Dev Diary 4

zomg i hate chat gpt so much some times. AHHHHH! burn it with fire. I decided to move the level editor into the application proper, so its a matter of moving things from "editor script world" to a "runtime script world". So it SHOULD be simple, just moving logic from A to B. But, no such luck. However, i think if i just keep with it I should have it done either later tonight or tomorrow. Then users will be able to implement their own rooms for dungeons. And as i also allow users to generate their own stories (the visual novel/play thing that happens in between dungeon runs), that lets them set flags. Little strings, like, BossRoom. Then, if a room is tagged, BossRoom, and the party has that flag, the dungeon generation algorithm will then bias the spawning of that room. This way you can have both multi-act stories (storyA -> dungeon -> storyB unlocked by storyA) ... and have those stories effect dungeon generation. So i think thats cool.

Its really easy to train chat GPT to rewrite/generate stories as it. But obviously (as i hate chat gpt today) that has issues, sometimes you'll want to get in there and fix stuff yourself. As much as i love looking at code, i suspect not everyone shares that view. so i'll have to write up a little story editor that can load up the dialogue modules and let you edit, or just start from scratch and generate. So thats another thing i'll have to make. That should be a few more days, and then back to abilities and modifying them for direct control. At that point, i think i'll be ready to put up a demo or something? so, man, i'm still shooting for before my birthday, which is in febuary. Not far off. I'll really have to work hard to do that, but i can.

Hard work only sucks when you're doing it, fun to laugh about after.

Here is what i did today according to butt face chat Grand Pappy Twit-a-bit

High-level summary

Today was about stabilizing the Runtime Tile Foundry by:

1. Removing fragile UGUI dependencies

2. Unifying editor + runtime behavior

3. Fixing shape tools at the algorithm level

4. Separating concerns (UI vs logic vs math)

5. Eliminating race conditions, silent failures, and GC churn

A lot of time was spent undoing accidental complexity so the system behaves deterministically again.

1. UI direction change (important pivot)

Problem

• Generated UGUI (top/left/right bars) was:

  • brittle

  • order-dependent

  • racing core initialization

  • silently failing (layouts disappearing, brushes breaking)

Decision

• Stop fighting UGUI

• Match the Editor TileFoundry architecture

• Go IMGUI-only for runtime tooling

Result

• Top bar, grid, and sidebars now:

  • self-contained

  • deterministic

  • layout-driven by RectTransforms only

  • zero serialized UI wiring required

This was the right call.

2. Right sidebar (tile palettes)

What was wrong

• Layouts “disappearing” were caused by:

  • bad directory assumptions

  • timing issues

  • stale preview caches

• Brushes broke because tile lookup + preview cache drifted out of sync

Fixes

• Made the sidebar:

  • passive

  • poll-based

  • layer-aware

• Explicit refresh + timed refresh

• Hard cache invalidation

• No guessing paths — Resources.LoadAll only

Result

• Tile palettes are now stable

• Brush selection is explicit

• No silent “nothing selected” states

3. Grid rewrite (core of the day)

Problems found

• Painting sometimes did nothing

• Shapes behaved incorrectly (square radius bug, line inconsistencies)

• Runtime logic diverged from editor logic

• Shape previews allocated lists every frame

• Grid zoom could collapse below usable size

Fixes

• Grid is now:

  • IMGUI-only

  • single source of truth

  • validated loudly (LoudValidateOrDisable)

• Added minimum zoom enforcement based on panel + grid size

• Fixed panning math

• Ensured hover, drag, shapeStart, lastPaint are reset correctly

4. Shape tools: the real win

This was the most important technical cleanup.

Before

• Shape logic duplicated in multiple places

• Preview logic ≠ paint logic

• Square tool was actually a radius-based diamond

• Line tool inconsistently used Bresenham

• Preview = allocation-heavy (List.Contains every cell)

What we did

We extracted all shape math into:

TileFoundryShapes


This now contains:

Line

• Line_Bresenham(a, b) → paint

• Line_Contains(a, b, p) → preview (no alloc)

Rectangle

• Rect_Fill(a, b, size, visit)

• Rect_Contains(a, b, p)

Circle

• Circle_Fill(center, edge, size, visit)

• Circle_Contains(center, edge, p)

Hex

• Hex_Fill(center, edge, size, visit)

• Hex_Contains(center, edge, p)

Result

• Editor and Runtime now share identical math

• Preview and commit use the same geometry

• No GC during preview

• Shapes finally behave correctly

This fixes:

• broken squares

• broken lines

• inconsistent circles

• hex preview mismatch

5. Architectural outcome

You now have a clean separation:

UI

• IMGUI layout

• No state mutation beyond intent

• Panels define bounds only

Grid

• Handles interaction

• Calls shape helpers

• Owns painting rules

Shapes

• Pure math

• No Unity state

• Reusable everywhere

This is the structure you were aiming for from the beginning.

6. Why this felt painful (but was necessary)

• You were carrying editor legacy logic into runtime without isolating it

• UI rewrites masked core bugs instead of fixing them

• Shape bugs were math bugs, not UI bugs

Once we stopped touching UI and went straight to:

“given two points, which cells should be affected?”

Everything started snapping back into place.