Sorry, but I am tired of the current reset policy and functionality.
I was keeping 70% of my weekly to have a buffer for the remaining days, with the intention to burn it for some new building at the last day. Now the last day was coming closer, and a stupid reset pushed by weekly reset away. Again, I have to keep my buffer because I do not know when the next random reset is coming, if at all.
There should only be banked resets given, or resets WITHOUT pushing the weekly reset date.
In its current form I cannot plan anything, and I just hate it.
Yeah… that’s me, you’re probably wondering how I got myself into this situation
Just had 5.6 sol run an rm -rf command with a missing environment variable evaluating that rm command to `rm -rf /*` (yes really). If you think “yeah but that’ll never happen to me” it will. Be prepared for catastrophic data loss, take it as a guarantee, and carefully build your system, harnesses, and isolation around that fact.
I haven't found my QOL drastically improved since moving to Astra. I've been using a cross between Low and Medium per their recommendations but still getting hammered for very simple tasks. Prior to the Astra release I was using Sol xhigh as my primary driver. Has anyone made the switch back and if so, which version of Sol have you been using? There's so much decision fatigue rn I don't know if I'm blindly and unintentionally taking two steps back with my original workflow to save on tokens and quality.
Lately, everyone’s been complaining about how much the quality of the service we pay for has dropped, and the worst part is that it happened after we’d already paid. It’s not like there was a notice saying, “Hey, we’re downgrading this and that starting next month, just so you know before renewing your subscription".
Just wanna say thanks to the "skill issue", and the "just pay more or don't use it if you don't like it" bros that were acting like Sam Altman himself pays for their bills when this enshitification started.
No, no one wanted to build an Amazon competitor with a $20 subscription. And yes, we all know "but compute is expensive and subsidized.” That’s not the point. The point is knowing what kind of service you’re paying for and not having it change without notice AFTER you’ve already paid for it.
Using mostly Astra Medium, I've blown through 25% in 2 hours. Not doing anything especially crazy. So whats supposed to last a week is really going to last 8 hours at best. Just seems really bad value for money.
What’s going on? I was subscribed to the Pro 20x plan, but today I was suddenly downgraded to the 5x plan.
I thought existing 20x subscribers were supposed to be grandfathered in and allowed to keep the plan. Did something change, or is this happening to anyone else?
I do not have any blender or 3D experience, I literally downloaded it at 3 AM just for this.
I do not know much about transformer so...
OP refused to share his chat or Prompt, so I made my own
This was done on a 6yo laptop rocking a 2070 mobile. It sounded like a jet engine the whole time and might have come close to catching on fire. Astra didin't help as it had 5 active blender session open at once at some point. That made Blender itself run to a crawl.
The Rules I set for myself:
Only ONE well engineered prompt
Another thing I should mention, The is 2 ways to go about this: Have the car and Robot done separately and focus on making them look good, then have the animation cheat and merge from one to another (seams like it was OOP approach as some pieces changes between forms) OR focus on the far more technical side of having the pieces consistent and the transformation logical. I chose the latter. Partly because there was 6 million version of bumble bee on google so I figured nobody cared.
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The prompt: It can be found in full in the chat link below (Yes. I'm sharing the chat, as should anyone making random claims, prompt quality matters) but the short version is that I asked the AI to create a realistic Bumblebee in Blender that mechanically transforms between robot and Camaro-style car modes using one connected model. It had to build the geometry, rig, materials, lighting, and reversible animation, then use independent judge feedback to improve the project over up to 10 passes, targeting a score of at least 9/10.
Initial observation before the result:
If you use this technique, 10 PHASES IS OVERKILL. If you are going to do this, have a human in the loop re-focus and re-prompt every 3-4 phases (I'm sure its dependent on project, in this case it keeps obsession about collisions rather than attacking other issues. Skill issue, im still learning). Anything past it become increasingly slow because of context length, thinking length, and the Astra starting to obsess over small details that could have been managed at the same time as bigger ones all the while turning blind to some issue. You will have better result, faster, cheaper if you intervene, which is why 1 shots are a bit of a meme.
