Initial support for Terrain SmoothGrid data

[checkraisefold]

DISCLAIMER: THIS IS MY FIRST ACTUAL PROJECT IN RUST. Terrible code will bleach your eyes!
Because of that, this PR also has edits by maintainers on.

This PR adds support for serialization and deserialization to rbx-types for the Terrain object SmoothGrid property data.
This fully permits the creation of external tooling for modification and generation of smooth terrain data, as Roblox Studio, along with RCCService (presumably) generate the additionally-required PhysicsGrid data at runtime/publish-time.

As a bonus, no reverse engineering of the client had to be done here; just a lot of comparing outputs with ImHex peddled by this article.
https://zeux.io/2017/03/27/voxel-terrain-storage/

Rendered spec.

• Decoder
• Decoder tests
• Encoder
• Encoder tests
• Module splitup

[Dekkonot]

I'd prefer we keep the naming scheme intact and name the spec file for SmoothGrid to be smooth-grid.md.

Otherwise, I've left my comments and questions for the spec file.

[checkraisefold]

further code commits are paused until structure is reviewed so I don't add the deserializer and have to immediately rewrite it

[Dekkonot]

Overall, I'd say that this is a good start to an encoder. The comments up above are more focused on the actual code than things like code structure.

Let's rename the terrain.rs module to smooth_grid.rs. I'd also like it if the TerrainSerializer trait could be killed off, since I don't think it adds anything. The encode and decode methods could be under the same impl blocks as the rest of the methods.

Architecturally I have some things I'd like to change but they involve files outside of this PR so I won't force them onto you.. Stuff like moving smooth_grid and material_colors into a submodule named terrain and having them share a Material enum, as an example. If you want to make those changes you're welcome to but otherwise I'll do it after this is merged.

[checkraisefold]

Architecturally I have some things I'd like to change but they involve files outside of this PR so I won't force them onto you.. Stuff like moving smooth_grid and material_colors into a submodule named terrain and having them share a Material enum, as an example. If you want to make those changes you're welcome to but otherwise I'll do it after this is merged.

i could give this a shot but I was mainly wondering how the enum should be structured with it being like this? the easiest way would be to just put it in order but you'd have to include air and some other non-colorable materials i think and then implement an error for them??

[checkraisefold]

i could give this a shot but I was mainly wondering how the enum should be structured with it being like this? the easiest way would be to just put it in order but you'd have to include air and some other non-colorable materials i think and then implement an error for them??

for this

[Dekkonot]

i could give this a shot but I was mainly wondering how the enum should be structured with it being like this? the easiest way would be to just put it in order but you'd have to include air and some other non-colorable materials i think and then implement an error for them??

There's a few ways I can imagine this working.

The first is that we just have a TerrainMaterial enum and error if you ever try to use a material that isn't allowed. This seems reasonable, but it's kind of a bummer that it would mean being unable to statically verify that a material was allowed.

Another option is to just say "to hell with it" and have multiple TerrainMaterial enums, which is how it's implemented right now. This solves the static analysis problem but it means that working with Terrain in rbx-dom requires two identically named enums, which is a terrible UX.

The final option I can see is that we have a centralized TerrainMaterial enum and then also module-specific material enums, which can be converted back and forth via from and try_from. I think I hate this idea, since it'd mean SmoothGridMaterial::try_from(TerrainMaterial::Water).unwrap() is a thing.

I'm inclined to go with the first option since it's the easiest and have the least obstructive UX possible. Moving us to a central TerrainMaterials enum is technically breaking because it involves adding variants to the one from MaterialColors, but I think I'm willing to accept it. Curious to know what @kennethloeffler thinks though.

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In terms of actual implementation, I imagine that each Terrain would have its own internal variant that it used that it just tried to convert into from the central TerrainMaterials. That'd allow each module to do its own thing while still giving a consistent public interface.

[Dekkonot]

Can't wait for Ken for the rest of our days, so I'm gonna go ahead and say go for the plan I gave above with moving us to a central TerrainMaterials enum.

[checkraisefold]

No that does not compile, just pushing work so far

[checkraisefold]

So far my only hypothetical concern is performance - I feel like the algorithm in the encoder sucks
Decoder hopefully shouldn't be too bad in comparison at least

[checkraisefold]

@Dekkonot
module splitup is done, re-requesting review of the splitup before I move on to the decoder

[checkraisefold]

needs review - only thing missing is decoder testing

[Dekkonot]

This obviously still needs tests, but nothing is jumping out at me right now implementation-wise. I have some questions and suggestions but they're mostly clerical.

However, outside of the implementation there's stuff we have to do for rbx-dom to actually support reading and writing files with this type!

This needs support for reading it in rbx_xml; there's a list of conversions in rbx_xml\src\conversion.rs that you need to add an entry for SmoothGrid to.

In rbx_binary, this needs some conversions. You can take a look at my MaterialColors PR for a good idea of what that actually entails: https://github.com/rojo-rbx/rbx-dom/pull/323/files

In rbx-dom-lua, we need at least a pod in rbx_dom_lua\src\EncodedValue.lua. If we want to support live syncing it for Rojo, it also needs an entry in rbx_dom_lua\src\customProperties.lua but honestly that might be a lot of work.

Also obligatory "we need a changelog entry".

[checkraisefold]

i have to make ChunkCoordinates/VoxelCoordinates serializable as strings that are acceptable as json keys. worst day