Landon Voss

Day 40 — Bug Jail, Placement Preview Regression, and Constraint Polish

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Context

Today was largely about polish and stability. As the Home and Home_Edit systems grow, I’m starting to feel the weight of regressions where small changes can cause outsized breakage. Today’s main issue was one of those moments.

Placement Preview Regression

I spent most of the day chasing down a regression where the placement preview was no longer displaying correctly.

This involved:

  • Arguing with AI agents over incorrect assumptions
  • Restoring older snapshots to isolate the issue
  • Carefully diffing recent changes

Eventually, I found the root cause and got it fixed. It appears that a recent refactor unintentionally broke the preview logic. This was frustrating, but also a reminder that even well‑structured systems can become fragile as they scale.

Small but Important Fixes

In addition to the regression fix, I completed several smaller tasks that improve overall stability and UX:

  • Set up dozens of home items as prefab entities
  • Added support for certain home items to not be rotatable (e.g., wall‑mounted TVs, ceiling items)
  • Prevented players from equipping tools while in Home or Home_Edit mode
  • Fixed issues where tools were still visually displayed despite being unequipped
  • Added a placement constraint when building a home: it must be at least two tiles away from a tree to prevent branches clipping through interiors

Current Concerns

Despite frequent refactoring and attempts to keep the codebase scalable, today reinforced a concern: as the project grows, the surface area for subtle regressions grows with it. Catching these issues early requires discipline, tooling, and patience.

Summary

What I accomplished:

  • Fixed a major placement preview regression.
  • Added rotation constraints for wall and ceiling items.
  • Improved Home/Home_Edit input and equip restrictions.
  • Expanded home item prefabs.
  • Added placement rules to prevent environmental clipping.

What I learned:

  • Regressions are inevitable as systems scale.
  • Snapshotting and diffing are essential debugging tools.
  • Architectural discipline reduces—but does not eliminate—fragility.
  • “Bug jail” days are part of building complex systems.

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