Changelog

Last updated: Tuesday, April 7, 2026

Active Areas

Area	Changes (30d)	Status
Main loop & systems	9 churn	Active — explicit storage parameters
Dialog system	10 churn	Active — projectiles, camera, rendering
Render core	15 churn	Active — text pipeline, font atlas, globals
World state	8 churn	Active — intent storage, component management
Player mechanics	6 churn	Stable — character bundle, player states
Shader system	4 churn	Active — gizmo lines, dissolve, snow light
Content pipeline	1 churn	New — Blender export addon

Completed: All 16 systems refactored to take explicit Storage<T> parameters instead of &World/&mut World.
Pattern: Functions receive only storages they need (e.g., camera_follow_system takes &Storage<FollowComponent>, &Storage<CameraComponent>, &mut Storage<Transform>).
Benefit: Explicit data dependencies improve borrow checker clarity and code readability.
Main loop (src/main.rs): Updated to pass individual storage fields at call sites rather than whole World reference.
Affected systems: camera_input_system, camera_intent_system, camera_follow_system, camera_noclip_system, camera_ground_clamp_system, dialog_camera_transition_system, dialog_camera_system, player_input_system, physics_sync_system, render_system, particle_intent_system, particle_update_system, trigger_system, dialog_system, dialog_projectile_system, all state machines.

Completed major refactor (3 weeks ago): Systems communicate through one-frame Storage<T> intents instead of direct function calls.
Intent types: FollowPlayerIntent, StopFollowingIntent, CameraTransitionIntent, SpawnParticleIntent.
Consumer pattern: Systems read intents from world storage, act on them, then remove them. Producers don't import consumer modules.

Dialog state machine: Ink-based story progression with display timer, projectile phases, parry mechanics.
Projectile system: Spawns physics-driven projectiles with parry windows; detects hits vs. evasion vs. parries (I/J/L buttons).
Dialog camera: Auto-frames all dialog participants; transitions smoothly between follow-cam and dialog-cam via intent; computes centroid + spread.
Bubble rendering: Billboard-based text with word-wrap, dynamic sizing (tail height → body dimensions), border/fill colors, RGBA text atlas.

Font atlas pipeline: Pre-rasterized glyphs (16×8 grid, 124px cells) from Departure Mono font.
Text measurement: Character-width aware layout with line wrapping against max bubble width.
Vertex-based text: Custom TextVertex (position, UV) fed into dedicated text pipeline with view-proj uniform.

Intent-driven spawning: particle_intent_system reads spawn_particle_intents Vec, transfers configs into persistent ParticleBuffers.
Configurable emitters: Burst count, lifetime range, speed range, directional spread (cone), gravity, size range, color gradient.
Snow particle integration: Spawned continuously at camera position for screen-fill effect; spawn_snow_particles adds particles to ParticleBuffers.

Global renderer via thread-local: render::global module centralizes Device/Queue access for loaders and systems.
Draw call generation: render_system reads entities, transforms, meshes, dissolves storages; generates DrawCall per visible entity.
Gizmo shader: Fragment shader outputs world-normal as axis color (X=red, Y=green, Z=blue).
Snow light accumulation: Persistent texture tracking deformation; blue-noise dithering maps snow brightness into tile pattern.
Dissolve shader: Blue-noise masked alpha cutoff; controlled by enable_dissolve uniform.

Tree dissolve system: Per-instance dissolve amounts lerp toward targets; updated via tree_occlusion_system which reads player transforms and cameras.
Instance buffer sync: tree_instance_buffer_update_system syncs dissolve state changes to GPU buffer after state updates.

Sphere-based triggers: trigger_system runs each fixed step; reads triggers, transforms, player_tags storages; fires TriggerEvent with Entered/Exited kinds.
Activation filtering: TriggerFilter::Player specifies which entity types can activate.
Event queue: Events collected in world.trigger_events and consumed by dialog_system to spawn bubbles.

State hierarchy: Idle, Walking, Jumping, Falling, Leaping (dash), Rolling.
Physics per-state: state_machine_physics_system applies damping on enter (Idle), horizontal input application (Walking), vertical velocity control (Jumping).
Transition logic: Grounded checks, input presence, airtime duration.

Dear ImGui integration: Inspector window with player state display, entity transform gizmos.
Entity selection: Right-click picking calls picking::pick_entity with ray; gizmo renders for selected entity when editor active.
UI mode gating: Systems check editor.wants_keyboard()/wants_mouse() to suppress game input during inspector focus.

Plugin: blender/addons/snow_trail_export.py provides one-click glTF + EXR export from Blender 5.0.
glTF operator (SNOWTRAIL_OT_export_gltf): Exports selected mesh objects to assets/meshes/{blend_filename}.gltf with configurable modifiers, vertex colors, materials.
Heightmap bake operator (SNOWTRAIL_OT_export_heightmap): Calls generate_heightmap.py to bake terrain Z-position as 32-bit EXR to assets/textures/terrain_heightmap.exr (1024px default).
UI panel: "Snow Trail" category in 3D viewport; auto-discovers project root by walking directory tree until assets/ and blender/ found.

Area	Last Changed	Status
Physics manager	80+ days	Stable
Camera follow	30 days	Stable — now takes explicit storage params
Movement component	30+ days	Stable
Mesh loader	30+ days	Stable
Spotlight sync	30 days	Stable — explicit storage params applied
State machine physics	30 days	Stable
Debug colliders	30+ days	Stable
System signatures	New	Stable — refactor complete, no behavioral changes

Global renderer thread-local: Marked for gradual migration to explicit RenderContext parameters on systems/loaders.
Dialog parry mechanics: Gameplay tuning (PARRY_WINDOW_RADIUS, HIT_RADIUS) ongoing.
Tree occlusion performance: Occlusion system runs every frame; no visibility culling yet. Scalability unknown for >100 trees.
Heightmap bake normalization: Exported EXR uses raw Z-coordinate; game may need per-level scale application.