PROCITY/docs/CITY_SPEC.md

PROCITY — CITY_SPEC (the shared contract)

Every lane reads this first. If a lane needs to change something in here, it changes this file in the same commit and says so loudly in the commit message — this doc is the treaty.

What we are building

A standalone, procedurally generated, fully walkable Australian shopping town — the Vuntra City trick (every building enterable, interiors generated on demand) applied not to cyberpunk towers but to record stores, op shops, toy shops, book barns, video rental, pawnbrokers, milk bars, market stalls. 90s-Australia aesthetic, low-poly + generated texture skins. Content (real item data, lore, economy) plugs in later via the GODVERSE/BaseGod feeds — v1 is the system: plan → streets → facades → doors that open → themed interiors → NPCs walking around.

Engine decision (settled — do not relitigate)

three.js r175, vendored, plain JS ES modules, importmap, zero build step, zero npm. This is the proven house stack (90sDJsim + thriftgod both ship on it), it runs great on Apple Silicon, and it lets us lift working code (fittings kit, rig stack, dig.js) verbatim. Unreal was considered and parked: nothing in v1 needs it, and the asset pipeline (GLB, web-ok licensing, 3GOD depot) is web-native. Serve with cd web && python3 -m http.server 8130.

• three and three/addons/ resolve via importmap to web/vendor/ (copied from 90sDJsim).
• No DRACO requirement (house GLBs ship uncompressed/webp-optimized); DRACOLoader is vendored if needed.
• No external CDNs at runtime. Everything local or from https://digalot.fyi/3god (CORS-enabled).

Units, axes, determinism

• Metres. +Y up. Ground plane is XZ. City origin (0,0) = centre of the main square.
• Right-handed three.js defaults. Buildings face their street; a facade's outward normal points at its street edge. GLB convention: origin at base, facing −Z, real-world scale.
• Seeded everything, Math.random() is banned in generation code. web/js/core/prng.js is the only randomness source:
  • seedFor(citySeed, kind, id) → stable uint32 (xmur3 hash of "seed:kind:id").
  • rng(citySeed, kind, id) → mulberry32 stream.
  • Same citySeed ⇒ byte-identical city, forever. This is the thriftgod/90sDJsim house rule and it's what makes the authored-override layer possible later.

The three-layer architecture

LAYER 1  CityPlan   (pure data, no THREE)   Lane A
LAYER 2  Streetscape (chunked 3D realization) Lane B
LAYER 3  Interiors  (on-demand room scenes)  Lane C
         Citizens   (NPCs over layers 2+3)   Lane D
         Assets     (skins + GLB depot)      Lane E

Layer 1 — CityPlan (JSON-serializable, generated in <100ms)

The whole town as lightweight data, generated up front from citySeed, dumpable to JSON. Schema v1 (Lane A owns it; extend, don't break):

{
  version: 1,
  citySeed: 20261990,           // uint32
  name: "…",                    // generated town name
  size: { w: 1024, d: 1024 },   // metres, city core v1 = 1km²
  districts: [ { id, kind, cx, cz } ],
      // kind: 'mainstreet' | 'arcade' | 'backstreets' | 'warehouse' | 'residential' | 'market'
  streets: {
    nodes: [ { id, x, z } ],
    edges: [ { id, a, b, width, kind } ]   // kind: 'main' | 'side' | 'lane' | 'arcade'
  },
  blocks: [ { id, district, kind, poly: [[x,z],…] } ],
      // district = district ID (index into districts[]); kind = that district's kind string, denormalized
      // onto the block so consumers can theme it without a lookup (Lane A extension, non-breaking).
  lots:   [ { id, block, x, z, w, d, ry, frontEdge, use } ],
      // use: 'shop' | 'anchor' | 'house' | 'yard' | 'stall' | 'infill'
      // ry: Y-rotation (radians) so a GLB modelled facing −Z ends up with its facade's OUTWARD normal
      //     pointing at frontEdge. World facing = (−sin ry, −cos ry). Lane B rotates the shell by ry.
      // frontEdge: id of the street edge this lot fronts (guaranteed to exist and be geometrically adjacent).
  shops:  [ { id, lot, type, name, sign, seed, facadeSkin, storeys, hours: [open, close], openLate? } ]
      // type: see SHOP TYPES below.  hours: [open, close], 24h integers, 0 ≤ open < close ≤ 23.
      // storeys: integer in [registryMin, permittedMax] where permittedMax = registryMax≥2 ? min(registryMax+1,3)
      //   : registryMax. The "+1 (cap 3)" is the CITY_SPEC "occasional 3-storey corner anchor" — it fires ONLY
      //   for tall-capable types (registry max ≥ 2); single-storey types (video/milkbar/stall, [1,1]) are NEVER
      //   boosted. So `storeys > registryMax` on a corner anchor is EXPECTED, not plan↔registry drift.
      // openLate: present and `true` on EXACTLY ONE shop per town — the designated late-night landmark
      //   (closes ≥ 22:00; a naturally-late type, video rental or milk bar, never a market stall). Absent
      //   on every other shop. Lane B lights it after dark; Lane F's night gate keys off this field
      //   (`plan.shops.find(s => s.openLate)`), NOT a magic hours threshold.
}

