Performing edit on VoxelTerrain that hasn't loaded yet silently fails

[Piratux]

Describe the bug
Performing edit (for example using do_sphere) on VoxelTerrain or VoxelLodTerrain that hasn't loaded yet silently fails as opposed to printing an error in console.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Add do_sphere in _ready() script of parent VoxelTerrain.
2. See no edit being performed, and no error printed to console.

Expected behavior
Some sort of error in console, saying that edit could not be performed.

Environment

• OS: Windows 10
• Graphics card: GTX 650 Ti
• Godot version: 4.2.2 stable
• Module version: 1.2.0
• Renderer: Forward+

MRP
Test silent edit fail on terrain on ready.zip

[MGilleronFJ]

That was intended. Only some VoxelTool implementations used to print errors when partially out of bounds, but then I got reports that didn't want errors to be printed. Now no implementation print anything by default. If you want to be notified of that, something should print if you enable verbose stdout in Godot's debug options (or command line -v).

[NuclearPhoenixx]

IMHO, if a dev does something unsupported or unexpected with the module like that, there should at least be some warning or a notice or something. Instead of suppressing or outright removing the warning, it would be better to address the issue directly and don't try to edit terrain that is not loaded.

[Piratux]

That was intended. Only some VoxelTool implementations used to print errors when partially out of bounds, but then I got reports that didn't want errors to be printed. Now no implementation print anything by default. If you want to be notified of that, something should print if you enable verbose stdout in Godot's debug options (or command line -v).

If that's intended, then perhaps return value of do_* methods could be used to indicate whether edit was successful?
For example, instead of do_sphere returning void, it could return bool value, where true means edit was successful, and false unsuccessful?

[Zylann]

I could bring back the log as a warning instead of only when verbose output is enabled?

I don't really like the idea of having every single edit method return a result like that... that's a lot of methods to modify, in some cases there is already a return value, it breaks compatibility in some cases, and it's going to be either ignored most of the time (which might in turn trigger warnings along the way for "unused return value"), or you'll have to put an if or assert when calling every function, which in script-land is just annoying/inefficient. And that would not even cover the case where you were expecting to be able to edit, but failed and will still not print anything.

[Piratux]

Ah, you're right, didn't think about warnings of ignoring return value, that could be annoying indeed.

I think warning or error by default should be better choice here as opposed to silent fail.
If one wants to avoid warnings, one can always use VoxelTool.is_area_editable().

[Zylann]

Changed to warnings in 3a9f3d1