Developer Notes

Release Date: Sept 2025

Weather System Overhaul

Dispersed Rain Implementation
- Replaced old linear rain with a particle pool.
- Each drop now has randomized spawn x, velocity jitter (±10%), and independent lifetime.
- Reduced uniform streaking → now looks like natural scattered rainfall.
Snow & Vortex Wind
- Added snow particle type (type:"snow") with flake size variance.
- Introduced wind gusts: applied horizontal sinusoidal offset + random turbulence to flakes.
- Implemented “mini-vortex” effect: per-gust, a subset of flakes get additional angular velocity, simulating swirling snow.
Global Weather Manager
- Centralized with weather.set({ type, intensity, seed }).
- Each call clears previous weather state (prevents duplicate layers).
- Weather intensity now scales particle count dynamically (low intensity = ~30%, high intensity = ~120%).

5 Biome Packs Added: Forest, Village, Urban, Desert, Space.
Each playthrough now randomly selects one biome pack at start.
Within a run, maps are procedurally extended endlessly, but no two consecutive runs repeat the same map pack.
Anti-repeat window ensures variety (e.g. if you just played “Village,” it won’t reappear until at least 4 other packs cycle through).
Each biome integrates with the new weather system (e.g. snow in Village, sandstorms in Desert, starfields in Space).

Multiple Suns Issue
- Fixed duplication bug in village.js where the sky renderer instantiated drawSun() every map segment.
- Now tracked via singleton sky.sunDrawn flag per render cycle.
Weather/Background Sync
- Fixed race condition where rain was drawn before background gradient, causing “flattened” visuals.
- Reordered render pipeline → background → weather → ornaments → foreground.

Optimized particle pool reuse to avoid GC spikes when weather intensity changes.
Added clamp for intensity values (0.0–1.0). Values above 1.0 no longer crash particle system.
Reduced draw calls by batching rain drops into grouped canvas paths.

Code touching weather: js/world/weather.js, ambient_village.js, random_maps.js.
New infinite maps logic: js/world/random_maps.js.
Test seeds:
- weather.set({ type:"rain", intensity:0.5, seed:12345 }) → moderate scattered rain.
- weather.set({ type:"snow", intensity:0.8, seed:98765 }) → dense snow with vortex gusts.
Known limitation: vortex effect doesn’t yet push background ornaments (trees, houses). Planned for v2.0.27.