I want to preface this by saying that I think I got cooked by AI here.
I have a game where I am working on a job system. The job system has a job objects which I need to put into a data structure that can be searched via id, location, or work type. At first I was building with the mindset of "do whatever to solve this problem and make it work" but it became very hard to implement new features because I would break everything. So I started trying to think ahead and design ways of doing things that would handle all the different jobs and things.
At first I put all jobs into an array and iterated through. Then I learned about dictionaries and started using them for way to many things and so i updated my job queue to be a dictionary with the Key as ID > JobObj
Then I decided to plan out the job system before writing anything and "do it properly". I decided I needed to upgrade the data structure holding jobs because its a core part of the game and will be heavily interacted with. But I realized I only know array, dictionary and database, so I asked AI what data structure I should use and it suggested a nested dictionary.
Now im using multiple dictionaries but im really hating it. Its hard for me to work with and conceptually im not sure I can visualize how its even working.
How I am thinking about it is there is multiple layers of keys, 1st layer is work types, then once I find the work type it points to a dictionary of region IDs and that points to an array of jobs in the region.
Job def is work type like Planting
Region id: the map is broken down into region IDs so i dont have to check every tile and can limit seaching
#python
var job_pool: Dictionary = {}
func register(designation: DesignationObj) -> void:
var job_def = designation.job
var region_id = designation.region_id
if not job_pool.has(job_def):
job_pool[job_def] = {}
if not job_pool[job_def].has(region_id):
job_pool[job_def][region_id] = []
job_pool[job_def][region_id].append(designation)
Here is how I am picturing it in my head.
var job_pool {
"plants": {
"1": {
"job1"
"job2"
}
"2": {
"job3"
}
}
"mining": {
"1": {
"job4"
"job5"
}
}
"hunting": {
"5":{
"job12"
}
}
}
But now I want to add ID look up into this im stuck and im thinking the entire structure does not work for what it needs to do.
They are