deepgrain-foundry/NOTES.md

Notes

The owner's to-do list for the game. Add notes anywhere in the lists below. Agents work on them when asked; AGENTS.md says how. Finished items go to "Done, please check" at the bottom and stay there until the owner has checked them in the game and deleted them.

To do

• stacking ingots is a little odd, they dont stack neatly. so putting them all in the same place means it will get full but have lots of air space. what can we do about this? WHat in real life might be the solution for storing ingots?
• lets think about how best to design the factory products. basics are normal smelting ore, refining, etc. but the actual export products could be like real construction materials. materials that a real construction site might need.
• the world still seems quite small. i dont know if thats because the bot moves so fast, the bot can mine too fast, or the grains should be smaller... i would like to make the worl seem huge to the player and give them loads of resources to mine for a long game. as is, you could mine all the resources from the map pretty quickly and end up having to start a new world and new game as a result. or maybe there is some other solution that i havent thought of yet. need to brainstorm this.
• there is a sound effect that seems to happen randomly but constantly. sounds like a circuit breaker flipping on or off or something. maybe like a ruller snapping on a desk. what is it? its not new ive just been ignoring it. actually it may be a part of the background music. but it seems out of place. not sure if its the music or not. it folows the player wherever it goes. but maybe the sound effects are not local?
• for buildings that need a material selection, lets make a new material selection menu
• lets rework the vacuum/blower tool. the selecting, ticking, etc of the items for filtering and otherwise. its a little confusing and difficult to understand. lets ocme up with a simpler ui/ux, intuitive while still containing the same core functions like filtering what you pickup and drop and allowing pickup/drop all or filtered.
• the silo art looks the same for both pixelated graphiocs and smooth.

Future features and ideas

• we can add more exotic/sci-fi ish ores and materials for more late game.
• add more world generation options in new world creation and some presetsa Presets like different planet environments and all. Trees, water, dirt, all that could look different too.
• lets talk about upgrades to the res drill. currently we have a bit mold. but that doesnt really make sense for the res drill. lets redesign the whole upgrades functionality anyway.

Done, please check

• instead of full description on to left for build menu, mouse hover reviels a new info popup. organize the popup look so its nice and easy to read the information.
  • (agent) Hover a tile in the build menu for a popup: icon and name, cost (red if you can't afford it), size, the full description, how to place it, and the build keys. The top-left card is hidden while the build tool is out; what it showed about the selected piece (material or direction · R, filter settings · F, Replace · Ctrl, ghosts waiting, messages like "Nothing built here to pick.") is now a row under the tiles. On a gamepad the popup shows for the selected tile. Copy, cut and paste still use the top-left card.
• dont need the short description in the build menu if we have a hover info popup.
  • (agent) Removed: the line under the tiles is now the selected piece's status row instead.
• i have noticed that belts with a big pile on top only move the grains on the top of the stack. the belt should move the whole stack. if this is an issue for performance, maybe a nice solution is to stall the belt when there is too much on it. then the player must build in a way to control the flow to that belt. update: i found that its because when there is a screw tube at the end of the belt, it stops the lower grains and only the ones at the top move. the screw tube shouldnt block them, it should suck them in.
  • (agent) Written after version 24, which already tried to fix this: carryColumn in src/sim/conveyors.js moves the whole stack, up to 96 grains deep. A one-off headless check of a tall heap moving together passed then (it was not kept as a suite test), so the real game must differ from that check somehow. Reproduce it in the game first (tools/shot.py, or play it), then add a suite test that fails, then fix.
  • (agent) Found it: when the front of the line backs up (your tube taking less than the belt brings, or a wall), the bottom grains were blocked but the ones above them still had air ahead, so the top slid forward over a stuck bottom forever. Now a column on a belt moves as a unit: if a grain can't move, nothing above it moves either, so a backed-up heap stands still (the belt slips under it) and is fed into the tube from its front, bottom layers included. A free-running belt still carries the whole heap. To check: blow a heap of two materials onto a belt that ends in an up tube and watch the bottom material go into the tube too. tools/scenes/belt-heap.js sets up the same thing for screenshots.
• copper bars go into the furnace. also they shouldnt require the player to press F to collect. instead it should automatically eject ingots below and the player can have a belt there.
  • (agent) Bars now drop out of the bottom of an ingot mold by themselves as soon as they set, never up into the furnace. Leave one open block under the mold and put a belt below that: the bars land on it and ride off (a belt touching the mold's underside counts as blocked). If there is no room, the bars wait in the mold and a message says so once. The bit of metal too short for a bar stays in the trough for the next firing. F on the mold is now optional upkeep: it empties the trough, chips off slag and rakes the furnace grate. To check: run a furnace over a mold with a belt a block below.