I'm writing a server in node.js. It describes a 3D World to clients who connect, in a Buffer object.

Here is my code.

var zlib = require("zlib");
var filesystem = require("fs");
var path = require("path");

class World {
  constructor(name, x, y, z) {
    this.data = Buffer.alloc(x * y * z);
    this.name = name;
    this.x = x;
    this.y = y;
    this.z = z;
    try {
      this.data = this.load();
    } catch (er) {
      console.warn("Couldn't load world from file, creating new one");
      this.data.fill(0);
    }
  }

  setNode(id, x, y, z) {
    this.data.writeUInt8(id, 4 + x + this.z * (z + this.x * y));
  }

  getNode(block, x, y, z) {
    return this.data.readUInt8(4 + x + this.z * (z + this.x * y));
  }

  dump() {
    return this.data;
  }

  load() {
    this.data = zlib.gunzipSync(filesystem.readFileSync(path.join(__dirname, `/worlds/${this.name}/world.buf`)));
  }

  save() {
    filesystem.writeFileSync(path.join(__dirname, `/worlds/${this.name}/world.buf`), zlib.gzipSync(this.data));
  }
}

module.exports = World;

in another file, I can then

var World = require("./lib/world.js");
var world = new World('example', 256, 64, 256);

But, when trying to do anything with the buffer, I get errors relating to the value being undefined.

console.log(world.dump());

undefined

I thought my installation of node broke, so I tried making a file with the content:

var test = Buffer.alloc(8);
console.log(test);

but this worked:

<Buffer 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00>

I then tried editing my code to initialise the Buffer outside of the class:

...
var test = Buffer.alloc(4194304);
console.log(test)

class World {
  constructor(name, x, y, z) {
    this.data = test;
    console.log(this.data);
...

this yielded this result:

Buffer <00 00 00 00 00 00 00 00 [etc]>
undefined

can someone explain what I'm doing wrong? this has worked before so the only thing I can think of is moving it into a Class broke Buffers somehow.