Moving an RTS from Godot to Lobster
Comments on “Moving an RTS from Godot to Lobster”
Claim-checked. Scored by all three judges, and its checkable claims were compared with the sources it cites. How far stories are checked
The developer of Age of Anything, an RTS, replaced Godot and GDScript with the Lobster language in four days, using Claude for most of the porting. The move came two weeks into the project. Per the developer's own figures, a 15-minute bot match matched the original on all 18,000 state hashes and ran about fifteen times faster per tick. The tests missed UI regressions and a rendering slowdown, which manual play found. Those numbers are self-reported and unverified.
Why it ranked
No. 14 of 43 with a score of 0.60. The panel rated it highest on new information (0.89) and technical depth (0.86), lowest on significance (0.43). Placed No. 14, No. 23 by score alone: the placement terms moved other stories past it.
- AI judgeJudge 2claude-haiku-5-5
- Detailed, candid engineering write-up of porting a game engine, with specifics on parity testing, performance, and pitfalls. Narrow audience, a single indie project, but strong technical depth and clearly new content.
- AI judgeJudge 3gpt-5.6-luna
- A detailed, measurement-heavy engineering account of a full engine migration, parity testing, compiler bugs, performance tradeoffs, and mobile deployment. It offers reproducible lessons, though it concerns one game and remains an in-progress project.
Each judge wrote its line after answering the rubric, with the site and the author still hidden. Every answer behind this is in the table under Score.
Score
0.60total under rubric v2.3
- Significance0.43
- Reader interest0.76
- Audience breadth0.43
- Practical relevance0.69
- Substantiated0.77
- Technical depth0.86
- New information0.89
- Counts against: Promotional0.08
- Counts against: Overclaim0.15
Each judge’s answer per question (0–1), their mean and spread, and what the question adds to the score (weight × mean).
| Question | Judge 1 | Judge 2 | Judge 3 | Mean | Spread | Weight | Contribution (weight times mean) |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| SignificanceHow much does this change what people in tech know or can do? | 0.45 | 0.25 | 0.58 | 0.43 | 0.33 | +0.24 | +0.102 |
| Reader interestWould a well-informed senior engineer or tech founder want to read this today, and likely pass it on? | 0.69 | 0.70 | 0.88 | 0.76 | 0.19 | +0.26 | +0.197 |
| Audience breadthHow many people who build technology does it concern? | 0.47 | 0.33 | 0.48 | 0.43 | 0.15 | +0.13 | +0.055 |
| Practical relevanceHow useful is it to someone who builds software or tech products? | 0.70 | 0.60 | 0.78 | 0.69 | 0.18 | +0.22 | +0.153 |
| SubstantiatedHow well is it backed? Consider whether it is the primary source, and whether its main claims come with data, code, a demo, a reproducible method or citations. | 0.83 | 0.65 | 0.84 | 0.77 | 0.19 | +0.05 | +0.039 |
| Technical depthHow technically substantive is it? | 0.94 | 0.80 | 0.86 | 0.86 | 0.14 | +0.05 | +0.043 |
| New informationDoes it contain information absent from the stories covered in the last 7 days (list provided)? | 0.85 | 0.85 | 0.97 | 0.89 | 0.12 | +0.05 | +0.045 |
| PromotionalIs it mainly marketing with little substance (a press release, ad or sponsored post with no real information)? A launch post that carries real news is not promotional. | 0.05 | 0.15 | 0.04 | 0.08 | 0.11 | −0.19 | −0.015 |
| OverclaimDo the headline or conclusions claim more than the body supports? | 0.17 | 0.20 | 0.08 | 0.15 | 0.12 | −0.11 | −0.017 |
| Sum of contributions | +0.602 | ||||||
| Claim-check penalty | 0.000 | ||||||
| Total, as published | 0.602 | ||||||
Spread is the highest minus the lowest judge answer. marks a spread above 0.40: the judges disagree, and the story is marked contested.
The badge for this ranking, for the author's page or anyone's: one line of HTML, and it links back here.
<a href="https://rubric.hrih.si/editions/2026-11-02/14/"><img src="https://rubric.hrih.si/badge/2026-11-02/14.svg" alt="Ranked #14 on Rubric, 2 Nov 2026" width="238" height="28"></a>Claim check
Claim check: 7 no source given · 1 couldn’t check. Each claim is compared with the source the article itself cites; a flag is published only when both checkers agree.
Couldn’t checkGeneralization
Lobster is a small game programming language created by Wouter van Oortmerssen.
The source was unreachable, paywalled or too long, or the two checkers disagreed.
The article says “Lobster, a small game programming language by Wouter van Oortmerssen”
The source says No passage could be compared.
Source cited by the article: github.com/aardappel/lobster
No source givenNumber
The port deleted about 86,000 lines of GDScript and replaced them with about 59,000 lines of Lobster.
The article gives no link or citation for it.
The article says “About 86,000 lines deleted and about 59,000 lines of Lobster in their place”
The source says No source to compare with.
No source givenBenchmark result
A 15-minute bot-vs-bot match in Lobster was identical to the Godot one across all 18,000 ticks.
The article gives no link or citation for it.
The article says “a 15-minute bot-vs-bot match ran in Lobster identical to the Godot one on all 18,000 ticks”
The source says No source to compare with.
No source givenBenchmark result
The full bot match went from 1.48 ms per tick in GDScript to about 0.1 ms in Lobster, roughly fifteen times faster.
The article gives no link or citation for it.
The article says “The full bot match went from 1.48 ms a tick in GDScript to about 0.1 ms in Lobster, roughly fifteen times faster”
The source says No source to compare with.
No source givenBenchmark result
2,000 units fighting took 3.3 ms per tick in Lobster versus 111 ms in Godot, which the article describes as 20 to 40 times faster for big battles.
The article gives no link or citation for it.
The article says “Big battles were 20 to 40 times faster, 2,000 units fighting took 3.3 ms a tick instead of 111”
The source says No source to compare with.
No source givenNumber
14,946 of 14,952 unit draw calls matched the Godot version, and each of the six misses was a real bug.
The article gives no link or citation for it.
The article says “14,946 of 14,952 did, and each of the six misses was a real bug”
The source says No source to compare with.
No source givenNumber
Fixing the text buffer problem and capping the game at 60 fps cut CPU use from about 60% of a core to under 30%.
The article gives no link or citation for it.
The article says “Fixing it in Lobster and capping the game at 60 took the game from about 60% of a core to under 30”
The source says No source to compare with.
No source givenCausal conclusion
Godot 4.7 shares packed arrays instead of copying them, so the supposed start-of-tick copies were the live arrays.
The article gives no link or citation for it.
The article says “Godot 4.7 shares packed arrays instead of copying them, so the “copies at the start of the tick” were the live arrays”
The source says No source to compare with.
Also covered by
No other coverage was clustered with this story.
Elsewhere
Elsewhere: HN 1 pts, not on front page
Recorded for context only, checked 2 Nov 2026, 05:46 UTC. It played no part in the ranking.