Dave Colson
@dcolson.bsky.social
Lead Programmer at Climax Studios. Previously worked on Star Citizen. Personal account though. I mostly post about coding and coding projects. He/Hm
I'm supposed to post more but I frequently forget, but anyway, major text editor update!
- Completed a rewrite of the UI and text rendering
- Implemented syntax highlighting!!
- Smooth scrolling, and countless bits of UI polish
Really coming together, I'm able to use it day to day more often now
- Completed a rewrite of the UI and text rendering
- Implemented syntax highlighting!!
- Smooth scrolling, and countless bits of UI polish
Really coming together, I'm able to use it day to day more often now
August 4, 2025 at 9:43 AM
I'm supposed to post more but I frequently forget, but anyway, major text editor update!
- Completed a rewrite of the UI and text rendering
- Implemented syntax highlighting!!
- Smooth scrolling, and countless bits of UI polish
Really coming together, I'm able to use it day to day more often now
- Completed a rewrite of the UI and text rendering
- Implemented syntax highlighting!!
- Smooth scrolling, and countless bits of UI polish
Really coming together, I'm able to use it day to day more often now
Been a while since I've posted, still working on projects. I have completely rewritten the renderer and UI system for the text editor, it now looks vastly nicer, and we can have a lot more interactive, better looking and complex UIs.
#programming #texteditor
#programming #texteditor
May 11, 2025 at 2:18 PM
Been a while since I've posted, still working on projects. I have completely rewritten the renderer and UI system for the text editor, it now looks vastly nicer, and we can have a lot more interactive, better looking and complex UIs.
#programming #texteditor
#programming #texteditor
It's more arcadey than I thought it would be, but as a result it's very simple to pick up and play when you want a quick bit of fun. There's loads of planes and loads of content, so it's very easy to enjoy without getting too in depth with anything. It's what I want war thunder to be haha
April 13, 2025 at 7:33 PM
It's more arcadey than I thought it would be, but as a result it's very simple to pick up and play when you want a quick bit of fun. There's loads of planes and loads of content, so it's very easy to enjoy without getting too in depth with anything. It's what I want war thunder to be haha
I've been playing a game called Janes Fighters recently, it's a flight game from the 90s that I've heard a lot about and always wanted to play. It's a bit annoying setting up old games on modern PCs, but I gotta say this game is really cool.
April 13, 2025 at 7:33 PM
I've been playing a game called Janes Fighters recently, it's a flight game from the 90s that I've heard a lot about and always wanted to play. It's a bit annoying setting up old games on modern PCs, but I gotta say this game is really cool.
It's really important in the design of this fantasy console that it's quick and easy to develop things for, and so loading assets it's very simple it's just, load(assetname) in code.
March 22, 2025 at 7:57 PM
It's really important in the design of this fantasy console that it's quick and easy to develop things for, and so loading assets it's very simple it's just, load(assetname) in code.
This was much more work than I initially expected, but you can now hot reload any asset that's currently loaded into Polybox (my PS1 inspired fantasy console) #gamedev #programming #psx
A little more detail on why this was tricky 🧵
A little more detail on why this was tricky 🧵
March 22, 2025 at 7:57 PM
This was much more work than I initially expected, but you can now hot reload any asset that's currently loaded into Polybox (my PS1 inspired fantasy console) #gamedev #programming #psx
A little more detail on why this was tricky 🧵
A little more detail on why this was tricky 🧵
Another cool thing I've worked alongside a lot of filesystem features is hot reloadable code. It's one of those features that feels like absolute magic when it works nicely. I'm hoping to absolutely everything be hot reloadable, meshes, textures, code, audio etc.
March 16, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Another cool thing I've worked alongside a lot of filesystem features is hot reloadable code. It's one of those features that feels like absolute magic when it works nicely. I'm hoping to absolutely everything be hot reloadable, meshes, textures, code, audio etc.
Been working on Polybox, my PS1 fantasy console recently. A lot of non-visual work such as a virtual filesystem and project system. Mostly to support it being an actually usable little product rather than a demo. While doing this I got the swamp scene from Crocotile3D imported #gamedev #programming
March 16, 2025 at 4:57 PM
Been working on Polybox, my PS1 fantasy console recently. A lot of non-visual work such as a virtual filesystem and project system. Mostly to support it being an actually usable little product rather than a demo. While doing this I got the swamp scene from Crocotile3D imported #gamedev #programming
The idea being that scenes, textures and meshes are all relatively simple and fully visible to lua code, which means you can make procedural meshes and textures to your hearts content, and the console will render them happily. Here is how you might access the above data to draw a mesh
March 2, 2025 at 5:05 PM
The idea being that scenes, textures and meshes are all relatively simple and fully visible to lua code, which means you can make procedural meshes and textures to your hearts content, and the console will render them happily. Here is how you might access the above data to draw a mesh
A normal file, like a gltf file gets imported and converted to a lua table which you can easily load into lua. Meshes also get converted to userdata buffers (shown in second image), which can be manipulated however you want in lua.
