The Last Spike Online / 21 July 2026
One geometry system instead of three separate maps
Country-specific board coordinates were demanding more and more special-case code. We moved to a shared geometry model with validated coordinate data for each variant.
Situation
The USA, Canada and other board variants had evolved separately, so the same rendering rule existed in several forms. Fixing a rotation or tile position could easily affect only one map. That divergence stayed tolerable until the artwork layer and tests started exercising several countries at the same time.
Approach
I introduced a unified board-coordinate model in which country-specific differences are data. Dedicated tests validated every country's coordinates and rotation rules. The renderer used the same pipeline for every edition and received only a different geometry dataset as input.
Outcome
Board code became simpler and drift between variants became test-detectable. A shared rendering fix automatically applied to every country as long as its geometry data satisfied the same contract.