The Library and EDGEbuilder for VS Code

Draft 2, 2026-10-29. Status: agreed with the owner on 2026-10-29, written from their idea and answers (draft 2: the root’s default and Relocate, who keeps the rules). B3 builds the Library’s first part. It changes where scenes and bakes live (B3, B4) and turns B7, the project builder, into an EDGEbuilder extension for VS Code with a map of the whole world.

The idea

A modder building a large part of the city works on it for months and releases it in pieces: an extension of a district in phases, each phase its own mod. The vision should live in one place, not be spread over a dozen REDcode projects. That place is the Library: the long-term, organised warehouse of design-time and build-time work. Projects take from it what one mod needs.

The Library is a way of working, not a rule. A modder who keeps everything in one REDcode project and never opens the Library can do that, as today.

The name stays Library, as a real library holds books and tapes on every subject in one building. EDGEdeck’s is “the mod library” in these docs. If the two get confused in use, the fallback name is Stash.

The Library

One root folder for the EDGE platform, shared by every tool that uses it. The first tool to need it asks where to put it, offering Documents\EDGE Library. Its place is kept in one small file every tool reads, %APPDATA%\EDGE\library.json ({ "root": ... }), since the in-game Node mod cannot read VS Code’s settings. Relocate moves the whole Library, to a bigger drive for example: it copies the root, checks the copy, updates library.json so every tool follows, and only then removes the old folder. A project’s “came from” notes are relative to the root, so they survive the move. Any tool whose work belongs there offers a Library view: EDGEbuilder for scenes and bakes, EDGEfab for made and imported assets, EDGEmat for materials and appearances, perhaps others later. Each tool owns its own kinds of item; the root and the few rules below are shared.

EDGEbuilder’s items:

Flows

What a bake is, in game terms. A bake does not rewrite the game’s sector file. It adds a new sector of our own at that place, patched into the world through ArchiveXL, and (from B4b) ArchiveXL edits that hide or change the game’s own objects there. Rewriting the game’s sector would clash with every other mod in the area and break with each patch. “Bake this sector” is fine wording in the interface; the result is “our sector and edits at this place”.

Flags

EDGEbuilder for VS Code

The out-of-game half. The design’s B7 planned it inside REDcode; it becomes an EDGEbuilder extension that uses REDcode (projects, the three.js mesh viewer, the bridge) rather than adding to it.

The world map

A bird’s-eye editor view of the whole world, wireframe: every sector’s streaming box, drawn from the game’s sector lists.

• A level filter, not one strict tree: show the finest exterior level, a coarser one, interiors, quest sectors, or Phantom Liberty’s, alone or together.
• Hover highlights a box and fills a side panel: the sector’s name, kind and level, its grid cell and size, the archive it comes from (base or Phantom Liberty), the installed mods that change it, and the Library scenes and bakes that overlap it. Node counts are read on demand.
• Click drills in: to a finer level’s boxes inside it, or, at the bottom, opens the sector view.
• Our own scenes and bakes are drawn on the map in another colour.
• Perhaps later: the game’s own map as an underlay.

The sector view

The sector drawn in 3D with a flying camera, from its nodes: meshes and instanced meshes at their transforms, entities as their meshes or as boxes, lights and other kinds as markers. Each unique mesh is exported once through REDbridge and cached, so the first visit to a sector is slow; a progress bar says how many meshes are left and about how long. Flat colours first, textures and EDGEmat’s materials later; terrain and full entities later still.

In it the modder can:

• turn Library scenes on and off over the sector, add objects to a scene and move them (the same gizmo and keys as in game);
• place Library assets: imported from Blender, made by EDGEfab or an AI service, with new appearances from EDGEmat;
• pick the game’s own nodes, which is easier here than in game: the sector file gives each node directly, where in game 2.5 keeps only a hash of a node’s path. B3b’s “add a copy to the scene” and B4b’s edits get a second home here;
• bake, open the scene in the running game (REDnode), and include a bake in a project.

What it needs from the other repos

Opened 2026-10-29: REDbridge #11 for sector.find and sector.nodes.

Roadmap

E0 can run early, beside B2c or B3, since it touches only REDbridge and a script. E1 and later follow B4, when scenes save, load and bake. B4b’s edits from the sector view follow B4b.

Open

• The rules’ home (agreed): this page keeps the shared Library rules (the root and library.json, self-describing items, the “came from” note) until a second tool uses the Library; then they move to the platform’s wiki.
• The default folder: Documents\EDGE Library as offered above, unless the owner prefers another; Relocate makes the first choice cheap to change.
• EDGEscene, an empty repo of 2026-10-27, was deleted by the owner: residue of early ideas, not a home for this.