docs(docs): replace Commonwealth with Settled Reach across docs

Updated in-universe "Commonwealth" references to "the Settled Reach"
in decisions, architecture docs, design docs, workshop outputs,
README, and wiki. Kept all references to Hamilton's books as
inspiration/comparison in historical discussions and wiki-review
workshop rounds.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 <noreply@anthropic.com>
This commit is contained in:
2026-03-05 11:26:52 +01:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 4.6
parent b492410e39
commit 3005294c98
20 changed files with 41 additions and 41 deletions
@@ -51,20 +51,20 @@ I'm going to be blunt about each reference. What we take, what we leave, and why
**Hotline Miami** — Top-down camera as terror engine.
- **What it gets RIGHT:** D-015 literally cites this game. The camera creates tension because you CAN'T see everything. Every room you enter is a potential death. The neon palette creates mood so strong you can FEEL it. Each floor is a spatial puzzle. The game proves that top-down can be viscerally intense when the camera is a limitation, not a superpower. The way it uses color to communicate emotional state (cool blues for calm, hot pinks for violence) is directly relevant to our relationship color system.
- **What it gets WRONG for us:** WAY too fast. WAY too violent. The neon palette screams "1980s drug fever dream" — the Commonwealth is sleek, advanced, subtle. Hotline Miami's aesthetic is maximalist where ours must be restrained. The emotional register is adrenaline-and-horror where ours is unease-and-suspicion. Also, Hotline Miami has zero life-sim — there's no "quiet life is good" counterbalance.
- **What it gets WRONG for us:** WAY too fast. WAY too violent. The neon palette screams "1980s drug fever dream" — the Settled Reach is sleek, advanced, subtle. Hotline Miami's aesthetic is maximalist where ours must be restrained. The emotional register is adrenaline-and-horror where ours is unease-and-suspicion. Also, Hotline Miami has zero life-sim — there's no "quiet life is good" counterbalance.
- **What we take:** The principle that a locked top-down camera creates tension through information denial. The use of color palette as emotional register. The spatial puzzle of "I need to see around this corner."
- **What we leave:** Everything about the aesthetic. The speed. The violence. The maximalism.
**Invisible Inc.** (Klei Entertainment, 2015) — Tactical stealth, fog of war, information management.
- **What it gets RIGHT:** The closest existing game to our intersection of stealth + information + top-down. The fog of war is sharp and readable. Peek mechanics let you see around corners — visual information as a resource you spend actions to gain. The UI layers tactical data (guard patrol paths, alarm status, hack progress) without overwhelming the game view. Klei's clean, comic-book art style is distinctive without fighting the information overlay. The visual language clearly distinguishes known, unknown, and suspected information.
- **What it gets WRONG for us:** It's isometric, not top-down. It's turn-based, so information can be displayed statically — our real-time game needs information that reads at a GLANCE, not after deliberation. It's a heist game — the aesthetic is "cyberpunk spy thriller," too stylized and too genre-specific for the Commonwealth's sleek functionality. No life-sim component, no daily routines, no investment in place.
- **What it gets WRONG for us:** It's isometric, not top-down. It's turn-based, so information can be displayed statically — our real-time game needs information that reads at a GLANCE, not after deliberation. It's a heist game — the aesthetic is "cyberpunk spy thriller," too stylized and too genre-specific for the Settled Reach's sleek functionality. No life-sim component, no daily routines, no investment in place.
- **What we take:** The information-as-resource visual language. The layered UI that separates world state from tactical overlay. The proof that stealth + information management can be visually clear in a top-down format. The fog of war that communicates DEGREES of knowledge (seen, heard, suspected).
- **What we leave:** The isometric perspective. The cyberpunk aesthetic. The turn-based visual pacing.
