Spent a while rewriting the code that loads the Title Screen Island in an attempt to reduce the load time, since there was no real reason it should have been so much longer than a normal Save File. Turned out that the Save File was bugged, instead of Trees and stuff being in their own Chunk ds_grid cells they were all in one big list in a single cell.

This is way faster than it was!

There's still more I think I can do to speed it up, at least quitting from a game. I believe the main lag left there is the destruction of the ds structures, so splitting them into parts should speed things up. It's quite fortunate that I don't have to run through the lists in the grids to destroy all the objects, since they aren't persistent and there's a room change to the Title Screen.

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Noticed an issue with The Underground walls, despite the draw order being correct there is some colour inconsistency. There should only be two different colours here not three.

I'm not sure exactly why this was happening, the walls are made of three parts, the ground surface that is always under things, actual tiles that need drawn at specific depth and the top part that is always over everything.

I fixed it by moving the code for the darkness from the draw event to the draw_end event so it's done last.

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Big bug! Walls being placed over the Entrances and Exits in Caves!

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Ok, I definitely need to fix this. While it would be quite cool to need to unearth the Exit Stairs it would be an issue if you don't have a way to do so. Granted there will always be a chance of there being Mine-able Walls between the Entrance and Exit, so maybe it's less of an issue than I think?

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Turned out the reason for the Exit blockage was because of legacy code.

Caves used to be generated before and after a room transition, the tiles before and the objects after. Since the objects don't exist yet the check for them fails and the walls get placed where they'll end up, so I've moved things around. Now the basic walls and ground gets set up, then the Entrance/Exit are placed along with setting the tiles below it, then any extra Walls can be placed anywhere that isn't blocked.

Odd bug popped up though...why is there now always a wall next to the Teleporter?!

(It's because of how I'm exiting the for loops, fixed!)

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Updated the ground gen code for Caves, adding in dirt patches and making it Autotile, even added it to Wall Mining so that it doesn't look odd.

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Fixed an issue where Chests and Pedestals wouldn't spawn in Caves, turns out it was because they need Flooring, but the fancy Flooring I was using for them couldn't spawn because of the Walls in the way, so now I'm using normal Flooring and drawing the fancy rug under them.
Found another weird bug though, for some reason there are instances of Pots spawning on Cave Walls?!

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Working on more Ruins rooms, here's a room that can have up to 4 Treasure Chests, but be careful they can be trapped!

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I think I'm going to make these small rooms be rewards at the end of a different type, I've got bigger rooms that can have multiple features which I think will be more common.

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Layout needs work as does the Pier tile design (add autotiling), but Ruin Fishing spots work!

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Hmm, this is better. Rearranged the room layout, added depth to the Pier and some water fencing.

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I need to come up with some more variations and other Ruins Rooms., I have a couple ideas but the issue is making sure they actually fit the world and getting them designed.

Started adding some sprites of floor to surround specific objects to break up the ground tiles a bit, I'm working on some Ruins floor tile variants but it's a pain because of tiling.

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It might be a little hard to see in The Underground, but I think it looks quite good in the Caves/Ruins.

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Bug Fixes and small Changes

• Fixed being able to see Wall Plaques on NPC Buildings.

• Fixed not being able to dig up crops due to a change to the grid check code.

• Fixed World Gen code re-genning World code running twice (once on choosing Generate, and again on choosing Start New Game).

• Fixed Caves being drawn out of bounds.

• Fixed Walls and Cave Walls not autotiling with each other

• Fixed Culling oversight that added Cave Buildings to the BuildingRunning list.

• Fixed Wall Panels in Ruins not being placed over Walls.

• FIxed a bug where Building wasn't cleared on Ruins generation.

• Updated interact indicators when Moving/Deleting Building Parts.

• Updated NPC pathfinding to adjust the destination based on NPC's collision box.

• Updated the Clean Up script that destroys Cull Lists to destroy the objects in them when a room changes DOESN'T occur (since room change does this itself).

• Updated Traps to be more deadly by expanding the number of Damage Frames.

• Updated Ruin Shape layouts to use the same symbols as The Underground.

• Updated Ruins to use Ruins Walls for their layouts, with Cave Walls being rare or only additional/mineable Walls.

I think that's it for now. Heating is getting fixed Thursday (hopefully), I will do my best to get back to a normal schedule/work pace.

Thank you all so incredibly much. I hope you all have a fantastic 2026 and achieve all of your goals!

Please stay safe out there and keep being awesome!