Levels can now be converted to RLE encoded chunk accessors and be re-saved
continuously without any loss of information.
Off-by-one errors resolved:
* The rle.NewGrid() was adding a +1 everywhere making the 2D grids have 129
elements to a side for a 128 chunk size.
* In rle.Decompress() the cursor value and translation to X,Y coordinates is
fixed to avoid a pixel going missing at the end of the first row (128,0)
* The abs.X-- hack in UnmarshalBinary is no longer needed to prevent the
chunks from scooting a pixel to the right on every save.
Doodad tool updates:
* Remove unused CLI flags in `doodad resave` (actors, chunks, script,
attachment, verbose) and add a `--output` flag to save to a different file
name to the original.
* Update `doodad show` to allow debugging of RLE compressed chunks:
* CLI flag `--chunk=1,2` to specify a single chunk coordinate to debug
* CLI flag `--visualize-rle` will Visualize() RLE compressed chunks in
their 2D grid form in your terminal window (VERY noisy for large
levels! Use the --chunk option to narrow to one chunk).
Bug fixes and misc changes:
* Chunk.Usage() to return a better percentage of chunk utilization.
* Chunker.ChunkFromZipfile() was split out into two functions:
* RawChunkFromZipfile retrieves the raw bytes of the chunk as well as the
file extension discovered (.bin or .json) so the caller can interpret
the bytes correctly.
* ChunkFromZipfile calls the former function and then depending on file
extension, unmarshals from binary or json.
* The Raw function enables the `doodad show` command to debug and visualize
the raw contents of the RLE compressed chunks.
* Updated the Visualize() function for the RLE encoder: instead of converting
palette indexes to hex (0-F) which would begin causing problems for palette
indexes above 16 (as they would use two+ characters), indexes are mapped to
a wider range of symbols (0-9A-Z) and roll over if you have more than 36
colors on your level. This at least keeps the Visualize() grid an easy to
read 128x128 characters in your terminal.
Finally add a second option for Chunk MapAccessor implementation besides the
MapAccessor. The RLEAccessor is basically a MapAccessor that will compress
your drawing with Run Length Encoding (RLE) in the on-disk format in the ZIP
file.
This slashes the file sizes of most levels:
* Shapeshifter: 21.8 MB -> 8.1 MB
* Jungle: 10.4 MB -> 4.1 MB
* Zoo: 2.8 MB -> 1.3 MB
Implementation details:
* The RLE binary format for Chunks is a stream of Uvarint pairs storing the
palette index number and the number of pixels to repeat it (along the Y,X
axis of the chunk).
* Null colors are represented by a Uvarint that decodes to 0xFFFF
or 65535 in decimal.
* Gameplay logic currently limits maps to 256 colors.
* The default for newly created chunks in-game will be RLE by default.
* Its in-memory representation is still a MapAccessor (a map of absolute
world coordinates to palette index).
* The game can still open and play legacy MapAccessor maps.
* On save in the editor, the game will upgrade/convert MapAccessor chunks over
to RLEAccessors, improving on your level's file size with a simple re-save.
Current Bugs
* On every re-save to RLE, one pixel is lost in the bottom-right corner of
each chunk. Each subsequent re-save loses one more pixel to the left, so what
starts as a single pixel per chunk slowly evolves into a horizontal line.
* Some pixels smear vertically as well.
* Off-by-negative-one errors when some chunks Iter() their pixels but compute
a relative coordinate of (-1,0)! Some mismatch between the stored world coords
of a pixel inside the chunk vs. the chunk's assigned coordinate by the Chunker:
certain combinations of chunk coord/abs coord.
To Do
* The `doodad touch` command should re-save existing levels to upgrade them.
Updates the savegame.json file format:
* Levels now have a UUID value assigned at first save.
* The savegame.json will now track level completion/score based on UUID,
making it robust to filename changes in either levels or levelpacks.
* The savegame file is auto-migrated on startup - for any levels not
found or have no UUID, no change is made, it's backwards compatible.
* Level Properties window adds an "Advanced" tab to show/re-roll UUID.
New JavaScript API for doodad scripts:
* `Actors.CameraFollowPlayer()` tells the camera to return focus to the
player character. Useful for "cutscene" doodads that freeze the player,
call `Self.CameraFollowMe()` and do a thing before unfreezing and sending the
camera back to the player. (Or it will follow them at their next directional
input control).
