Tinyworld Settings

Tiny World Settings

Settings live in tiny-world-builder.html inside #render-modal.

Keep settings changes compatible with the existing static single-file app:

• Preserve data-settings-tab values (app, rendering, world, materials, environment, crowd, ai) unless every command-palette and settings caller is updated in the same change.
• Preserve existing control IDs. The settings setup code binds controls by getElementById, so moving controls between sections is safe but renaming IDs is not.
• selectSettingsTab(name) must guard unknown names and update all tab and panel state together: .active, aria-selected, tab tabIndex, panel .active, and panel hidden.
• Settings tabs should remain real role="tab" buttons inside a role="tablist" and support click plus Arrow/Home/End keyboard navigation.
• Panels should be role="tabpanel" with stable IDs and aria-labelledby pointing at the matching tab.
• Settings search should be a thin UI layer over the existing tab/panel wiring: never rename controls for search, keep hidden rows reversible when the query clears, and route automatic tab changes through selectSettingsTab().
• Search result counts may be shown inside tab buttons, but keep the tab's data-settings-tab value, role, keyboard navigation, and accessible label in sync.

Structure rules:

• Keep settings grouped by user intent, not implementation variable names.
• Current top-level tabs are Workspace, Rendering, World, Materials, Environment, Crowd, and AI.
• Tabs should stay dense and scannable: desktop may show a short hint; mobile should keep a compact horizontal tab strip.
• Mobile/short-screen scroll: .settings-card is height-capped (max-height: calc(100vh - 100px), dvh on phones) and the panels scroll internally (.settings-panels { overflow-y: auto }, layout flex:1 1 auto; min-height:0). Never let the card grow unbounded again — on a phone that pushes lower controls off-screen and they become unreachable. On phones the layout is grid-template-rows: auto minmax(0,1fr) so the panels row is the scroller.
• Add data-settings-keywords when a setting or panel should be discoverable by broader user language such as performance, mechanics, textures, weather, or model.
• Preserve the existing data-settings-tab / data-settings-panel wiring, ARIA roles, keyboard tab navigation, and search-count chips.
• Search should route broad category terms to the right panel without hiding the controls in that panel.

Organization guidance:

• App/Workspace owns the UI theme selector (ui-theme-mode). Auto follows live UK/BST time-of-day, Dark forces dark chrome, and Light forces light chrome without auto-darkening after-hours.
• Rendering: keep image/render-cost controls grouped by intent. Quality covers shadow quality, Resolution, Dynamic resolution, and Target FPS; dynamic resolution treats the Resolution slider as a ceiling and only changes a transient effective scale. Lighting covers lighting and fill controls; Image effects covers brightness, saturation, contrast, pixelation, shader AA, and tilt-shift.
• World: preview/ghost controls are intentionally removed and forced to zero; do not reintroduce distance/window/opacity controls unless Preview rendering is explicitly brought back. Terrain style covers voxel bevel, landscape/planet toggles, voxel/cottage, and terrain voxel resolution. Voxel gap and Show crowns are also intentionally removed from the UI and forced off for render stability/performance.
• Time & weather popup: the time-of-day range is editable only in Build mode for local lighting previews. Play/Tinyverse/no-edit modes follow live UK/BST time and disable the range; do not persist manual build-time overrides to localStorage.
• Environment owns the Planes checkbox (render-planes-enabled) because it controls ambient flyovers and towed banners. It defaults off for the current performance pass and should stay searchable by plane/crop-duster/banner terms.
• Environment owns the admin-only Watcher controls (watcher-*). The Watcher visual is sourced from engine/world/assets/god-face_15.html, rendered by engine/world/69-watcher-layer.js, and must stay a transient Three scene layer, not saved world data. Keep it world-anchored with X/Y/Z controls so it zooms/pans with the island; do not re-lock it to the camera. Leave depth testing enabled so a distant Watcher sits behind the island instead of painting over it.
• Material wear defaults to 100% (materialWear: '1' and shipped tinyworld:render:materialWear = 1.00). When changing shipped render defaults that must override older browser localStorage, bump RENDER_SETTINGS_VERSION and update tinyworld-defaults.json together.
• Materials, Environment, Crowd, and AI can be improved independently, but keep their current control IDs and listener wiring intact.