MVP Feature Planning

[mbrown1413]

Needed for Alpha

File management

• [x] List saved puzzles
• [x] New puzzle
• [x] Open puzzle
• [x] Delete puzzle
  • [x] Confirm dialog
• [x] Save / load external files

Pieces

• [x] Piece listing in tree
• [x] Add piece
• [x] Delete piece
• [x] Piece editor
• [x] Bugfix: Pieces can store coordinates out of bounds. These hidden coordinates don't show in the editor, but they'll be used in the solver still.

Problems

• [x] Problem listing in tree
• [x] Add problem
• [x] Delete problem
• [x] Problem editor
  • [x] Set goal
  • [x] Set pieces
• [x] 3d view of all pieces + goal
• [x] Make single input handling both pieces used and goal piece

Solutions

• [x] Solver, list solutions in tree view
• [x] Solution view
• [x] Support multiple copies of a piece
• [x] Run solver in separate worker

Error handling

• [x] Robus deserialization error handling
  • [x] Home page
  • [x] Puzzle page
• [x] Action failure - Currently Action.perform() return value is ignored. Consider having this throw an error instead.

Docs

• [x] README: Project introduction
• [x] Quick pass over internal docs
• [x] README inside ui/ and lib/
• [x] README: Building instructions
• [x] README: Testing instructions

Code Cleanup

• [x] Coordinate -> Voxel: string
• [x] Move metadata tweaks on save to a SerializableClass.getSerializeData() method (in particular, take this logic out of EditProblemMetadataAction.
• [x] Remove or reorganize functions in utils.py

Housekeeping

• [x] Finalize project name
• [x] License
• [x] "About" section in app and link to github. Link to github.io deployment
• [x] Repo description
• [x] HTML title
• [x] Pass over committed files for anything extraneous
• [x] Test that everything works on a clean clone with README instructions

Needed for Beta

• [x] Copy puzzle
• [x] Edit metadata
• [x] Graphics: #2
• [x] Remove symmetries (piece orientation symmetries removed, but this may still produce redundant results)
• [x] Example puzzles
• [x] Save-as on puzzle edit page
• [x] Basic undo/redo
• [x] #4
• [ ] #5
• [ ] #6
• [ ] #7
• [ ] #8
• [x] #9
• [x] #10
• [ ] #11
• [x] #12
• [x] #13
• [x] #14
• [x] #15
• [x] #16
• [ ] #17
• [x] #18
• [x] #19
• [x] #20
• [ ] #21
• [x] #22
• [ ] #23
• [x] #24

Bugs

• [x] #25
• [x] #26
• [x] #27
• [ ] #28
• [x] #29
• [x] #30
• [x] #13
• [x] #31
• [x] #32
• [x] #33
• [x] Sometimes problem labels get erroneously serialized as [object Object], and sometimes a piece's Y bounds are zeroed. I think this had to do with #2 and it should be fixed now.
• [x] Localstorage limit of 5mb - Fixed by using compression when puzzles are large
• [x] Firefox crashes due to, I think, graphics out-of-memory issues when displaying too many pieces on the problem form.
• [x] #2
• [x] Piece list: arrow keys don't work to select above/below piece because the keypresses are captured by OrbitControls
• [x] Blank canvas glitch - key presses directed towards canvases that are not visible makes that canvas stuck blank.
• [x] Auto-focus "Name" field in new puzzle modal?
• [x] Change piece color -> display does not update until an in-layer voxel is hovered
• [x] Lag when dragging 3D view - I think this only happens when the hovered voxel changes. Fixed in: 6b08dd98211b3e377ccbb3cfb8e2ff74c202b78c

Uncategorized

• 34

• 35

• 36

• 37

• Enforce that voxel shapes actually match when listing piece placements (we'll know to do this when grids that need it are implemented)

• 38

File management:

• 39

• 40

Task Improvements

• 41

• 42

• Too many task logs causes AppBar to be covered up

• 43

Graphics:

• 3

• Pause drawing (refresh(); redraw() calls) while view is being dragged. This should improve edge case performance issues when dragging.

• 44

Docs

• "Features" heading on main README, detailing both implemented and planned upcoming features.

