Hey folks, and welcome back!
This past week was all about the level loader — again. At one point, it was working. Then it was really working. Then, as I kept expanding it to handle more edge cases, things started to feel… bloated.
Turns out, the more magic I tried to cram into the loader, the more fragile and complicated it became.
🔧 Simplifying the Monster
The original goal was to have one system that:
- Built rooms from text
- Placed switches and gates
- Rotated gates correctly
- Linked switches to gates
- Delivered pizza
(okay maybe not that last one, but still)
It was ambitious — and to be honest, kind of fun while it lasted.
But as the complexity grew, so did the mess. I realized I was spending more time debugging edge cases than actually building puzzles. That’s when I made the call: scale it back.
🧩 What the Loader Does Now
The loader is now focused on what it does best: tile placement.
- It builds the room shape from a text-based layout
- It places walls, floor tiles, obstacles, and decorations
- It sets the stage for the rest of the logic to happen manually (for now)
The rest — things like linking switches to gates or rotating them properly — will be handled by hand in the Unity editor for now.
It’s not perfect, but it’s a cleaner, more stable foundation. And honestly, it’s still saving me tons of time.
🚀 What’s Next
- Rebuilding my test levels with the new streamlined loader
- Reintroducing gates, switches, and goals one piece at a time
- Planning phase two of the loader once the basics are rock solid
- Trying to resist the urge to “just add one more feature” again
🙃 Final Thought
Sometimes, progress means pulling back instead of pushing forward. The dream is still a full-featured level loading system — and I’ll get there. But for now, I’m happy having a tool that helps me build faster without breaking everything else in the process.
One tile at a time.
– Chris