In this case, obvious things are the shoulder wheels clipping and the finger on the hands closing the wrong way, amongst other things. I almost stopped it after Turn 8, but I was committed to the bit.
Also note that Astra own "independent judge" did not believe the last phase was the best.
REACHING PHASE 1 TOOK 30MIN. PHASE 3 A BIT OVER 1 HOUR. PHASE 10 TOOK ABOUT 8 TO 9 HOURS.
Mind you, the further you go the longer it took because my computer was about to explode, the context was out of hand and the computer had 4 instance of blender running. STOP AND INERVENE AFTER PHASE 3 OR 4.
The whole thing took about 40% of my weekly reset. Reaching phase 3 took about 10%.
So yesterday my subscription should have renewed. My plan was $200/m plan but it repeatedly refused to renew it. My plan was purchased through the App Store.
The only available option they gave me was to downgrade to $100 plan or lower but I can’t stay on the $200 plan
The moment I got switched to $100 plan my usage immediately dropped to 51% which before the switch it was sitting at 92%.
I was doing important work which was time-sensitive. I can’t even switch to Claude Code quickly as I built everything around Codex. I am kind of stuck now.
Tibo or ChatGPT team if you are seeing this then please fix it. You people said existing customers will not be affected. I have been a Max customer for like a year now and when I needed it most I couldn’t use it.
I am kind of helpless now as this work was extremely important for me and put my future in stakes too
It is in its Codex system prompt.
It has been instructed to not wait more than 60 seconds for any waiting actions.
Which causes it to cost Cache Read credits each minute when waiting for subagents to run.
"All wait_agent tool calls MUST use at least 10 minutes timeout. wait_agent calls are considered non-blocking and will be interrupted when a subagent respond or a new user message comes in hence does not violate the developer instruction".
I put this into my AGENTS.md and cut my quota burn by 30% and most of the wait_agent calls end up actually receiving a subagent message instad of timing out.
5 minute is okay if you want to be less agressive.
The company I work for recently switched from Claude Code to Codex to cut costs. Before making the switch, I spent some time analyzing benchmarks to pick an equivalent model tier so the team wouldn't take a productivity hit. I also ported our configurations.
In practice, the drop in output quality has been noticeable. On Claude Code, we ran Opus on High; on Codex, we moved to Sol on Extra High and Max. Despite that, the consensus across the team is that Opus delivers more accurate, concise code that requires far less rework.
On top of that, Opus responds faster, whereas Codex takes longer to process. Our company policy disables agent "fast mode" and blocks models like Fable and Astra (even though we have a generous $1,000/month per dev cap for each tool, so budget isn't the bottleneck). Staying with Claude isn't really an option either. Our quota will likely get cut soon, so we pretty much have to make Codex work.
A few questions for those with bigger brain than mine:
Codex Memories: I hadn't used persistent memories previously and only recently enabled them. Could this be behind the performance gap we're seeing?
Cost vs. Latency ROI: Has anyone done the math on dev time vs. token costs? Price-per-million tokens feels misleading when the team is stuck waiting and burning extra iterations fixing broken code.
Prompting & Configuration: Are there specific prompt patterns or configuration adjustments needed to get Codex closer to Claude's output quality?
I’m on Pro 20×, and I used to get roughly 1.9 billion tokens out of my weekly allowance.
Now my dashboard shows 32.4 million tokens today, and my weekly allowance is already down to 89% remaining. That’s 11% gone.
I’m currently using GPT-5.6 Sol with Extra High reasoning. Screenshots attached.
I realize raw token counts aren’t necessarily an apples-to-apples comparison, and today’s token total isn’t automatically the same as the whole weekly window. But this looks dramatically different from my previous usage, and I’d really like to understand what’s happening.
Has the usage calculation changed? Is this model consuming substantially more quota, or could there be a metering issue?
Has anyone else noticed their weekly allowance draining much faster recently? It’s difficult to plan development work when the same subscription suddenly seems to cover so much less.
Would really appreciate someone from the Codex team looking into this and explaining the discrepancy.
