how to bypass integer limit

[royal violet]

seems like roblox stops at 9223372036854775295 on the dot which is 2 to the 63rd - 1 - 512
is there any way to bypass that?
in an int variable it stores 2 to the 63rd - 1024

[craggy finch]

modules like eternitynum, infinite math

check those out

[opaque pollen]

Also always state your use case

[drifting trail]

it doesn't simply stop at that number, it does continue because roblox automatically uses doubles for all its numbers, problem is because the precision is so limited, adding or subtracting 1 will not change the number, so you just use a bigger number to change it

[craggy finch]

for example bignum exists with is the most precise thing i've seen but the efficiency is a stab in my chest

[drifting trail]

ngl should probably avoid those unless you know what you're doing

[craggy finch]

ye and it doesnt support float, thing u dont want on a game probably

[drifting trail]

that would depend on what you're doing

if you don't know what you're doing just stick with regular doubles and accept the precision issues, its really not that bad and wont affect your game as much as you might think

[craggy finch]

well personally when I just started I would've liked to make a cool incremental with no "limit" but going with modules like eternitynum or infinitemath for it when just learning is going to desesperate

[drifting trail]

yep. e303 is plenty for most games. using these number modules just adds complexity you really don't need if its a first project

and if someone really needed more, and knew they needed more, then they would also know what they're doing when they go to use those bigger number modules.

[gloomy shadow]

Let’s be frank, even if you need more then you most likely don’t need the accuracy, the only thing I can think off that would require actual accuracy would be some id system, but even then normal numbers are fine (main limit will most likely be the key sizes of datastores/memory stores being capped at 128 utf8 bytes. (so 1e127 is the limit with a normal b10 number) which should be more than plenty for any purpose that I can think if were you need such accuracy

If you want some game with some of those insane stats then you can just write your own version of some number rounding system. As 4 significant figures is all you need at that point, if it isn’t then you need to work on your gameplay loop as the data that gets nullified makes up less than 1 promille of the total, meaning the player would have to repeat a task 1000 times to double his stat

[plucky river]

there are no integers in roblox or luau

all numbers are doubles which retain integer precision up to somewhere about 2^53 i believe

if the concern is key lengths for datastores then stop worrying about it

if you just want to have big numbers like in a tycoon then i believe there are bigint libraries available

[opaque pollen]

There are integers used in roblox

OrderedDataStores

Values must be positive integers only

IntValue, and idk what else accepts integers strictly

[gloomy shadow]

Buffers also differentiate between floats, unsigned and signed integers

[royal violet]

thanks

[plucky river]

intvalues store integers but not really; all reads of intvalue.Value give you a double

ordereddatastore only do because it's computationally easier to sort (which is their job)

[opaque pollen]

Hence why I said roblox not luau

[plucky river]

even in roblox a 64-bit integer can never exist in a luau VM register

the format IntValue uses to store integers is more of an implementation detail than it is something that is relevant to you as a programmer

same for OrderedDataStore keys and values

and anywhere else you can find an actual physical integer value, probably

for any and all intents and purposes, integers do not exist in luau code nor roblox code

for the sake of this discussion, i define "bigint" as "any integer which fits inside a 64-bit physical integer representation but not in an IEEE754 double"

i can't discover any way to write a bigint to an IntValue from luau code

additionally, even if such a bigint is written to an IntValue from the properties window, it still doesn't exist, because any read of this value causes the same precision loss

because luau code / any user-created roblox code (scripts) cannot in any way even conceptualize integers above 2^53 or whereever the exact cutoff is

the number datatype is a double

it is a sixteen byte VM register value where eight of those bytes are used to represent an IEEE 754 64-bit floating point number

the only way a true 64 bit integer could exist in user-created code would be through that users location, implementation, or through any method access of a bigint library which uses strings, buffers, or any data structure that must consist of more bytes than a single number value

but that's not a primitive, and any turing complete language can do anything if you try hard enough

[plucky river]

well, i suppose using more bytes would not be strictly necessary, but it'll certainly not achieve it through the use of a single number value itself

[somber hatch]

** You are now Level 3! **

[opaque pollen]

Don't think too deep into it, when I said that integers are used, I am quite literally talking about the how roblox does differentiate from int64, int, and float number classes. Yes they are all stored as IEE754, but when I say that integers exist, I am talking about how roblox does distinguish between them in the reference manual

[somber hatch]

** You are now Level 6! **

[plucky river]

this distinguishment is about how those api calls don't expect numbers with decimal values

not about how many bits of integer precision they have

[opaque pollen]

Yes but all I mean is that there is a distinguishment

[plucky river]

not really lol

for reasons explained above

an integer inside of a double is still a double

it's only an integer in the mathematical sense

it is not an integer in the programmatic sense

[opaque pollen]

Noo you're still overthinking it, yes an integer IS stored as double. But that's not what I mean. I literally am just saying that roblox has things like IntValues, that only accept "integers" (think of the integer set of numbers, 0, 1, 2..., which is represented as a double, but nonetheless is distinguished from NumberValue)

[plucky river]

yes

those are mathematical integers

not programmatic integers (not the value you provide to them)

[opaque pollen]

And that's what I'm saying, roblox distinguishes between the integer set and real number set (leaving luau completely out of it)

[plucky river]

but we're not programming the engine, are we?

we're programming in luau

and we can only do what luau can do

[opaque pollen]

We are using it, and the engine gives us the option of IntValue, or NumberValue, and not NumberValue only

[plucky river]

the only real usecase of IntValue is for cross-trust communication to ensure that the number read is a mathematical integer

i see no benefits except in perhaps the wackiest of niches that would never realistically happen for it to be in any way relevant that IntValue stores physically as a programmatic integer

[opaque pollen]

Again don't think too deep into it, it exists and that's all that matters

[plucky river]

yeah but where does its existence come into play

where does its existence invalidate the functional correctness of "there are no integers in roblox or luau"

no matter what you can't have an integer, it is forbidden

any sensible human wouldn't hit 2^52 much less 2^64 keys in an ordereddatastore and if the values themselves exceed that number then you need to rework your system because you can't even handle player save data anymore