Field-type contract (Lane A is the source of truth; consumer fixtures must match this, not the reverse). Every id and every reference to one — lot.block, lot.frontEdge, edge.a/b, block.district, shop.lot — is an integer, not a string. facadeSkin, and every entry in a registry facades pool, is a full filename under web/assets/gen/ (e.g. "facade-fibro-blue.jpg") — load it verbatim; do not prepend facade- or append an extension (the shop-types table below abbreviates skin names for readability only). The same rule holds for Lane E's ground/awning/sky/wall/ interior skins: store the file exactly as the manifest names it, never re-derive a key from it.

Layer-1 invariants Lane A guarantees (enforced by web/js/citygen/selfcheck.js): fully deterministic per citySeed (with a committed golden fingerprint guarding against drift); every frontEdge/block/district/lot reference resolves; every lot faces its frontEdge; no two building lots (shop/anchor/house/stall) overlap, within OR across blocks; exactly one shop carries openLate (the late-night landmark); chunkIndex covers every lot and lists every edge in every chunk its road corridor (road + verge, centreline ± width/2) touches — so verge-placed street furniture never resolves to a chunk that omits its edge; strictly JSON round-trippable (all finite numbers, no stray keys).

Plan sources (round 6). A CityPlan can come from two producers behind this one contract, chosen via generatePlanFor(seed, source) (web/js/citygen/index.js) — the shell selects with ?plansrc=:

• 'synthetic' (default) — generatePlan(seed), the procedural town. Byte-identical, golden 0x3fa36874.
• 'osm' — generatePlanOSM(seed), a real-data import from a checked-in fixture (osm_fixture.js, real AU shops from thriftgod's OSM cache; zero network). Golden 0x34cfdec0.

An 'osm' plan sets source:'osm', reports its real bounding-box size (not 1024²), and contains only real retail types — no synthetic market square, arcade, dept anchor, milk bars, or stalls. All structural invariants above hold identically. Consumers that assume a synthetic-only feature (dept/market/milkbar/stall) must guard on source. The invariant suite is parameterized by source.

Chunk key: cx = floor(x/64), cz = floor(z/64). Chunk size 64m. Lane A ships a chunkIndex(plan) helper: chunk key → { lots, shops, edges } touching it. Edges are bucketed across the full road corridor (centreline ± width/2), so anything placed in the verge (street furniture, footpath NPCs) resolves to a chunk whose edges list includes its edge.

Layer 2 — Streetscape (Lane B)

Realizes CityPlan chunks around the player. Hard requirements the two parent games skipped:

• Contiguous geometry — no teleport seams; you can walk the whole core.
• Chunk streaming — build/dispose chunk Groups at radius ~2–3; never rebuild the world.
• InstancedMesh from day one for: building shells, awning boxes, verandah posts, street furniture, trees, streetlights. Canvas signage batched into a sign atlas texture per chunk (one CanvasTexture, many UV-mapped planes) — not one canvas per sign.
• Facade formula (proven in both games): instanced box shell + front PlaneGeometry with a facade-*.jpg skin + parametric awning/verandah + sign band + door + window planes. Skins are generated with blank signboards — the game overlays the shop name.

