Week 28: Simpler framework configuration, and better in-editor rendering

I fixed Scaffolder to run global-singleton scripts in-editor,
which is important for rendering accurate styling in the scene editor tool!

tl;dr: I simplified how my frameworks are configured, I fixed a big problem with in-editor rendering, and I made more styling improvements.

What happened last week?

Highlights

• I simplified how my frameworks are configured and bootstrapped.
• I had received some feedback that there were a few too many moving parts to worry about!
• The client now only needs to:
1. Include the code in `addons/`
2. Define an AutoLoad singleton
3. Define framework parameters in an `app_manifest` dictionary
4. Call `Sc.run(app_manifest)`
• I also updated some names and error messages to be less confusing when getting started.
• I also simplified the READMEs and getting-set-up docs.
• I updated my AutoLoad global singleton scripts to run in-editor.
• This gives a much better development experience!
• The problem was that the scene editor tool had become less-and-less useful and reflected reality less-and-less as I moved more-and-more configuration into my global singletons.
• There were some interesting quirks of the Godot editor to learn about and work around, but things are working pretty well!
• I made some more small improvements to styling.

Laundry list

• Framework configuration simplification

• Refactor bootstrap/app-config system to require only a single invocation for the client.

• Replace bootstrap class-extension pattern with composition, and use signals instead of overridden lifecycle methods.

• Remove reference to main node from bootstrap.

• Make app-config classes extend a common interface.

• Remove the first-line-crash-reporter-notification log message.

• Rename the Scaffolder, Surfacer, and MommaDuck AutoLoads, and rename the config filenames to match their corresponding AutoLoad names.

• `scaffolder_config.gd` / `Gs` => `sc.gd` / `Sc`

• `surafcer_config.gd` / `Surfacer` => `su.gd` / `Su`

• `momma_duck_config.gd` / `MommaDuck` => `app.gd` / `App`

• This has the downside of being less descriptive.

• But, the consistency between filename and AutoLoad name is a benefit.

• And having the AutoLoads use a very short/abbreviation name is good, since they are used all over the place.

• Update READMEs.

• Update screen accept/exit input handling to use registered actions.

• Move some metadata methods out of the top-level Scaffolder config.

• Add support for automatically defining various Project Settings fields and Input Map actions, so the client doesn't need to define these manually.

• AutoLoad global-singleton in-editor support

• Make top-level app-config AutoLoad singletons be `tool`s, so they can run in the editor, and remove in-editor guards from other `tool`s that were previously meant to avoid accessing AutoLoads.

• Declare many more scripts as `tool`s.

• Fix lots of console errors that were due to running scripts in the editor (now that they’re `tool`s).

• Fix usages of _enter_tree and _exit_tree, so that they never rely on only being called once.

• When running things in the game environment, I can reliably control a Node’s lifecycle and when it attaches and detaches from the scene tree.

• However, when running things as `tool`s in the editor environment, I cannot predict or control when the editor will attach/detach nodes!

• This was causing a really terrible experience where the editor would crash as soon as it opened itself and then tried to re-open the previous scenes, which would then crash because the editor detaches and reattaches them, which leads to invalid state, because I sometimes was freeing-up state on-detach.

• So I use a custom `_destroy` method for any nodes that I need to clean-up state when they are done.

• The downside of this approach is that I have to be very careful to remember to manually call `_destroy` on the right things at the right times.

• Use Gs.device.get_viewport_size() instead of get_viewport().size directly.

• The benefit of this, is that it will work even if the call-site context isn’t currently attached to the scene tree.

• Declare most remaining scenes as `tool`s.

• Styling improvements

• Support StyleBoxTexture for overlay panels.

• This gives me more control over how panel borders are rendered, by using nine-patch textures.

• This also lets me render things with a more pixelated style.

• The previous style I was using created flat colors, with rounded corners, and shadows.

• Usages:

• Dropdown/OptionButton panels

• Welcome panel

• Inspector panel

• HUD key-value boxes

• Etc.

• Create ScaffolderHSeparator and ScaffolderVSeparator.

• Use ScaffolderHSeparator in WelcomePanel and InspectorPanel.

• Update StyleBoxTextureScalable to re-use a globally-cached Image, rather than re-creating the same re-scaled image many times.

• Fix initial rotation of accordion carets.

• Fix focus styling.

• Godot inconsistently uses the keys “focused” and “focus”.

• Also, Godot doesn’t report when you try to reference an invalid style key.

• So I wasted a fair amount of time trying to figure out what was going wrong here!

• Remove bg_color option for color_pulse, and just use modulate_color.

• Create a placeholder for a new accordion-header class.

• Miscellaneous

• Move `display_resized` to DeviceUtils.

• Rename `app_metadata` to `metadata`.

• Add a work-around for a Godot bug incorrectly reporting a missing InputMap action.

What's next?

• Do a tiny bit more styling and pixelation work in Scaffolder.
• Resume work on a list of Surfacer improvements.

🎉 Cheers!