islaApocalypse/Core/README.md
beezm 1f957b3430 docs: water sections (WBID/WBTB/WSRF), no-BSIN rationale, SkipRoads + water stage in READMEs (terrain-water task 03)
Byte-accurate entries for the three water sections (transitional
per-body level rule, provisional salinity, WSRF sentinel/quantization),
updated size math (~576 MiB at 8K with water), the on-the-record
rationale for NOT serializing basins, and README updates for the new
pipeline stage, the 0_water snapshot, and the SkipRoads toggle.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-07 01:40:48 -04:00

67 lines
4.5 KiB
Markdown
Raw Permalink Blame History

This file contains ambiguous Unicode characters

This file contains Unicode characters that might be confused with other characters. If you think that this is intentional, you can safely ignore this warning. Use the Escape button to reveal them.

# Core Module
Shared, stateless logic used by both the server and client paths: the `.dat` parser, the mesher, the
voxel data containers, and the material lookups. **No Godot nodes, no scene state.** These scripts
define what things are and how to calculate them; they never remember what is currently happening.
## Components
### `MapDataParser.cs` — the data bridge
Deserializes the binary `.dat` blueprint written by `/Tools` into a `WorldBlueprint` held in RAM:
map size, the float heightmap, the biome map, town locations, **all four tiers** of A\* road
vectors (Highways, Branch Roads, Rugged Roads, Trails), and — from v2 files — the embedded
generation params (seed, sizes, impact centre, provenance) and each town's highway-node flag.
**Two formats are live** (byte-accurate contract: `Core/Scripts/BLUEPRINT_FORMAT.md`). The parser
dispatches on the file's first byte:
- **v2 (primary)** — raw `ISLA` magic, u32 version gate, then tagged sections
`[u32 tag][u64 length][payload]`. Unknown tags are skipped by length, so future sections are
invisible to older readers. Validated on read: version, MapSize bounds, section lengths against
the file, biome/tier ordinal ranges. Since the water-bodies stage, v2 files also carry the
optional `WBID`/`WBTB`/`WSRF` water sections (per-pixel body ids, the body table, quantized
surface levels) — parsed into `WorldBlueprint` and consumed by nothing at runtime yet.
- **v1 (legacy)** — the positional `"ISLA_V1"` format, still written beside v2 as `_v1.dat` and
still loadable (with a deprecation warning) until a future removal task.
**Wire-format hazard.** Biome and town-tier enums are serialized as their **ordinal values**
(u8 in v2, i32 in v1). **Never reorder or insert members** in `Enums.cs` — append only, at the end.
v2's range checks make drift fail loudly at parse time; legacy v1 has no validation and silently
reinterprets every pixel. (`RoadTier` is exempt: road tiers are stored in separate file sections —
tagged in v2, positional in v1 — so that enum never hits disk.)
### `ChunkData.cs` + `Constants.cs` — voxel containers and tuning
- **Chunk dimensions:** `24 × 24` horizontal, `256` vertical (`Constants.cs`).
- **The `+1` padding is structural.** `Densities` and `BlockIDs` are one cell larger on every axis —
`[25, 257, 25]` — so the mesher can evaluate the boundary cells shared with the neighbouring chunk
and the meshes meet without gaps.
- **Per-column data for rendering:** `SurfaceHeights` (the true, unrounded surface), `ColumnBiomes`,
and `ColumnRoadMaterial` (0 = not a road). These let the mesher colour by real height rather than a
rounded integer.
- **Tunables in `Constants.cs`:** `BLEND_BAND_METERS` (how far one surface material fades into the
next) and the per-tier road block — width, shoulder, grade-smoothing and surface material for each
of the four road tiers, plus the derived cull padding.
### `MarchingCubes.cs` — the mesher
Turns a chunk's density field into a Godot `ArrayMesh`.
- **Analytical normals:** exact density gradients at each cell corner, interpolated along the edge by
the same fraction used for the vertex position — smooth lighting without Godot's normal pass.
- **Deterministic vertex welding:** shared vertices are keyed by an integer `EdgeKey` ordered
lowest-to-highest, so neighbouring chunks compute identical keys and no float drift creeps in.
- **Vertex colouring:** each vertex is coloured from its true float depth below the surface, fading
between the two materials either side of a boundary rather than switching at an integer depth.
**Density sign convention (load-bearing):** density is **positive above** the surface and **negative
below** it. A corner counts as inside the terrain when `density < ISO_LEVEL`.
### `BiomePalette.cs` + `BlockRegistry.cs` + `BlockData.cs` — materials
- **`BlockRegistry`:** byte-ID lookup for every block (`AIR`, `BEDROCK`, `STONE`, `DIRT`, `SAND`, the
three grasses, `SNOW`, `WASTELAND_DIRT`, `ASPHALT`).
- **`BiomePalette`** answers "what material is here?" twice, deliberately:
- `GetVoxelID(...)` — the authoritative **integer** classification by whole-block depth. Decides
what is actually stored in each voxel; used for everything non-visual.
- `GetBlendedVoxelIDs(...)` — the **rendering** version. Same question by *float* depth, returning
the two materials either side of the nearest boundary plus how far between them the point is, so
the renderer fades instead of snapping.
Both take a road-surface byte, so a trail is surfaced in dirt where a highway is surfaced in
asphalt.