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