Performing first Release

• Make issues for "after release" items
• Dependency updates that dependabot complains about (most of these aren't actually security issues for us, but it's better to just upgrade)
• Update github pages deployment

Far future

• Querystring in URL for linking to specific tab, piece, problem, solution, etc.
• Serialization improvements
  • Provide error messages with path to offending attribute (both serialization and deserialization)
• Example files

• 46

• Documentation Diagrams: Class inheritance, class member, and vue component. I haven't found a decent tool to do this, so I think making this custom with a simple regex will be best. Scan .vue files for .vue imports (error if no file extenison given).
• Better error when serializing data with circular references (existing skipped test: "circular references")

• 47

• 59

• 3

• ID Typing - Make common types like IDs nominal rather than structural. That is, we don't want an ID type to be mixed up with a string, even though they are strings at runtime. See: SO Question, Intro guide to nominal typing in Typescript, newtype-ts
• Use Prettier
• Explore type safety in deserialization - You can't exactly extract typescript type information at runtime (without hooking into the compiler, which is possible but difficult), but we may be able to read expected type info from a class's constructor and use that to type-check deserialized classes. This would help a lot in detecting issues with changes in serialization format caused by adding new fields on classes.

Housekeeping

• SEO
• Consider github features: Wiki, sponsorships, discussions, organization
• Upgrade to yarn 2

File management

• Sorting puzzles: most recently opened, created time, alphabetical, etc.
• Export problem, export solution (pdf, stl, etc.)

• 39

Puzzle

• 48

• 49

• Console interface

• 52

• 51

• 53

UI & Settings

• 55

• 54

• Settings management - Edit, save/restore json

• 50

• Label axes an 2d and 3d views. Real space (x, y, z) and grid axes
• Make voxels look better in editor - Try beveling sharp corners (use EdgeSplitModifier or shrinking ("erode"). Make these an optional flags in the grid object. Another option described here is to just make the bevel yourself (we'd probably want a "visible" geometry separate from a "collision test" geometry).
• Make a custom AxisHelper which has thicker lines, like how the grid wireframe is drawn.

Pieces

• 58

• 56

• 57

• Instead of OrbitControls, use TrackballControls or ArcballControls, since OrbitControls has a gimbal lock problem. Possibly offer a setting to switch between control styles.
• Better way to change viewpoints
  • Ability to switch between perspective and orthogonal projections
  • Gizmo for displaying and changing axes/viewpoints like this: https://discourse.threejs.org/t/blender-like-orbit-controls-gizmo-for-three-js/27527

Problems

• 58

• Non-fixed number of pieces. "min-x, max-y"
• Button to remove unused pieces from problem
• Show pieces which could have additional units and still have the same solution (or solutions same or greater number of moves)
• Solution
  • manually delete solution (how to handle when generated content is changed?)
  • delete non-unique solutions (I guess we'd not generate duplicates in the first place?)
  • Programmable piece selection - Ability for arbitrarily programmed sets of pieces to be selected. For example, I want 1 of group A, 1 of group B in the solution.
• Difficulty measure (or more general plugin system for measures about problems, puzzles, etc.)
• Other problem types (BasicAssemblyProblem, SymmetricShapeProblem, MazeSolvingProblem, etc.). We want to have the goal be extensible. A particular algorithm will only work with one type of problem though. We don't actually need anything other than BasicAssemblyProblem implemented, but for backwards compatibility, the Problem class must be a base class only.

Solutions

• 60

• Solver setting for minimum number of moves required

• 45

• 50

Open questions

• How to make it easy to sort pieces and problems (and their generators) based on unit count, solution count, etc.
• Target workflow: Carve puzzle starting from solid end shape.
• Easily asses whether a piece will work in a problem/solution. Maybe highlight problem cells which are preventing your intended movement. I imagine you could make a preferred set of movements for the solution, then as you're editing pieces you can see whether a change you made breaks that movement, or whether an edit creates unintended movements.
• How to model restricted/sequential movement, e.g. moving a marble through a maze, or Rubik's cube

[mbrown1413]

Most of this has now been turned into GitHub issues and mapped out in Project Planning. Other items that weren't as well thought through, or I wasn't sure if we want to implement at all, I've jotted down in notes elsewhere.