* `Self.MoveBy(Point(x, y int))` to move the current actor a bit.
New option for the `doodad` command-line tool:
* `doodad resave <.level or .doodad>` will load and re-save a drawing, to
migrate it to the newest file format versions.
Small tweaks:
* On bounded levels, allow the camera to still follow the player if the player
finds themselves WELL far out of bounds (40 pixels margin). So on bounded
levels you can create "interior rooms" out-of-bounds to Warp Door into.
* New wallpaper: "Atmosphere" has a black starscape pattern that fades into a
solid blue atmosphere.
* Camera strictly follows the player the first 20 ticks, not 60 of level start
* If player is frozen, directional inputs do not take the camera focus back.
Previously: the Chunker tracks with chunks were gotten during the
current game tick and the N-1 and N-2 ticks, and chunks not accessed in
two ticks were freed immediately.
Now: they go into a "garbage collection" pool with a minimum number of
game ticks to free. So if they're needed again, they're saved from the
gc pool. F3 overlay data shows the count of the gc pool.
* Editor: Auto-save on a background goroutine so you don't randomly freeze
the editor up during.
* Fix actor linking issues when you drag and re-place a linked doodad: the
level was too eagerly calling PruneLinks() whenever a doodad was 'destroyed'
(such as the one just picked up) breaking half of the link connection.
* Chunk unloader: do not unload a chunk that has been modified (Set or Delete
called on), keep them in memory until the next ZIP file save to flush them
out to disk.
* Link Tool: if you clicked an actor and don't want to connect a link, click
the first actor again to de-select it.
Updates to the `doodad` tool:
* `doodad edit-level --resize <int>` can re-chunk a level to use a different
chunk size than the default 128. Large chunk sizes 512+ lead to performance
problems.
Adds several new doodads to the game and 5 new wallpapers (parchment
paper in blue, green, red, white and yellow).
New doodads:
* Crusher: A purple block-headed mob wearing an iron helmet. It tries
to crush the player when you get underneath. Its flat helmet can be
ridden on like an elevator back up.
* Snake: A green stationary mob that always faces toward the player.
If the player is nearby and jumps, the Snake will jump too and hope
to catch the player in mid-air.
* Gems and Totems: A new key & lock collectible. Gems have quantity so
you can collect multiple, and place them into matching Totems. A
Totem gives off a power signal when its gem is placed and all other
Totems it is linked to have also been activated. A single Totem may
link to an Electric Door and require only one gem to open it, or it
can link to other Totems and they all require gems before the power
signal is sent out.
Especially to further optimize memory for large levels, Levels and
Doodads can now read and write to a ZIP file format on disk with
chunks in external files within the zip.
Existing doodads and levels can still load as normal, and will be
converted into ZIP files on the next save:
* The Chunker.ChunkMap which used to hold ALL chunks in the main json/gz
file, now becomes the cache of "hot chunks" loaded from ZIP. If there is
a ZIP file, chunks not accessed recently are flushed from the ChunkMap
to save on memory.
* During save, the ChunkMap is flushed to ZIP along with any non-loaded
chunks from a previous zipfile. So legacy levels "just work" when
saving, and levels loaded FROM Zip will manage their ChunkMap hot
memory more carefully.
Memory savings observed on "Azulian Tag - Forest.level":
* Before: 1716 MB was loaded from the old level format into RAM along
with a slow load screen.
* After: only 243 MB memory was used by the game and it loaded with
a VERY FAST load screen.
Updates to the F3 Debug Overlay:
* "Chunks: 20 in 45 out 20 cached" shows the count of chunks inside the
viewport (having bitmaps and textures loaded) vs. chunks outside which
have their textures freed (but data kept), and the number of chunks
currently hot cached in the ChunkMap.
The `doodad` tool has new commands to "touch" your existing levels
and doodads, to upgrade them to the new format (or you can simply
open and re-save them in-game):
doodad edit-level --touch ./example.level
doodad edit-doodad --touch ./example.doodad
The output from that and `doodad show` should say "File format: zipfile"
in the headers section.
To do:
* File attachments should also go in as ZIP files, e.g. wallpapers
Noah