**Citizen Sleeper** (Jump Over the Age, 2022) — Space station life, quiet tension, daily routines.
- **What it gets RIGHT:** The MOOD. "Quiet life with undertow" is exactly our register. The visual design is clean, information-forward, atmospheric without being cluttered. The space station feels like a PLACE — different areas have different visual identities. The UI is elegant and minimal. The art (by Guillaume Singelin, also known for the Lancer TTRPG) uses bold shapes, limited palettes, and strong silhouettes. The color palette is muted with strategic warmth — exactly the Commonwealth tone. The way daily life feels meaningful and engaging despite being mechanically simple is what our life-sim substrate needs.
- **What it gets RIGHT:** The MOOD. "Quiet life with undertow" is exactly our register. The visual design is clean, information-forward, atmospheric without being cluttered. The space station feels like a PLACE — different areas have different visual identities. The UI is elegant and minimal. The art (by Guillaume Singelin, also known for the Lancer TTRPG) uses bold shapes, limited palettes, and strong silhouettes. The color palette is muted with strategic warmth — exactly the Settled Reach tone. The way daily life feels meaningful and engaging despite being mechanically simple is what our life-sim substrate needs.
- **What it gets WRONG for us:** It's a visual novel / narrative RPG with dice mechanics, not a spatial game. There's no movement, no sightlines, no fog, no spatial puzzles. The "station" is a menu, not a map. The gorgeous character portraits are irrelevant to our top-down perspective. The game has no observation mechanic — you learn things through dialogue choices, not by watching.
- **What we take:** The mood. The color temperature. The "space station as home" feeling. The visual principle that muted palettes with strategic color accents communicate both comfort and unease. The proof that a space station setting can feel warm and human, not just cold and industrial.
- **What we leave:** Everything about the presentation format. It's a different genre.
@@ -95,7 +95,7 @@ I'm going to be blunt about each reference. What we take, what we leave, and why
**The Expanse** (TV series, 2015-2022) — Best modern lived-in space station aesthetic.
- **What it gets RIGHT:** Medina Station, Tycho Station, Ceres — these feel like REAL PLACES where real people work and live. Different social zones look different: the bar district has different lighting than the docks. Institutional signage is everywhere. The stations show their age — repairs are visible, modifications are layered. The diversity of spaces (dive bars next to control rooms next to residential corridors) is exactly the spatial variety Sova needs. The visual language says "advanced civilization, working class, functional" — which is precisely our register.
- **What it gets WRONG for us:** Too gritty. The Expanse is harder sci-fi — more resource-scarce, more political tension visible in the infrastructure. The Commonwealth is wealthier, more comfortable. Sova should feel like a well-maintained 40-year-old building, not a station on the edge of revolution. The Expanse's color palette tends toward industrial grey-brown, too desaturated for the warmth we need in social spaces.
- **What it gets WRONG for us:** Too gritty. The Expanse is harder sci-fi — more resource-scarce, more political tension visible in the infrastructure. The Settled Reach is wealthier, more comfortable. Sova should feel like a well-maintained 40-year-old building, not a station on the edge of revolution. The Expanse's color palette tends toward industrial grey-brown, too desaturated for the warmth we need in social spaces.
- **What we take:** The "different zones feel different" principle. Institutional signage as environmental storytelling. The visual language of repairs and modifications visible in walls and surfaces. The feeling that these are WORKPLACES first, sci-fi settings second.
- **What we leave:** The grittiness. The scarcity aesthetic. The political tension written into the infrastructure.
@@ -109,7 +109,7 @@ I'm going to be blunt about each reference. What we take, what we leave, and why
**Syd Mead** — The godfather of "lived-in future" design.
- His work on Blade Runner, Aliens, and personal concept pieces shows technology as INFRASTRUCTURE, not decoration. Clean lines, functional surfaces, institutional colors. People USE his environments — they don't just pose in them. The Commonwealth's visual language should channel Syd Mead: advanced technology that serves human needs, not technology that exists to look futuristic.