Layer 3 — Interiors (Lane C)

Interiors are not street geometry. Walking into a doorway triggers enterShop(shop) → separate room Group built from shop.seed (thriftgod archetypes + the 90sDJsim fittings.js parametric kit), themed by shop.type. Leaving restores the street exactly where you stood. Street windows show a cheap fake (tinted glass + emissive warm glow at night in v1; interior-mapping shader is a stretch goal).

Shop types v1 (registry lives in web/js/core/registry.js, Lane A writes it, all lanes read)

web/js/core/registry.js is the machine-readable source of truth — import SHOP_TYPES for the exact facade pools, sign hints, interior archetype, fittings, storeys, hours and district weights. This table mirrors it. (Lane A amendment 2026-07-14: added a variety facade to toy/book/pawn and rounded out the fittings mixes — a counter to shops that sell over one, a freezer to milkbar, a glass_case+counter to dept — so this table matches the registry lanes actually consume. Non-breaking; all facades exist in web/assets/gen/.)

(Lane A amendment 2026-07-14 · round 2, responding to B/E/F integration notes: gave stall a 2nd facade facade-corrugated.jpg (a market-shed backdrop, matching Lane E's manifest facade→type map, so every type now has ≥ 2 facades per Lane E's validator). Replaced the old per-shop 6% "open late" dice — which yielded 0…many late shops and often none past 22:00 — with exactly one deterministic openLate landmark per town (see the schema note above). Widened chunkIndex edge coverage to the full road corridor. All non-breaking; self-check green at 1283/1283; golden fingerprint refreshed to 0x098eec2b.)

type	facade pool	interior archetype	fittings mix
record	timber-teal, arcade-tile, djsim-record	crates + bins	record bins, crates, counter, listening corner
opshop	weatherboard, fibro-blue, djsim-opshop	racks + shelves	clothes racks, bric-a-brac shelving, book wall, counter
toy	stucco-pink, deco-pastel, boutique	shelves + glass case	cube shelves, display tables, glass case, counter
book	federation, sandstone, redbrick	halls of shelves	bookshelves, spinner racks, armchair, counter
video	stripmall, djsim-video	aisle shelves	VHS shelving, returns slot, poster wall, counter
pawn	besser, grimy, djsim-pawn, corrugated	counter-forward	glass cabinets, wall hooks, barred window, counter
milkbar	djsim-milkbar, brickveneer	counter + freezer	counter, fridge, magazine rack, freezer
dept (anchor)	terrazzo, djsim-dept	grand hall	mixed sections, escalator prop, glass case, counter
stall (market)	market, corrugated	open stall	trestle tables, crates

NPC contract (Lane D)

• Fleet rule (house law): 2 rigged base meshes + shared clip bank. Canonical rigs: ~/Documents/character_kit/ (female grandma_game.glb route, male hum_character.glb) plus the 19 peds in 90sDJsim/web/world/models/peds/. Game-local copies are byte-identical builds — copy from character_kit / 90sDJsim, never edit locally.
• Distance tiers: near <25m = rigged SkeletonUtils.clone + AnimationMixer; mid = billboard impostor (pre-rendered sprite, instanced); far = culled. Walkers path along street-edge footpath lanes from the CityPlan graph.
• Licensing: 🟢 web-ok only (Mixamo, CC0/CC-BY, CGTrader RF). No ActorCore in web builds.

Performance budget (M-series laptop, 60fps)

• ≤ 300 draw calls in street mode, ≤ 200k tris in a typical view.
• renderer.setPixelRatio(min(devicePixelRatio, 2)).
• Textures: skins ≤ 1024px, sign atlases 2048px, total GPU texture < 512MB.
• Chunk build must not hitch: budget 4ms/frame (build incrementally or in idle callbacks).
• Adopt 90sDJsim's GFX_TIERS idea later if needed; don't gold-plate now.

