The system used to be of complexity O(n^2). Essentially two for loops running per every argument. Which ended up being surprisingly slow (there were instances where I saw the argument parser as using quite a lot of CPU time).
This replaces it with a more linear algorithm. It's somewhere near O(n) where n is the length of the unparsed query. Which is more stable and faaaster. This comes with two changes, however:
Parameters inside the query now have to be delimited from both sides with : (colons). The alternative to this would be to use something like $n or just assume that space marks the end of a marker. Only the former is workable, the latter would break a few queries already.
Arguments in the argument array no longer have to be prefixed by : (colons). So, while in the query you would write :thing:, you'd initialize the array of args as: list("thing" = somevar). It could be made to work without it, but eh, I think this is fine.
Argument validation is slightly weaker. What I mean by this is that with the old system, unused keys would result in an error. This is no longer a thing. Missing keys will still result in an error, however.
One more improvement: double delimiting removes an edge case where if key A partially covers key B, depending on the order, key A would mangle key B.
Updated and tested all queries that I could find. So this should be good.
changes:
Refactored footstep sounds to use less operations & only calculate for human-types.
Improved the logging detail of the lighting profiler.
Fixed some shuttle corners that weren't correctly working with parallax space.
Converted get_turf() into a compiler macro.
Solars are now dynamically lit.
Silenced warning from lighting overlays pooling themselves when updated on a space tile.
Fixed a bug where securing a girder was instant when it was supposed to have a delay.
Adds a new process-based effects system with the goal of reducing insane lag from sparks.
Currently only supports sparks, but should be easily extendable to other types of effects.
Also fixes a bug with airlocks where the light from bolts wasn't updating.
Refactors bears slightly to reduce duplicated code & pointless spark object creation and destruction.
Lighting profiler will now log /turf locations & names correctly.
Doors will no longer trigger way more visibility checks than they need to.
This is it. The big one.
Risk: Very large. This modifies or rewrites several important systems.
Some things still need balancing, but that's probably better done if/when this hits dev.
changes:
New smooth lighting system.
Machinery split into three processes: machinery, powernet, pipenet Removed due to breakage. Refactored into multi-step process.
Mob process rewritten.
NanoUI process rewritten.
Objects process rewritten.
Tweaked color output of station lights.
Slime core lights now emit colored light.
Fixed light update frequency issue with fire alarms, hydroponics trays, and airlocks.
Increased light emission from bolted airlocks.
Miscellaneous performance improvements.
New datum pool implementation.
New lighting usage profiler.
Lighting system now tracks UV light, which is not visible to players.
Space now has a parallax effect.
Disabled Spin View verbs due to incompatibility with the new lighting system.
Disabled hallucination view spin due to incompatibility with the new lighting system.
Lighting system now initializes in the lobby before the round starts to reduce BoR deadtime.
Added UV light tracking to lighting engine; dionae now gain energy exclusively from UV light.
Added colored lighting to a few consoles that used default (white) light.