- His work on Blade Runner, Aliens, and personal concept pieces shows technology as INFRASTRUCTURE, not decoration. Clean lines, functional surfaces, institutional colors. People USE his environments — they don't just pose in them. The Settled Reach's visual language should channel Syd Mead: advanced technology that serves human needs, not technology that exists to look futuristic.
- **What we take:** Technology as infrastructure. Clean lines. Functional surfaces. The principle that futuristic = well-designed, not flashy.
**Ron Cobb** — Designed the Nostromo interiors for Alien.
@@ -191,7 +191,7 @@ This is Q-003. v0.1 is defined (boxes with labels, D-033 color system, no image
### My Recommendation: Clean 2D with Bold Silhouettes, Driven by Dynamic Lighting
**NOT pixel art.** Pixel art communicates "retro" and "indie." The Commonwealth is advanced. The aesthetic should feel contemporary, not nostalgic. Pixel art also fights with our information overlay — the diegetic insert, monologue text, and perception mode layers need clean visual separation from the game world, and pixel art's uniform texture density makes that harder.
**NOT pixel art.** Pixel art communicates "retro" and "indie." The Settled Reach is advanced. The aesthetic should feel contemporary, not nostalgic. Pixel art also fights with our information overlay — the diegetic insert, monologue text, and perception mode layers need clean visual separation from the game world, and pixel art's uniform texture density makes that harder.
**NOT painted / Disco Elysium style.** Too detailed per frame, too expensive to produce consistently, and critically: too hard for AI image generation (Nano Banana / Gemini 2.5 Flash) to maintain style consistency across hundreds of assets. Disco Elysium's painterly beauty was hand-crafted by a small team of exceptional artists. We can't replicate that and shouldn't try.
@@ -453,7 +453,7 @@ This gradient communicates INFORMATION RELIABILITY visually. The player can glan
**Three principles:**
1. **Readability over beauty.** Rimworld's lesson: if you can't parse the game state in a glance, nothing else matters.
2. **Lighting over detail.** The same room, differently lit, is a different room. Invest in the light system, not in texture detail.
3. **Restraint IS the aesthetic.** The Commonwealth is advanced and subtle. Not flashy, not grim, not neon, not grimy. Clean lines. Muted palettes. Strategic warmth. The visual equivalent of a well-designed tool.
3. **Restraint IS the aesthetic.** The Settled Reach is advanced and subtle. Not flashy, not grim, not neon, not grimy. Clean lines. Muted palettes. Strategic warmth. The visual equivalent of a well-designed tool.
**Long-term style target:** Clean 2D, bold silhouettes, lighting-driven atmosphere. Achievable in Godot 4's standard pipeline. Compatible with AI-generated asset workflow. Scales from boxes-with-labels to full art without changing the visual grammar.
@@ -232,7 +232,7 @@ The bar is the best-maintained space because Lera cares about it. The terminal i
The insert overlay should feel like a CONTACT LENS, not a HUD. It's something your character is wearing. It's always slightly there — a subtle shimmer at the edges of perception that becomes more prominent when you actively engage it.
- **Passive state:** Almost invisible. Maybe the faintest geometric grid at the very edge of the viewport. Just enough to remind you "you're augmented." Like how you stop noticing your glasses after a while.
- **Active state (checking insert):** Clean geometric overlay. Thin lines. Small text. The aesthetic of medical equipment displays — precise, minimal, functional. NOT Iron Man holographics. NOT cyberpunk neon. The Commonwealth has technology so mature it doesn't need to show off.
- **Active state (checking insert):** Clean geometric overlay. Thin lines. Small text. The aesthetic of medical equipment displays — precise, minimal, functional. NOT Iron Man holographics. NOT cyberpunk neon. The Settled Reach has technology so mature it doesn't need to show off.
- **Color:** The insert should use a color that doesn't conflict with entity colors (D-033). I'd suggest a subtle cool white or very pale blue — neutral enough to overlay any scene without fighting the amber/green/red relationship colors.
