Move the engine's own first-boot prompts (data directories, listeners, server
name, expansion + map selection) out of ServerConfiguration.Load and into
ServerConfiguration.ConfigurePrompts() [CallPriority(0)], so all first-boot
prompting -- engine and content -- runs through the single
AssemblyHandler.Invoke("ConfigurePrompts") phase. Load now only reads/creates
the config file.
- Feasible because assembly loading uses AssemblyDirectories (default
./Assemblies), not DataDirectories, so assemblies load before the now-later
data-dir prompt.
- UOClient.Load() (client-file discovery) moves with the data-dir prompt.
- Core.Expansion is now assigned in ConfigurePrompts (every non-mocked boot);
nothing between LoadAssemblies and that phase reads it (type initializers run
lazily, not at load).
- CallPriority(0) keeps engine prompts (incl. map selection) ahead of content
prompts like the pathfinding pre-bake (priority 50).
Main.cs already invokes the ConfigurePrompts phase, so no startup-ordering edit.
Tests are unaffected: fixtures call Load(true), which now just reads config, and
set expansion/data dirs directly; ConfigurePrompts is gated on m_Mocked.
Updates dev-docs/server-lifecycle.md to reflect the unified design.
NOTE: Main.cs startup ordering isn't covered by the fixture-based test suite, so
this needs a first-boot runtime check (fresh modernuo.json) before merge.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
## What
On **first boot** (right after map selection), offer to pre-bake the pathfinding `.swb` cache for the selected maps. This removes first-pathfind-after-boot latency and is now cheap — ~18 MB/facet after the v8 format work (the old ~565 MB is gone). The answer persists in `modernuo.json` as **`pathfinding.prebakeMaps`** (default **false**): asked exactly once, and skipped on headless/CI boots (redirected input) where operators can set the flag directly.
## How — a generic startup phase, not pathfinding hardcoded in the engine
The clean-console (pre-Serilog) prompt window is inside the engine startup, but UOContent isn't loaded until after `ServerConfiguration.Load`. So rather than coupling the engine to pathfinding, this adds a generic lifecycle phase:
- **`Main.cs`**: new `AssemblyHandler.Invoke("ConfigurePrompts")` — runs **after** `LoadAssemblies` (so content can participate) but **before** the first `logger.Information` (so console prompts aren't interleaved with the async console sink). The first log line moves below it. Any class can hook in with `public static void ConfigurePrompts()` and self-gate on first-boot state. No `ServerConfiguration` or pathfinding coupling added to the engine.
- **`PathCacheCommands.ConfigurePrompts()`**: the first-boot prompt (interactive-only, flag-absent-only); persists the answer.
- **`PathCacheCommands.Initialize()`** (`Invoke("Initialize")` phase, after the tile matrix loads — which the bake walks): when the flag is set, bakes any map whose `.swb` is **missing or stale** (tile-data fingerprint mismatch, via `StepCache.ComputeLiveFingerprint` / `TryReadFingerprintFromFile`). A fresh cache is a no-op, so only the first boot — or a post-client-update boot — pays the several-minute cost.
## Docs
Fixed the now-stale "~565 MB / ~1.5–2 GB / do not bake by default" section in `dev-docs/pathfinding.md` (it's 17.9 MB for Trammel, tens of MB for all six facets after v8), added a "First-boot pre-bake prompt" section, and added the `pathfinding.prebakeMaps` lever row.
## Verified
- `dotnet build UOContent -c Release` → 0 errors (rebased on #2474).
- Pathfinding/StepCache tests: **90/90 pass**.
- Bootstrap streamlining of the startup phases is intentionally left as a follow-up.