Modes & shell (Lane B owns the shell)

MODE ∈ { map, street, interior } — one renderer, one state machine, same as both parent games. map = 2D canvas town directory (Lane A's debug view grows into it). Save/load = localStorage v1.

File ownership (parallel-safety treaty)

path	owner
web/js/core/* (prng, loaders, canvas)	scaffold (frozen — propose changes via CITY_SPEC PR)
web/js/core/registry.js	Lane A
web/js/citygen/*, web/map.html	Lane A
web/index.html, web/js/world/*	Lane B
web/js/interiors/*, web/interior_test.html	Lane C
web/js/citizens/*, web/citizens_test.html, web/models/*	Lane D
pipeline/*, web/assets/* + web/assets/manifest.json	Lane E
web/package.json	scaffold/shared — {"type":"module"} only, added by Lane A
docs/*	everyone, additively

Each lane also ships its own standalone test page so it can be verified without the others. Never edit another lane's files. Integration (Lane F) happens after A–E land.

web/package.json (added by Lane A) contains only {"type":"module"} so node runs the pure web/js/** ES modules directly (e.g. node web/js/citygen/selfcheck.js, an acceptance criterion). Browsers and python3 -m http.server ignore it; no deps, no build step. It changes Node's module interpretation for every lane's web/js/** — which is what we want (all lanes can node-test their pure modules) — so it's flagged here as shared scope, not silently added.

Infrastructure map

• This mac — dev box, Blender + Unreal installed, Apple Silicon (no CUDA — all gen is cloud-API or tailnet).
• ultra ssh johnking@100.91.239.7 (key auth works, always-on M1 Ultra): MESHGOD Blender scripts (~/Documents/MESHGOD/scripts/finish_glb.py, render_glb.py, media_primitive.py), sorted model library ~/Documents/3D=models/ (shop-fittings / street-furniture / furniture — see its MANIFEST.md + CH_MAPPING.md), character_kit/, mixamo-fetch/out/ clip bank (34 clips — never re-download an existing clip). Caveats: no GNU coreutils/timeout/setsid, system python 3.9, Homebrew at /opt/homebrew.
• m3ultra http://100.89.131.57:11434 — Ollama (qwen3:235b/32b/8b, gemma3:4b vision, gemma4). Free local LLM for name generation, lore, cataloguing. Use it before any paid API.
• 3GOD depot https://digalot.fyi/3god — POST /api/upload?name=<f>.glb, GET /a/<f>, GET /api/list (CORS on). The shared GLB CDN all sibling games use.
• MeshGod https://digalot.fyi/meshgod — image→GLB generation (~30¢/solid; check the DealGod canon-3D cache first; media/books use the free parametric skinner).
• Image gen — house flow is prompt packs (see ~/Documents/FLOW_PROMPTS.md format) + thriftgod's gen_assets.py batch pipeline (OpenRouter google/gemini-3.1-flash-image, ~$0.004/img, style-bible prefix, resumable) and 90sDJsim's Cloudflare Flux scripts (creds in ~/Documents/backnforth/.env).

Style lock (visual)

Low-poly chunky geometry, flat-ish shading, muted 90s Australian palette, warm cinematic light — the 90sDJsim POLY lock — skinned with the thriftgod generated-texture kit (69 skins already in web/assets/gen/). Facade prompt template (blank signboards!) is in thriftgod gen_assets.py:69-86 — reuse it for new skins so everything matches.

House patterns to keep (both games proved these)

• Promise-cached loaders; missing asset ⇒ placeholder box, never a crash. The game must run with zero assets.
• CanvasTexture text planes for ALL signage/text — no font files.
• SkeletonUtils.clone for anything skinned; canonicalize mixamorig\d+ → mixamorig so one clip drives every character; strip position tracks from shared clips (_rotOnly).
• Height-normalize rigs off the head bone; plant feet by min bone Y.
• Seeded flat-colour fallbacks under every texture.
• A shot() fixed-camera screenshot harness for visual regression (90sDJsim tools/shots.py).