March 2, 2025 at 5:05 PM
A normal file, like a gltf file gets imported and converted to a lua table which you can easily load into lua. Meshes also get converted to userdata buffers (shown in second image), which can be manipulated however you want in lua.
This weekend's work has been back on my PS1 fantasy console project. I've been working on making custom file formats for things like meshes/scenes/textures that are more easily compatible with lua. Heavily inspired by what @lexaloffle.bsky.social has done with picotron.
March 2, 2025 at 5:05 PM
This weekend's work has been back on my PS1 fantasy console project. I've been working on making custom file formats for things like meshes/scenes/textures that are more easily compatible with lua. Heavily inspired by what @lexaloffle.bsky.social has done with picotron.
I've been trying to use my text editor at work day to day, it's useful to help decide what's the most important thing to work on.
The other week I realised I the most notable missing feature was file search, so here we go! It's a full regex engine, so you can search however you want
The other week I realised I the most notable missing feature was file search, so here we go! It's a full regex engine, so you can search however you want
February 23, 2025 at 5:47 PM
I've been trying to use my text editor at work day to day, it's useful to help decide what's the most important thing to work on.
The other week I realised I the most notable missing feature was file search, so here we go! It's a full regex engine, so you can search however you want
The other week I realised I the most notable missing feature was file search, so here we go! It's a full regex engine, so you can search however you want
A new hobby is developing for me haha. I made a custom modded GBA. Has a backlit high-res IPS screen, USB-C charging and an all new case and buttons.
Can’t get over how good the screen looks. Leaps and bounds better than the original.
Can’t get over how good the screen looks. Leaps and bounds better than the original.
February 19, 2025 at 11:29 AM
A new hobby is developing for me haha. I made a custom modded GBA. Has a backlit high-res IPS screen, USB-C charging and an all new case and buttons.
Can’t get over how good the screen looks. Leaps and bounds better than the original.
Can’t get over how good the screen looks. Leaps and bounds better than the original.
Been working on my Vulkan rendering project this weekend. I've refactored and tidied up a lot of messy code into something inspired by @sebaaltonen.bsky.social's talk on his renderer. Setting up the rendering pipeline for a cube now looks like this, much neater. Also we can draw textured meshes now
February 16, 2025 at 12:03 PM
Been working on my Vulkan rendering project this weekend. I've refactored and tidied up a lot of messy code into something inspired by @sebaaltonen.bsky.social's talk on his renderer. Setting up the rendering pipeline for a cube now looks like this, much neater. Also we can draw textured meshes now
Lot of work recently on my text editor, almost all the basic editing features are in and working, plus countless bugfixes for tabstops and line endings (I hate these things).
You can now save the document, which means the editor is useful as a real editor in my daily work! This feels so good
You can now save the document, which means the editor is useful as a real editor in my daily work! This feels so good
February 4, 2025 at 11:44 AM
Lot of work recently on my text editor, almost all the basic editing features are in and working, plus countless bugfixes for tabstops and line endings (I hate these things).
You can now save the document, which means the editor is useful as a real editor in my daily work! This feels so good
You can now save the document, which means the editor is useful as a real editor in my daily work! This feels so good
Been mostly relaxing and playing some games this holiday, but did do a small bit of work on the text editor.
This is a modal (helix-like) editor, so I started work on the various motions, such as jumping to start and end of line, as well as skipping over words. Can even jump by subwords!
This is a modal (helix-like) editor, so I started work on the various motions, such as jumping to start and end of line, as well as skipping over words. Can even jump by subwords!
January 2, 2025 at 12:05 PM
Been mostly relaxing and playing some games this holiday, but did do a small bit of work on the text editor.
This is a modal (helix-like) editor, so I started work on the various motions, such as jumping to start and end of line, as well as skipping over words. Can even jump by subwords!
This is a modal (helix-like) editor, so I started work on the various motions, such as jumping to start and end of line, as well as skipping over words. Can even jump by subwords!
