ScrapComputers turns 2 years old!
On June 17th, 2024, ScrapComputers's first ever version got released to the public, it was a tiny mod at the time. But now 2 years later, it grew into a a mod with over 10,000 subscribers! with way more features added than before.
With this blog post, we would like to give a update on ScrapComputers V4!
Questions & Awnsers about the progress of ScrapComputers V4:
How's development going?
Not gonna lie, not the greatest. Personally i'm having problems trying to work on this mod due to sm.regui v2 & ScrapThreads (keep reading for more info on that) and that programming oddly just isn't that fun for me anymore.
However we still wan't to try releasing ScrapComputers V4 this year, but we can't make any promises. We will try to release a beta version of the mod by the end of the year, but again, no promises.
What about the threading system you've promised to make?
Well originaly it should've been finished a WHILE ago. However it's really a pain in the butt to work on. It's stupidly easy to make race-conditions and bugs as obviously its not offically supported for Scrap Mechanic. I even once actually given up on it because of this.
However now its hopefuly back on track (even tho i need to completely rewrite it) and can be integrated with ScrapComputers but NO PROMISES!
Yeaaa it's not as good as u think. It's only worth it for code that takes longer than like 0.25 seconds to execute. If ur code takes less than that, then your just wasting performance.
For people that don't know: MultiLua is a mod that got released 3 or so months ago that also achieves real lua multithreading.
MultiLua doesn't use a great system and is VERY wasteful. It creates a entire new World just for a singular thread, which is just... really bad.
ScrapThreads will try to be as least wasteful as possible by using all the cells in a world and World Caching to try and minimize the amount of worlds it needs to create. Worlds are NOT free!
What about ScrapComputers development?
Welll... I cannot work on it till i finish sm.regui v2 and ScrapThreads which are both taking a lot of time to work on. And then after that i can start working on ScrapComputers.
A.K.A, there has been no development on it.
Why do you need a sm.regui V2 for ScrapComputers?
Before it wasen't planned to have a V2 of sm.regui, however once i started working on the new computer i realised that sm.regui was a hot peice of garbage and really buggy and so i'm forced to rewrite the entire thing. Although its way more fun to work on than ScrapThreads.
If you want ScrapComputers V4 to be released faster, then i recommend helping me on sm.regui v2 development. Any help is appreciated, even if its just finding bugs and reporting them.
Can't you release without the new threading system?
Well (to be dead honest) i want to and add it in like 4.1 or something, but the problem is that:
- I've already talked heavly about wanting to add the threading system in V4, so it would be really weird to release without it.
- I am worried that the new computer system will be incompatible if not already designed with the threading system in mind, which would cause a lot of problems down the line.
Theres a possible chance that i have to release without it, but i really want to try and add it in for the initial release.
Can't you release without sm.regui v2?
The ONLY reason why it's needed is because we will have a new computer system that will require a lot of new features that isn't capable with sm.gui but is with sm.regui. I have a LOT of ideas for the new system that no other mod has ever done including widescreen-gui support and no more of that pesky stupid text-list examples list.
So removing sm.regui means removing a lot of the new features that i want to add in, which is really not ideal & adding it later would mean rewriting the entire system which.
Can i help with development?
Well originally i was going to say no, but because absolutely nothing is getting done. Yes, you can help with development! If you want to help us getting this mod finished faster, then just ask us on our discord server.
When are we getting Scrap Mechanic styled models?
We really do want this, but because of my TERRIBLE 3D modeling skills and that we don't got anyone to do that, we sadly are unable to do that.
But even with that, if u atleast can make our models look better, then we will gladly accept your help on that!
Teasers for ScrapComputers V4:
Although we basicly got nothing to show yet, we can tease about some of the features that we want to add in:
These are just teasers of features that we want to add in, but we can't promise that they will be added in.
We will try our best to add as many of these features as possible, but we can't make any promises.
Faster LuaVM performance
Obviously, each majour update we try to optimize the LuaVM as much as possible. We have some pretty big optimizations planned for V4. Infact i know a optimization that in theory should massively improve the performance of the LuaVM.
Proper debugging support
This is something that is REALLY needed for the mod, currently you have to learn the error messages first before you can even start knowing how to fix your code.
At the bare minimum, we want to add better error messages so that you can actually understand what the error is.
At best, we want to add a entire in-game debugger with breakpoints, disassembly, variable inspection and all that good stuff. But this is a really big feature and we can't promise it will be added in V4.
Add support for other programming languages
What i also want to add is C/C++ support. You may be asking on how we are even going to do this? Well we got 3 ideas on how to do this:
- C compiler in lua (probably like ANSI C or C99), but no C++ support.
- WASM support (Allows more languages than just C/C++), but you need external tools to compile to WASM
- LLVM support (Full C/C++ support) but that would mean a lot of learning on how to use LLVM.
At the moment, we are leaning towards LLVM support (cause WASM is a bit painful to make) as it would allow us to create our own bytecode but obviously this will require a lot of work to implement.
Better addon support
Currently, the addon api is basicly the internal api of the mod, which isnt ideal as we would be forced to break compatibility every time we want to change the internal api. We want to add a proper addon api that is separate from the internal api, which would allow us to make changes to the internal api without breaking compatibility.
It would also allow a way more clean way for addons to add features to the mod and minimize breaking changes for addons.
Proper documentation
The documentation is just absolutely terrible as we don't have a documentation generator and is really boring work to do.
We already started working on a documentation generator, but at the time of writing this, its around 50% done and not great to use. We want to finish the documentation generator and use it to create proper documentation for the mod.
Remaster of models and textures
Some of the models and textures kinda don't look that great, especially the computer model. We want to remaster all the models and textures to make them look better and more consistent with the style of ScrapComputers.
Additional Information
There are also other topics we want to talk about that isn't directly related to the development of the mod but is still important to talk about:
The future of ScrapComputers
ScrapComputers is a mod that has been in development for 2 years now. However since the start of 2026, we noticed that our only competitor has effectively stopped development on their mod.
This is a good and bad thing:
- Good: We are now the only mod that is actively being developed, which means we can attract more users and have a bigger community.
- Bad: We have no competition, which means we will have less motivation to work on the mod.
And so i have decided on this:
ScrapComputers V4 will be the last major update for the mod. After V4, we will only be doing minor updates and bug fixes for the mod, and we will move on to other projects. We will still add features and optimizations, but it will be on a much smaller scale than before.
This doesn't mean that the mod will be abandoned, we will still be maintaining it untill we don't got anything else to add, fix or optimize. But don't expect majour overhauls afterwards.
We may also consider moving from source-available to open-source after V4. Because we don't have any competition, we don't have to worry about other mods taking our code and using it in their mod. However incase we will have competition again in the future, we will remain source-available.
Planned beta release for ScrapComputers V4
Bingo told me a idea to release a beta version of the mod before the official release. With the current state of the mod, a beta release will defenitly be planned so that our mod doesn't fall apart at release. Perhaps somewhere in Oktober or November of 2026.