The StateMachine offered a feature to remember the previous state and allow reverting to it. However this feature is unused. Remove it to allow the previous states to be reclaimed by the GC earlier.
When handling the Nodes collection in MiniYaml, individual nodes are located via one of two methods:
// Lookup a single key with linear search.
var node = yaml.Nodes.FirstOrDefault(n => n.Key == "SomeKey");
// Convert to dictionary, expecting many key lookups.
var dict = nodes.ToDictionary();
// Lookup a single key in the dictionary.
var node = dict["SomeKey"];
To simplify lookup of individual keys via linear search, provide helper methods NodeWithKeyOrDefault and NodeWithKey. These helpers do the equivalent of Single{OrDefault} searches. Whilst this requires checking the whole list, it provides a useful correctness check. Two duplicated keys in TS yaml are fixed as a result. We can also optimize the helpers to not use LINQ, avoiding allocation of the delegate to search for a key.
Adjust existing code to use either lnear searches or dictionary lookups based on whether it will be resolving many keys. Resolving few keys can be done with linear searches to avoid building a dictionary. Resolving many keys should be done with a dictionary to avoid quaradtic runtime from repeated linear searches.
Ensure the target location can be pathed to by all units in the squad, so the squad won't get stuck if some units can't make it. Improve the choice of leader for the squad. We attempt to a choose a leader whose locomotor is the most restrictive in terms of passable terrain. This maximises the chance that the squad will be able to follow the leader along the path to the target. We also keep this choice of leader as the squad advances, this avoids the squad constantly switching leaders and regrouping backwards in some cases.
Previously, the ClosestTo and PositionClosestTo existed to perform a simple distance based check to choose the closest location from a choice of locations to a single other location. For some functions this is sufficient, but for many functions we want to then move between the locations. If the location selected is in fact unreachable (e.g. on another island) then we would not want to consider it.
We now introduce ClosestToIgnoringPath for checks where we don't care about a path existing, e.g. weapons hitting nearby targets. When we do care about paths, we introduce ClosestToWithPathFrom and ClosestToWithPathTo which will check that a path exists. The PathFrom check will make sure one of the actors from the list can make it to the single target location. The PathTo check will make sure the single actor can make it to one of the target locations. This difference allows us to specify which actor will be doing the moving. This is important as a path might exists for one actor, but not another. Consider two islands with a hovercraft on one and a tank on the other. The hovercraft can path to the tank, but the tank cannot path to the hovercraft.
We also introduce WithPathFrom and WithPathTo. These will perform filtering by checking for valid paths, but won't select the closest location.
By employing the new methods that filter for paths, we fix various behaviour that would cause actors to get confused. Imagine an islands map, by checking for paths we ensure logic will locate reachable locations on the island, rather than considering a location on a nearby island that is physically closer but unreachable. This fixes AI squad automation, and other automated behaviours such as rearming.
This changeset is motivated by a simple concept - get rid of the MiniYaml.Clone and MiniYamlNode.Clone methods to avoid deep copying yaml trees during merging. MiniYaml becoming immutable allows the merge function to reuse existing yaml trees rather than cloning them, saving on memory and improving merge performance. On initial loading the YAML for all maps is processed, so this provides a small reduction in initial loading time.
The rest of the changeset is dealing with the change in the exposed API surface. Some With* helper methods are introduced to allow creating new YAML from existing YAML. Areas of code that generated small amounts of YAML are able to transition directly to the immutable model without too much ceremony. Some use cases are far less ergonomic even with these helper methods and so a MiniYamlBuilder is introduced to retain mutable creation functionality. This allows those areas to continue to use the old mutable structures. The main users are the update rules and linting capabilities.
