chill, I'm the only programmer on the project, and I don't have any problems understanding what the code is doing (only lost track of some of the "why", the process that led me there. which was only relevant here because I was trying to recreate that process with ChatGPT). The original algorithm involved a ton of trial and error from my end, so the "why" is really just "I tried a bunch of permutations of this and ended up with this as the version that worked".