### Perception mode overlay feel
@@ -257,11 +257,11 @@ References explicitly flagged as the wrong visual direction.
| **Star Wars romantic visual language** | Miri | Operatic scale, good/evil coding. Our investigation requires visual ambiguity. Watch span gate visuals. |
| **Mass Effect Citadel** | Miri | Gleaming future-city. Sova is a freight district, not a tourist destination. |
| **Dead Space grimy horror** | Miri | Body-horror visual territory. Wrong emotional register entirely. |
| **Pixel art style** | Araminta, Ozzie | Communicates "retro" and "indie." The Commonwealth is advanced. Fights information overlay readability. |
| **Pixel art style** | Araminta, Ozzie | Communicates "retro" and "indie." The Settled Reach is advanced. Fights information overlay readability. |
| **Painted / Disco Elysium production style** | Araminta | Too expensive per frame, too hard for AI pipeline consistency. (Note: DE's *principles* endorsed; its *production method* rejected.) |
| **Photorealistic 3D rendered to 2D** | Araminta | Too expensive, too slow, uncanny valley risk at top-down scale. |
| **Iron Man helmet display** | Araminta, Gore | Too dramatic, too military for neural insert overlay. |
| **Hotline Miami neon maximalism** | Araminta, Ozzie | Adrenaline-and-horror register. Commonwealth is sleek, subtle. Wrong emotional register entirely. |
| **Hotline Miami neon maximalism** | Araminta, Ozzie | Adrenaline-and-horror register. The Settled Reach is sleek, subtle. Wrong emotional register entirely. |
| **Teleglitch lo-fi aesthetic** | Araminta | Deliberately ugly, relentlessly oppressive. We need comfort AND unease, not just unease. |
| **Military tactical palette** | Araminta (re: XCOM, Door Kickers) | Combat-centric visual language. Our game has combat as punctuation, not the sentence. |
@@ -12,7 +12,7 @@ The bloom pass is the bridge: the data is precise, the RENDERING is soft. Like r
**The player experience test:** After 10 minutes of play, does the player forget the insert is there? If yes, we've succeeded. It should become like your own peripheral vision — invisible until something appears in it. The monologue chime (D-038) is the "hey, look at your insert" signal. Without the chime, the insert fades into perception. WITH the chime, your eyes snap to the overlay and the geometric precision is there, waiting, with the information you need.
Geometric = the insert is TRUSTWORTHY. The data is clean. This is technology that's been refined for centuries. It doesn't flicker. It doesn't glitch. It's as reliable as your own vision. That's Commonwealth tech — so mature it's invisible.
Geometric = the insert is TRUSTWORTHY. The data is clean. This is technology that's been refined for centuries. It doesn't flicker. It doesn't glitch. It's as reliable as your own vision. That's Settled Reach tech — so mature it's invisible.
