Phase 1: Bit-packed standability
- Add ChunkData struct with 4 bitsets per chunk (stand_in/on for floor/fixture)
- Replace 4 HashMap lookups per standability check with O(1) bit operations
- Memory: ~2KB bitsets per chunk vs ~50KB HashMap overhead
Phase 2: Reactive connectivity
- Add dirty_chunks HashSet to ChunkMap for incremental updates
- update_chunk_connectivity now O(d) where d = dirty chunks
- Early exit when no changes, preventing O(N) full rebuilds
Phase 3: Async terrain baking
- Move terrain generation to AsyncComputeTaskPool
- spawn_terrain_tasks: non-blocking task spawn (~34µs)
- apply_terrain_blobs: batched entity spawn on main thread
- Eliminates main-thread stutters during world generation
The async pathfinding with StandableBitGrid caused massive lag due to synchronous
bounding box calculation in the main thread (millions of hashmap lookups for long paths).
Additionally, the splicing logic had a catastrophic bug where it applied a single
finished path to ALL entities unconditionally.
Solution:
- Revert to thread-local synchronous A*
- Implement PathRequestQueue to process max 8 paths per frame
- Keep provisional paths for immediate movement
- Since entity walks provisional path, full path calculates from current position,
eliminating the need for complex splicing logic.
Key fixes based on benchmark analysis:
1. Remove TIER0 Vec-based pathfinding - O(N) linear scan was slower than FxHashMap for typical path lengths
2. Consolidate scratchpads into single AStarScratchpad struct - eliminates nested RefCell borrow overhead
3. Remove Arc wrapper from TileMap - eliminated Copy-on-Write trap causing 63ms stutters
4. Replace AHashMap with FxHashMap - FxHash is faster for small integer keys like IVec3
5. Simplify tier logic - single pathfinding function with scratchpad reuse
Benchmark analysis showed:
- Original: 1.95 µs/node, P99 1.1ms, Max 5ms
- TIER0/TIER1 regression: 2.89 µs/node (+48%), P99 5ms (+348%)
- Root causes: Vec linear scan in TIER0, nested RefCell borrows, Arc::make_mut CoW
This should restore and improve performance by using simple FxHashMap scratchpad for all paths.
- Add Arc<AHashMap> wrapper around floor_tiles, fixture_tiles, item_tiles
- Copy-on-write semantics: Arc::make_mut clones only if other Arcs exist
- Add insert_floor, insert_fixture, insert_item, remove_item methods
- Add get_floor_mut, get_fixture_mut for visibility updates
- Update all mutation sites to use new TileMap methods
- Enables cheap Arc::clone for async pathfinding workers
- Single-threaded pathfinding: no clone, direct access
- Multi-threaded pathfinding: clone Arc, read without locks
- Replace std HashMap (SipHash) with ahash::AHashMap for fast non-crypto hashing
- Pack tile data from tuples to structs: FloorTileData (~35 bytes) and FixtureTileData (~18 bytes)
- FloorTileData: pack 3 bools into single flags byte, use u8 for id/weight
- FixtureTileData: pack 2 bools into single flags byte
- Update all accessors: is_standable_tile, visibility, terrain generation, forestry
- Preparation for async pathfinding (Arc wrapping to come in follow-up)
Memory reduction: ~54% for floor tiles (76→35 bytes), ~62% for fixtures (48→18 bytes)
Hash performance: AHashMap uses fxhash, faster than SipHash for game data