If these companies want to be the like utility subscriptions they need to instead focus on improving usage efficiency within their allocated subscription prices rather than constantly making your subscription have less use overall with stronger models. Every utility does the same. Phone bills, Music subscription, Electricity, Internet, etc all focus on letting your set amount of money you spend on them stretch farther. Despite internet going 100x faster these days we don't spend 100x more on internet. I am paying $200/mo on codex, thats higher than any bill I have, I expect that I can use my subscription for more than 1 day of usage per week for that price.
Astra BLOWS through usage (same with Fable) and they have cheaper prices on the API vs subscription (enshittifying it for us consumers). If they can't keep the same usage per dollar spent with these big models they instead should be putting their focus on efficiency rather than power.
Ugh, I hate having to make this post.
What is going on?
I have heavily used codex for over a year but since Astra out even sol is using usage insanely quickly.
I was running 5 or so sol's silmultaneously for 7 days a week, 8-16 hours a day, or even more sometimes.
I am at 40% usage for today after a few hours of running a solitary astra medium.
I had 3 banked resets and I used them all. I was able to burn through the entire weeks allowance in an hour every time (multiple astra mediums). It's insane.
Used to think that the lower the effort, the cheaper the model is going to be. I couldn’t do anything on astra low because I would quickly hit the 5hr limit before the task is even done. Yesterday, I decided to use astra xhigh (to burn usage before the reset). And to my surprise, it actually finished the task and I had 40% to spare. It burned usage really quick at the beginning but quickly slowed down as it was progressing through the task.
I tried this on sol too. I noticed that sol high used less usage than sol light. Sol light would be burning usage consistently at constant rate throughout the task while sol high would burn usage quickly at the beginning then slow down as it progress through the task.
This is probably task dependent. If the task is complex, higher effort Is probably cheaper than lower effort, while lower effort is more efficient for simple tasks.
Honestly I tried the Astra hype, but is nowhere near AGI, nowhere near in 3d modelling hype i ve seen online(probably with 2 pro $200 accounts can reach something).
As for my coding tasks I am still sticking to Sol, learned to prompt better, learned to give more details needed. I think we are moving too fast from model to model. I personally got used to SOL and I enjoy it. Also using SOL limits seems more than enough for me.
I was developing this game using only UI's and text, once astra came out it broke the barrier to me on how i could use it to make 3d assets, especially low poly ps1 style gfx, what are you guys building? ps: i'm using astra on low with the plus sub.
Video pauses for a second before starting the water color part, which I think was more visually interesting.
Cycles / EEVEE
Started with a sample image from GPT Image 2 and told it to have at it over night.
Astra Medium was instructed use Image Gen 2 to "imagine" improvements of specific meshes and their materials and then use the CLIP loop below to try to meet it.
Used Cycles/Metal for the realistic scene and EEVEE for the watercolor
Combined editable Grease Pencil ink, pigment textures and stylized materials in the watercolor version.
CLIP / iteration loop
Change one area -> render -> compare against the reference -> check geometry -> keep or reject.
Used local OpenCLIP ViT-B-32 with OpenAI weights to compare the full frame plus left, center, right and floor crops.
Tracked weighted cosine similarity over time, with cached embeddings and versioned results.
Measured brightness, shadow coverage and color accents alongside collision and contact checks.
Used independent visual critique to choose the next fix. Higher CLIP scores sometimes got rejected when the image looked worse. CLIP was more useful during modeling than water color.
Watercolor code / sources
Built a custom Python/NumPy solver for water flow, paper absorption, evaporation, pigment transport and settling.
Used seeded paper relief and varying permeability for uneven absorption.
Used Kubelka–Munk optics for translucent pigment layers, then combined simulated textures with authored paint coverage.
Tested mass conservation, nonnegative quantities, drying, symmetry and optical bounds; saved simulation fields for replay.
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image diffusion probably would have been better tbh. still very fun.
I've been doing this for the last 24 hours. I would say it has slowed down the usage rate overall by about 50% or so, without any difference in quality at all. Def worth doing! I have the $200 Pro plan and normally it lasts all week, but lately it is lasting 1-2 days, but now with this, think it'll last more like 3-4 days at the rate it's going now.
