99 lines
6.3 KiB
Markdown
99 lines
6.3 KiB
Markdown
# PROCITY — THE FRONTIER (what is genuinely not figured out)
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*Fable (m3), 2026-07-17. John's challenge, verbatim: "there is heaps more to figure out — all
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the systems are set you say?" He's right. This doc is the honest map: what 29 rounds built is
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the WORLD and the PIPELine; the GAME — the reason a stranger would play for an hour — is
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mostly unfigured. Nothing here is chartered; it's the space the next epochs get picked from.
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Sibling docs: V2_IDEAS (the old parking lot), V6_LIVING_STREET (chartered, in flight).*
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## What is actually solid (don't re-litigate)
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Procedural + real towns · enterable interiors · citizens with identity · gigs · weather/tram ·
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the dig with real/mint/parody stock · the tier ladder + offline law · the two-studio pipeline ·
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the QA culture. The platform is genuinely done-ish. Everything below stands ON it.
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## THE BIG ONE — it isn't a game yet
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You walk, you dig, you buy. Then you close the tab and it never happened. The whole loop that
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makes digging MEAN something is unbuilt:
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1. **Persistence.** No saves. The wallet resets, the collection vanishes, "gone this session"
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is the only memory. (localStorage fits the seeded-everything law trivially — the world
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regenerates from seed; only the DELTA needs saving: cash, owned items, day. This is days of
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work, not an epoch, and it unlocks everything below.)
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2. **The collection.** You buy records and they go... nowhere. No crate at home, no album/
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shelf UI, no "look what I found in Katoomba." The collection IS the trophy case of the
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whole game and it does not exist.
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3. **The thrill loop.** thriftgod's `mint()` gem bands exist as DATA (price bands, gems,
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CBD-distance curation) and drive NOTHING. No underpriced gem in a dusty crate, no "is this
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worth more than they're asking", no sell/flip loop, no wantlist hunting across towns. The
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entire reason op-shopping is exciting in real life is un-simulated.
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4. **Why today matters.** No day structure — no opening hours pressure (hours exist! nothing
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makes you race them), no end-of-day, no "the gig starts at 9, the shops shut at 5, choose."
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The clock is scenery.
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5. **The player.** No hands, no home, no inventory UI beyond a number, no character. Who are
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you in this town?
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6. **Onboarding.** A stranger at digalot.fyi/procity gets pointer-lock and silence. The first
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five minutes are unfigured entirely.
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## Chartered but unbuilt (in flight or waiting)
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- **v6 LIVING STREET** — spikes gated on footage; then clips-at-scale, personas, footpaths +
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occasional cars, generated bodies.
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- **Option B** — real reservation holds (John's hold budget).
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- **Tier-2 auto-discovery** — needs a reachability contract.
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- **The editor/override layer** (V2_IDEAS, still the best long-game idea: hand-author any shop
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interior over the procedural base).
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- **Multiplayer presence** (see who's digging the same town).
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## Unowned design questions (nobody has even sketched these)
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- **What is a session?** 20 minutes? A day-cycle? A town per sitting?
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- **The economy loop:** buy low → ??? → profit. Sell where? To whom? GodBay (thriftgod's
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auction sim) is sitting right there as the obvious answer and no design connects them.
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- **Cross-town play:** 23 towns exist; nothing makes you travel. Regional wantlists? A gem
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rumor system? The tram/train BETWEEN towns?
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- **The gig layer as gameplay:** you can attend a gig; you can't book one, play one, or care
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about one. 90sDJsim overlap sits unexplored (DJ the venue?).
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- **Music identity:** procedural beds exist; a game this specific deserves a sound.
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- **The 90s-ness:** it's in the fabric (video shops, milk bars) but no system USES the era —
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no phone-free navigation puzzles, no street-press gig guide, no mixtapes.
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## THE THIRD DIMENSION + TEXTURE LIFE (filed 2026-07-18 — John's Perlin question, answered from the code)
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**The ruling that frames this section:** world *structure* stays on the semantic hash-stream
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system (`prng.js` — `seedFor(citySeed, kind, id)`, independently-keyed streams per entity).
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That architecture is why 31 rounds of features never moved a golden: a draw added to one
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stream shifts no other. Perlin answers a different question — a *continuous* value over
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space/time — and it enters the toolbox only where the question really is continuous. When it
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does, it seeds from the same citySeed keying: deterministic, gate-able, no exceptions.
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Candidates, ranked by honest cost:
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1. **TERRAIN / ELEVATION — the headline, epoch-scale, chartered as a v8+ candidate.**
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Everything is flat, which is *wrong for the real map*: Katoomba is a mountain town rendered
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as a billiard table. Per the real-map DNA, the primary source is REAL elevation (SRTM /
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contour data for each town bbox, the same discipline as the roads fetch) — noise is only
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the infill between samples, never the shape of a real hill. **The cost is named now so
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nobody charters it lightly:** terrain touches everything — roads follow grades, buildings
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need foundations and steps, footpaths slope, the chunk streamer and the walkers and every
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budget meet a Y axis, and the classic covenant needs a flat-forever fence. This is an
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epoch with an alpha/beta/close arc of its own, not a round.
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2. **Sky / cloud domes — cheap, near-term (v6/v7 polish).** Skies are baked textures today; a
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seeded FBM dome gives every day its own weather-shaped sky, composes with the existing
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weather states, and is one lane's item (B, lighting).
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3. **Wear & grime — cheap, high-charm (E/C canvas painters).** Seeded value-noise for sleeve
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ring-wear, facade sun-fade, footpath staining — per-item, deterministic, and exactly the
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90s patina the parody sleeves deserve. Pairs with the beta's price-guide work (a worn
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sleeve *reading* worn next to its condition grade).
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4. **Crowd ebb (LIVING STREET track, D).** A slow 1D noise curve modulating street density
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across the day — mornings trickle, arvo swells — richer than uniform draws, one stream,
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identity-safe.
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## The honest sequencing opinion (Fable's, not a ruling)
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The private-test deploy is the design instrument: John walks the game cold and writes down
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every "why can't I..." — that list IS the v7 charter input. My candidate for v7 once v6's
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spikes land: **THE GAME (persistence + collection + the thrill loop + a day that matters)** —
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it's the smallest set that turns the platform into something a stranger plays twice.
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