Client rendering, stage 2 — textured transitions, and the renderer check on web and phone

done priority 1 estimate M

ground-types/004 · created 2026-08-17 · updated 2026-08-18

What to do

The spec’s “its own special task”: the ground shows real (placeholder) textures with soft edges between any two types, corners included, and the same picture on Chrome and on the phone.

game/world/client/ground.gdshader — shader_type spatial. Inputs: a nearest-sampled RGBA8 data texture the size of the grid (R = lower-trigram index, G = upper index, B = flags; decode with int(round(c * 255.0)) — no integer samplers) and an 8×8 tile atlas (one Texture2D, gutter, mipmaps off). Per fragment: the four nearest cell centres, bilinear weights sharpened with smoothstep (optional value-noise wobble), each cell’s tile sampled at the same world UV so like types are seamless — four data reads, four atlas reads. Try sampler2DArray only if the atlas look is unacceptable.
client/ground_atlas.gd — the 64 tiles generated procedurally once from the ground and variant definitions (plain, speckle, stripes, dots, flowers for grass, cracks for lava, tiles / bricks / paths for Heaven); if res://client/ground/<lower>/<upper>.png exists it wins.
area_view.gd: swap the material behind a toggle; the vertex-colour material stays as the fallback / debug view.
game/world/project.godot: add renderer/rendering_method.mobile="gl_compatibility" (the POCs have it, the game doesn’t, so the APK is very likely running the Vulkan Mobile renderer today) and fix the stale config/features “Forward Plus” entry. Re-check the two UI canvas shaders on the device afterwards.
Verify on desktop Compatibility, on the web export in Chrome, and on an APK on Kris’s phone: no shader compile errors in the console / logcat; frame time on the 60×60 Badlands at maximum zoom-out. The phone check needs the laptop — everything else can run from the task runner.

Definition of done

Screenshots from all three, the numbers, and the atlas-vs-Texture2DArray decision written into docs/handoff/0NN-ground-rendering.md. Committed and pushed.

Where the work lands

land-of-lor/game/world/client/, game/world/project.godot, docs/handoff/.

What was done (2026-08-17, laptop session)

client/ground.gdshader (spatial; four-cell blend, band + value-noise wobble, cell data as a nearest RGBA8 texture decoded floor(c*255+0.5), no integer samplers / texelFetch) and client/ground_atlas.gd (8×8 atlas of 32 px tiles drawn from each hexagram’s colour and pattern — plain, speckle, streaks, dapple, cracks, pebbles, ripples, flowers, tiles; res://client/ground/<lower>/<upper>.png overrides a tile). area_view.gd swaps the material behind USE_TEXTURED_GROUND; stage 1 stays as fallback.
project.godot: renderer/rendering_method.mobile="gl_compatibility"; features string fixed. Decision: atlas as primary; Texture2DArray not needed, not tried.
Verified on desktop Compatibility (_shots.gd) and on the exported web build in headless Chrome (WebGL2) through the real signup → Start Game flow against a throwaway local director carrying the six ground files — no shader errors, textured home rendered. Screenshots + reasoning in docs/handoff/ground-types.md and docs/handoff/ground-types/.
Not done — needs Kris and a phone: the on-device check and the 60×60 frame-time number. The .mobile override puts the phone on the backend the web check just passed; the APK itself is built in 008.

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