL, LOADB 1, LOADB 0, LOADN 1, LOADK 9e9, DUPCLOSURE (no captures)
	FUNC_GLOBAL = newproxy; -- GETIMPORT, SETGLOBAL
	local t = { }; -- NEWTABLE 1 1
	local function stub() -- NEWCLOSURE (ref, val, ref captures)

	--!native

	-- uuid
	-- function for generating a uuid, based on https://gist.github.com/jrus/3197011

	local uuid_format = "%x%x%x%x%x%x%x%x-%x%x%x%x-4%x%x%x-%x%x%x%x-%x%x%x%x%x%x%x%x%x%x%x%x"
	local wrap_in_curly_braces_format = "{%*}"
	local string_format = string.format
	local random_seed = math.randomseed
	local random = math.random

	// F# version, bit of a hack because it relies on luau anyway so just use the luau version, it's faster
	// also I'm never writing a mathematics evaluator

	open System
	open System.Diagnostics
	open System.Collections.Generic
	// digits one to ten must be in order

	// numbers one to ten, with 3 operators placed between them
	let sum = 100

	local Players = game:GetService("Players")
	local TextService = game:GetService("TextService")
	local HttpService = game:GetService("HttpService")
	local DataStoreService = game:GetService("DataStoreService")
	local ReplicatedStorage = game:GetService("ReplicatedStorage")

	local FormRemote = Instance.new("RemoteFunction")
	FormRemote.Name = "FormRemote"
	FormRemote.Parent = ReplicatedStorage