I've implemented my optimization for my text editor, tldr, it was not easy, but I've got something cool and novel (at least by what I've seen online)
Here's it is, I can load a 130mb log file, consisting of 600k lines, it loads more or less instantly, and I can navigate and edit with no lag
Here's it is, I can load a 130mb log file, consisting of 600k lines, it loads more or less instantly, and I can navigate and edit with no lag
December 18, 2024 at 6:10 PM
I've implemented my optimization for my text editor, tldr, it was not easy, but I've got something cool and novel (at least by what I've seen online)
Here's it is, I can load a 130mb log file, consisting of 600k lines, it loads more or less instantly, and I can navigate and edit with no lag
Here's it is, I can load a 130mb log file, consisting of 600k lines, it loads more or less instantly, and I can navigate and edit with no lag
This is very much a backburner project for me, so you get CL descriptions like this:
December 10, 2024 at 10:36 AM
This is very much a backburner project for me, so you get CL descriptions like this:
Slow progress in my journey of learning about modern graphics APIs. It's the most cliche learning screenshot ever but here is a cube I made in like 1500 lines of vulkan code haha
December 10, 2024 at 10:32 AM
Slow progress in my journey of learning about modern graphics APIs. It's the most cliche learning screenshot ever but here is a cube I made in like 1500 lines of vulkan code haha
Progress update on the text editor today:
- You can now select text, and delete whole chunks
- Fixed a lot of weird bugs in text editing
- Created some debug tools for inspecting the piece chain
- Fixed a lot of issues with line endings (I hate line endings)
- You can now select text, and delete whole chunks
- Fixed a lot of weird bugs in text editing
- Created some debug tools for inspecting the piece chain
- Fixed a lot of issues with line endings (I hate line endings)
December 1, 2024 at 6:22 PM
Progress update on the text editor today:
- You can now select text, and delete whole chunks
- Fixed a lot of weird bugs in text editing
- Created some debug tools for inspecting the piece chain
- Fixed a lot of issues with line endings (I hate line endings)
- You can now select text, and delete whole chunks
- Fixed a lot of weird bugs in text editing
- Created some debug tools for inspecting the piece chain
- Fixed a lot of issues with line endings (I hate line endings)
Been coding this weekend on my text editor, specifically the actual bit where you edit text.
It's been a lot of effort to get here cause this editor uses a somewhat more complex data structure for storing the document to make edits on large files really fast.
It's been a lot of effort to get here cause this editor uses a somewhat more complex data structure for storing the document to make edits on large files really fast.
November 30, 2024 at 5:23 PM
Been coding this weekend on my text editor, specifically the actual bit where you edit text.
It's been a lot of effort to get here cause this editor uses a somewhat more complex data structure for storing the document to make edits on large files really fast.
It's been a lot of effort to get here cause this editor uses a somewhat more complex data structure for storing the document to make edits on large files really fast.
Lastly, I recently started making a vulkan renderer using Jai purely for the learning benefit of learning about modern renderers, and have been following vkguide.dev enough that I have a basic compute shader and imgui!
github.com/DavidColson/...
github.com/DavidColson/...
November 16, 2024 at 11:43 AM
Lastly, I recently started making a vulkan renderer using Jai purely for the learning benefit of learning about modern renderers, and have been following vkguide.dev enough that I have a basic compute shader and imgui!
github.com/DavidColson/...
github.com/DavidColson/...
The next side project is a modal text editor. This is a relatively recently started project and is partially dissatisfaction with current text editors, and also just for the fun of learning about text editing. I'm currently focusing on this one, so expect more updates.
github.com/DavidColson/...
github.com/DavidColson/...
November 16, 2024 at 11:43 AM
The next side project is a modal text editor. This is a relatively recently started project and is partially dissatisfaction with current text editors, and also just for the fun of learning about text editing. I'm currently focusing on this one, so expect more updates.
github.com/DavidColson/...
github.com/DavidColson/...
The next project is a statically typed, embeddable scripting language called Polyscript, which was initially intended to be for Polybox, but I decided to split it off into it's own project to make Polybox more widely familiar and usable to people.
November 16, 2024 at 11:43 AM
The next project is a statically typed, embeddable scripting language called Polyscript, which was initially intended to be for Polybox, but I decided to split it off into it's own project to make Polybox more widely familiar and usable to people.
The first project is my most notable project (at least in terms of github stars), Polybox!
Polybox is intending to be the Pico-8 of 90's era 3D consoles. Heavily inspired by the PS1, this is a very WIP fantasy console where you can make little 3D games in luau.
github.com/DavidColson/...
Polybox is intending to be the Pico-8 of 90's era 3D consoles. Heavily inspired by the PS1, this is a very WIP fantasy console where you can make little 3D games in luau.
github.com/DavidColson/...
November 16, 2024 at 11:43 AM
The first project is my most notable project (at least in terms of github stars), Polybox!
Polybox is intending to be the Pico-8 of 90's era 3D consoles. Heavily inspired by the PS1, this is a very WIP fantasy console where you can make little 3D games in luau.
github.com/DavidColson/...
Polybox is intending to be the Pico-8 of 90's era 3D consoles. Heavily inspired by the PS1, this is a very WIP fantasy console where you can make little 3D games in luau.
github.com/DavidColson/...