## OQ-02: Does the Visual Environment Shift When Conspiracy Activates?
@@ -25,7 +25,7 @@ Gore's proposed label for the converged art direction: **"functional warmth."**
| Agent | Position | Key contribution |
|---|---|---|
| **Araminta** | Accepts synthesis. Geometric underneath, bloom on top. | Specific implementation: 2-3px gaussian blur at ~40% blend on the insert CanvasLayer. D-033 colors gain soft halos rather than hard edges — "amber feels like a vague sense of concern, not a data flag." |
| **Ozzie** | Endorses. | Player experience test: "After 10 minutes, does the player forget the insert is there? If yes, we've succeeded." Geometric = trustworthy — Commonwealth tech so mature it's invisible. |
| **Ozzie** | Endorses. | Player experience test: "After 10 minutes, does the player forget the insert is there? If yes, we've succeeded." Geometric = trustworthy — Settled Reach tech so mature it's invisible. |
| **Miri** | Endorses. Setting-grounded. | Explains WHY both are simultaneously correct: data is computational (geometric), delivery is neural (organic). Brain receives precise data and renders it with biological softness. **New addition:** lattice overlay differs per character — smuggler's is thinner/sparser, detective's is denser/crisper (different hardware). |
| **Gore** | Accepts. | "Araminta is right about the source, I was right about the experience." Test: if switching the overlay OFF would feel like going deaf rather than closing a window, it's working. |
@@ -156,7 +156,7 @@ Inspired by Rimworld's pawn system: NPCs feel alive not because they're deep, bu
| Axis | What It Does | Example |
|------|-------------|---------|
| **Personality traits** (23) | Drives behavior and dialogue selection | Cautious, gregarious, vindictive |
| **Faction loyalty** | Determines allegiance and information access | Commonwealth loyalist / secretly compromised |
| **Faction loyalty** | Determines allegiance and information access | Concord loyalist / secretly compromised |
| **A secret or vulnerability** | Creates leverage and investigation targets | Gambling debt, undisclosed augmentation, past crime |
| **A want** | Motivates actions the player can exploit or assist | Promotion, escape, revenge, money, love, stability |
| **Relationships** (13) | Connects NPCs into webs | Owes a debt to X, romantically involved with Y, fears Z |
@@ -42,7 +42,7 @@ That's it. No style guide for art we haven't made. No font selection for UI that
### Proposed v0.1 Color Palette
The Commonwealth is sleek, advanced, subtle. Even at boxes-with-labels fidelity, we can communicate mood.
The Settled Reach is sleek, advanced, subtle. Even at boxes-with-labels fidelity, we can communicate mood.
**Background/Environment:**
- `#1a1a2e` - Deep navy. Base floor/ground. The station is dimly lit by default.
@@ -330,7 +330,7 @@ Even if we have zero audio files in v0.1, the sound model works through these vi
**Audio direction for later:**
I'd defer actual audio content entirely from v0.1. The visual indicator system proves the sound model mechanically. Adding audio is additive polish, not structural. When we do add audio:
- Ambient: low drone, station hum, ventilation. The Commonwealth is a machine. It breathes.
- Ambient: low drone, station hum, ventilation. The Settled Reach is a machine. It breathes.
- Close range: footsteps on metal, door mechanisms, muffled conversation bleed.
- No music in gameplay. Music in menus/loading only. The station's ambient sound IS the soundtrack.
@@ -65,7 +65,7 @@ This is the real question.
For the 50th station to be exciting, the generator can't just be varying surface features. It has to be varying WHAT MATTERS.
What matters to me as a player:
- **Who has power here** — and how it shows in the space. A station under Intersolar Commonwealth control looks and moves differently than one under de Terre influence. That's not just art. That's which doors are locked, which NPCs are nervous, where the cameras point.
- **Who has power here** — and how it shows in the space. A station under Concord control looks and moves differently than one under de Terre influence. That's not just art. That's which doors are locked, which NPCs are nervous, where the cameras point.
- **What happened here** — the environmental story. A district that used to be prosperous and isn't anymore. A market that's clearly improvised after something was destroyed. Spaces tell history. The generator needs inputs that make history legible.
- **What's the social architecture** — where do the hierarchies show up physically? Where do the powerful people eat lunch? Where do the workers hide from supervisors? This makes stations feel like societies, not buildings.
@@ -385,7 +385,7 @@ Auto-seeded from early decisions. Superseded by structured initiatives above. Re
| ID | Title | Decision |
|----|-------|----------|
| 1 | Custom game, not a mod | D-001 |
| 2 | Commonwealth as first campaign | D-003 |
| 2 | The Settled Reach as first campaign | D-003 |
| 3 | Single character first-person story generator | D-005 |
| 4 | Prototype scenario — Institute/Armstrong City/Guardians | D-006 |
| 5 | Five pillars of game design | D-007 |