Experiments in engine, systems, and iteration
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Currently on: Core loop, Data-driven content, Room generation
In one day Astra ran four read-only code reviews of older systems: combat, the run loop and saves, loot, and the backpack. Eighteen of the findings were real bugs, each checked against the code and then fixed with a test watched failing first. The suite had been green through all of them, because it tested the arithmetic and not the order things happen in.
A mission's attributes now change the run: Warband swaps skeletons for orcs, Nightfall puts the arena under a moon, and the long and short roads change how many rooms there are. They are meant as trade-offs, not as danger. Pass 36 wore all four.
Runs now start at a mission table in the hub: tokens dealt by an hourglass, carried by hand to a cradle, and a portal that sleeps until one wakes it. Holding a token properly took five passes, because the gauntlet's fingers had never been posed by anything they held.
The camera now rides in a cradle on the backpack, and taking it out turned into four passes about which hand, and which collider, the game thought I was reaching for. The fix was to make the pack grabbable only by its carry bar.
The roadmap after the break opened with chests. Astra had already delivered them: four tiers (Plain, Fine, Rare, Storied) with a lid on a hinge. The rules were mine. A chest's tier is a floor: it pays that tier or better…
On 11 September I read the license for the Unity Asset Store packs this game is built from, and stopped letting any AI look at them. This project is made almost entirely by agents, and a lot of what they do is measure ar…
Dropped loot now tells you what it is before you walk over: the beam means quality, a gem glints in its own color, and a soft glow and a trace up a sharpened edge mark the rest. By the last pass I called it perfect.
On 29 August we added two small files to the harness folder. .watchdog/hubprogress.json and .watchdog/itemvault.json replaced the Editor's save with a fixed one: 120 coin, eight items in the vault, no upgrades bought. Th…