Transmission from RustForge 🎙️
This update focuses on transforming the built-in Image Editor from a simple text and image tool, into a full-fledged editing tool. I've completely overhauled the editing engine, giving you absolute control over your images before they ever touch a canvas. Alongside a brand new set of drawing tools, this patch introduces a highly optimized, Undo/Redo history. Whether you are editing an existing image, drawing custom shapes, or flood-filling backgrounds, you can now do it all directly inside RustForge without ever needing to open MS Paint or Photoshop.
Patch Highlights
Drawing Revamp: Added Pencil, Line, Rectangle, and Ellipse tools to the Image Editor, complete with a new "Fill Shape" toggle for filling the shape.
Advanced Paint Bucket: Added a flood fill tool with an adjustable "Tolerance" slider to perfectly fill areas with gradients or JPEG artifacts.
Smart Color Picker: The Eye Dropper tool now features "Smart Fallback" memory, automatically snapping back to your previously active tool the moment you sample a color.
Interactive History Panel: A brand-new visual Undo/Redo history timeline. Every stroke, fill, crop, and other actions are tracked, allowing you to instantly click back and forth through time to undo or redo your edits!
Balancing & Logic
The Memory Leak Trap
The Challenge: Storing multiple high-resolution snapshots of an image for an Undo/Redo system requires massive amounts of memory. Simply saving the image state after every stroke or action would quickly trigger an Out-Of-Memory crash.
The Fix: Made a memory-capped history buffer that stores a maximum of 15 timeline states. This keeps the core engine running smoothly even during long, heavy editing sessions.
The Gradient Problem
The Challenge: Standard flood-fill algorithms look for exact pixel matches. When trying to fill an area on a standard image, it would hit microscopic color variations (anti-aliasing, compression artifacts, or gradients) and stop, leaving jagged white outlines, or weird bleeding effects.
The Fix: Built a custom algorithm for blistering execution speed. It uses an adjustable Tolerance slider, allowing the algorithm to calculate color distances and push past image artifacts for a perfectly smooth fill.
📈 Known Issues
HD Canvas Scaling (Zooming): While the new Smart Brush Suggestion feature combats the Moiré effect, if you zoom in/out heavily while painting on canvases like the new Artist DLC Canvas' Large Banner on Pole or the XL Picture Frame, the engine's scaling will change and your paint strokes will misalign. Most large Canvas's require a higher brush size due to its inflated size on screen. Fix: Do not zoom in or out while mapping/painting. If you absolutely must zoom in or zoom out, manually increase/decrease your brush size slightly to bridge the newly created gaps.
Contour Tracing & Smart Pathing (Resume Limitations): With how Contour Tracing and Smart Pathing calculate the most efficient omnidirectional paths for curves and fills, it is mathematically impossible to resume a paused painting from the exact pixel you stopped at. Instead, the engine will resume from the currently painting color, and begin from the start of that specific color layer to ensure nothing is missed. This is an intended feature of these advanced methods. It may add a few minutes to your total paint time if paused and resumed, but this prevents missing structural chunks of your image.