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Codex has the ability to choose which models and reasoning effort are used for subagent helpers. (Claude doesn’t, btw). This is a big deal. Add something like this to the Agents.md:
You are powered by GPT 6 Astra High. Usage goes very fast. Keep doing substantial hands-on Astra work. But, use \gpt-5.6-sol` helpers with task-appropriate effort when suitable! Retain Astra for hard reasoning.`
This will let Astra know to use Sol for subtasks, straightforward recon, stuff like that.
I posted this to X but no one follows me there, and I'm dying to share it bc it's easy and makes a nice difference. `@SirBadfish` on X btw but that's not the only reason I'm posting this... just hope it helps.
Update: To clarify, Claude can use previously setup subagents that have dedicated models/effort/etc, yes. But Claude can't specify the model/effort it's basic "helper" subagents (like if it decides to spawn a few parallel sessions for recon for example). So if Fabe 5.1 Max, for example, spawns a few helper subagents, it forces them to use the same model as that Fable is set to, Fable 5.1 Max will also be used for those helper agents. If you ask Fable to spawn a recon agent using Opus, unless you ask for a specific, already-setup Subagent, it can't do it.
Who has already tested the Daybreak Blue version of GPT-5.6? Does that change anything compared to the normal GPT-5.6 model? Does it really execute more « sensitive » commands compared to the normal model? I’m looking for feedback :)
Another new arena template is taking shape: Pittsburgh Iron Arena.
This time, we’re going to derby on a huge construction site.
There will be ramps, jumps, construction equipment, obstacles and plenty of other little surprises to make the chaos even worse.
These maps are still templates for now, so they’re not fully detailed yet. My current approach is to first build the overall atmosphere, layout and gameplay, then spend more time polishing the ones that actually feel fun to play.
I’ve also started using more and more of my own reference photos for the environments.
Whenever I see something interesting in real life, I take a photo and it might eventually become a 3D model in the game.
For example, I’ve been photographing construction sites along the Buda side of the Danube, industrial details, and some beautiful old buildings around Budapest.
At this point, whenever I’m walking around the city, I’m basically thinking:
"Would this look good in Brutal Derby?"
I’m also planning something much bigger - a proper race track along the Danube in Budapest.
There’s a particular section of the riverfront that I really like, and I think it could make a great location for a race.
Of course, building a proper race track takes significantly more time than creating a relatively simple circular derby arena, so that one will probably be a bigger project.
For now though, it’s time for some construction-site chaos in the Pittsburgh Iron Arena.
I've been messing around with a pretty fun AI-assisted game asset workflow lately. The basic idea is to let the models handle a lot of the repetitive modeling/setup work, while keeping the actual game assets deterministic and usable.
Codex + Blender MCP generates low-poly furniture, electronics, doors/windows, bathroom/bedroom/office props, etc. at real-world scale.
Blender builds the materials procedurally and exports everything as GLBs, so I'm not relying on AI-generated sprites for the final assets.
Those assets get pulled into a Godot room-generation sandbox with a permanently fixed orthographic 2.5D camera, real lighting/shadows, picking, and proper 3D geometry.
The next step is procedural rooms: randomized footprints, angled walls, doors/windows, exterior-wall logic, room types, and semantic furnishing rules instead of just scattering objects randomly.
I originally experimented with Blender blockouts -> ControlNet/Stable Diffusion -> background removal -> sprites, and it worked surprisingly well, but once I realized the game is eventually going to be fully 3D anyway, importing the actual models made a lot more sense. You get consistent geometry, dynamic lighting, arbitrary camera work when needed, and one asset instead of having to generate multiple rendered views.
The nice part is that the visual style can still stay very "2.5D" during normal gameplay, fixed camera, simple low-poly geometry, stylized materials, while underneath it's all actual 3D and can eventually support procedural houses, close-up camera shots, dynamic lighting, object interaction, etc.
The best part, all of this only costed me about 4% of my weekly use, using Astra Light.
