☂️ Game engine and infrastructure issues

[olanti-p]

Organizational issue for various problems with the game engine and support infrastructure.

It is split up by categories, and does not include "content" parts of the game or gameplay itself.

More entries may be added later.

Overview

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1. ☂️ Game engine: Issues with general code organisation #3200
   easy ☂️ umbrella +2
2. Game engine: JSON data loading and management issues #3142
   bug +1
3. ☂️ Game engine: Interface code organization issues #3144
   ☂️ umbrella +1
4. ☂️ Game engine: Issues with SDL rendering #3145
   bug ☂️ umbrella +2
5. ☂️ Game engine: Issues with mapgen #3154
   bug enhancement ☂️ umbrella +3
6. refactor!: give items identity #2250
   data src tests +3
   
7. Game engine: Issues with Reality Bubble #3152
   +0
8. Game engine: Issues with NPCs #3155
   +0
9. ☂️ Game engine: Issues with savegame format and management #3150
   bug ☂️ umbrella +2
10. ☂️ Game engine: Issues of current Lua implementation #3153
    enhancement ☂️ umbrella +2
11. ☂️ Issues with testing infrastructure #3146
    bug ☂️ umbrella +2
12. ☂️ Potential improvements to I18N system #3149
    enhancement ☂️ umbrella +2
13. ☂️ Migrating to CMake #3113
    2 of 14
    enhancement ☂️ umbrella +2
    
14. ☂️ Outdated documentation #3148
    docs easy ☂️ umbrella +3
15. Less messy way to make releases? #737
    enhancement +1
16. Debugging breaks for long actions and sleep #643
    +0
17. https://github.com/cataclysmbnteam/Cataclysm-BN/discussions/3301
18. optional_vpart_position should be removed #3821
    +0
19. Simpler experimental release names #3895
    +0
    
20. chore: rename upload branch to main #3888
    data docs +2

General code organization

• The codebase is extremely diverse as the result of natural growth over the years from hundreds of contributors. While the code works, it's frequently hard to navigate or find desired functionality, and there are often "islands" of code that adhere to one or another programming style ☂️ Game engine: Issues with general code organisation #3200

Data loading

• Various data types loadable from JSON have subtle (or sometimes huge) differences in their behavior, both in JSON and in the engine Game engine: JSON data loading and management issues #3142

Interface

• Interface code in tightly intertwined with the world state, and within itself, which makes testing difficult. Lack of clear organization and centralization frequently requires coming up with custom solutions for mundane UI functionality ☂️ Game engine: Interface code organization issues #3144

Rendering

• SDL tiles renderer is ancient and had vastly outgrown its original implementation over the years. May warrant a full rework ☂️ Game engine: Issues with SDL rendering #3145

Mapgen

• While mapgen is relatively good code, there are a few rough edges there, including lack of determinism or user-friendly mapgen tooling ☂️ Game engine: Issues with mapgen #3154

Entity management

• We have many different entity types: items, NPCs, monsters, vehicles, the avatar - and all of them use different systems for their management. Some of them can't be referred to in a unique way, some of them can't exist without a map instance, some of them are hardwired to be a single global g->u instance. A consistent system for entity management could come in helpful, see refactor!: give items identity #2250 and Spring refactor #2265 for in-the-works "Game Objects" solution.

Reality bubble

• There is only 1 reality bubble, and the underlying class does way too much things at once: Game engine: Issues with Reality Bubble #3152

NPCs

• NPC AI code is hard to reason about, can contain many subtle bugs and is quite inefficient: Game engine: Issues with NPCs #3155

Savegames

• There are some issues with format migrations, as well as room for improvement when it comes to robustness or size: ☂️ Game engine: Issues with savegame format and management #3150

Lua

• There is still work to be done for the Lua implementation ☂️ Game engine: Issues of current Lua implementation #3153

Testing

• Tests suffer from the monolithic nature of the game engine, and we could use more of them. Details: ☂️ Issues with testing infrastructure #3146

I18N

• There's always room for improvement, but for the moment most glaring issues have been resolved: ☂️ Potential improvements to I18N system #3149

Build

• There are multiple build systems in place, all out of sync with each other, and it would be good to reorganize them into a single cross-platform solution ☂️ Migrating to CMake #3113

Documentation

• Documentation is frequently outdated, and could use a refresh ☂️ Outdated documentation #3148

Releases

• Release procedure is a bit messy, since it starts immediately on push, but there may be multiple pushes in short timeframe: Less messy way to make releases? #737
• We may consider using additional branches: Release procedure update #673
• Binary distributions could be made smaller: Idea: break up binary distributions #3301