jpmschweitzerandClaude Opus 5
9b146f9e1f
Region rendered as fine uniform stucco while District and Quarter, on identical code, read as terrain. The cause was sampling: `min_wl_m` arrives as an LOD request and defaults to 0, so every invented octave contributed at every rung. MIN_WL_BANDS_M was meant to be the floor but is built from the rung's CELL SIZE (2 x DISTRICT_M), which stopped being the sample spacing at the D-255 extent inversion — a rung fixes EXTENT now and spacing falls out of the canvas size. The bands were off by roughly the cell count, and the served path never consulted them anyway. The cutoff is now derived from the resolved spacing, which is what this ticket asked for. Two things had to be measured rather than reasoned to get it right, and both corrected me. FIRST: the field was the culprit, not the renderer. I attributed the stucco to the client stipple painting noise onto a smooth field. Surfacing the terrain layer's own mean |relief_q gradient| in the capture readout settled it in one shot: Region 18.24 steps per cell — 144 m of relief between NEIGHBOURING cells — against District's 0.30 and Quarter's 0.07. The server was sending noise. That diagnostic ships here for the same reason `plane_variety` did in T-1213: a noisy field and a renderer inventing noise look identical, and one number separates them. SECOND: Nyquist is the wrong threshold. The first version floored at 2 x spacing, the aliasing limit, and Region barely moved (56.16 -> 59.73 lum spread, gradient still 18.24) because 2 samples per cycle is unaliased but renders jagged. The rungs that already worked say what the real bar is: District reconstructs its finest surviving octave at 34 samples per cycle, Quarter at 135. At 8x, Region goes to 1.08 gradient and 70.01 spread, and shows ridges and valleys. THE TRADE, taken deliberately and recorded in the tests: an 8x floor also truncates the coast warp's 2,048 and 1,024 m octaves at Region, the band T-1160 added for "one coastline at every rung". An earlier test here asserted that band must survive; it now asserts the opposite. Same reasoning as the relief: a 1,024 m coastline wiggle at 379.3 m per cell is 2.7 samples per cycle, so drawing it draws noise rather than coastline character — a rung cannot show shape finer than its own cell. The warp is amplitude-capped sub-pixel on the working grid, so what is lost is small. If a future pass wants the warp exempt, the fix is a relief-only floor threaded through derive_at_metres, NOT a lower multiple, which takes the stucco back. Global is exempt: its floor would be ~70 km and would truncate the whole warp band, and it needs none — the orbital derive leaves relief_q flat at 50. District (3.79 m spacing) and Quarter (0.948 m) floor below every octave in play and derive byte-identically, which their own test pins. Cache-safe by construction: the floor is a pure function of (rung, extent, body_radius), all three already in the step-canvas cache key. 0.4.12 is required anyway — this changes derived BYTES at Region, so a 0.4.11 entry holds a field this build would never produce. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
The Settled Reach
A top-down immersive sim where you only know what you can see, hear, and prove.
You're not the hero. You're a witness with a gun.
Pick a character. Step into their life. Figure out what's happening before it's too late.
The Settled Reach is a single-character detective game where information is the real weapon. You play from one perspective in a simulated world full of people who lie, withhold, and reveal on their own schedules. What you know depends on where you are, who you trust, and whether you're asking the right questions.
What You Do
Investigate. Follow leads through a city you can't see all at once. Line-of-sight isn't a gameplay abstraction - it's the core mechanic. You see what your character sees. Walls block vision. Corners hide threats. Fog returns when you leave. Information decays.
Navigate. Your neural lattice gives you directions, but only to places you've learned about. Contacts send locations. Research reveals addresses. Physical exploration fills the gaps. The map is sparse and frightening at first. By the end, you realize how much you missed.
Decide. Every conversation is a negotiation over what gets shared. NPCs have their own goals, their own information, and their own reasons to lie. You choose who to trust based on incomplete data. Sometimes you're wrong.
Act. When investigation fails, violence is an option. Fights are tactical, asymmetric, and often a terrible idea. Power mismatches run in both directions. Death costs you everything since your last backup - lost knowledge, lost relationships, lost deals. The world knows what you forgot.
Survive. An AI storyteller paces events for dramatic tension. The conspiracy's structure is set at game start. When things happen is driven by how you're doing. Comfortable? Something breaks. Desperate? A break appears. The game wants a story, not a grind.
Core Features
Information Asymmetry as Master Mechanic
You only know what your character knows. The same world looks completely different from different perspectives. A Senator sees political venues on their map. A Guardian sees safehouses. Same conspiracy, different game.
Occlusion-Based Detection
Vision is line-of-sight with a directional cone. You see what's in front of you. Peripheral vision is reduced. Behind you is fog. Sound gives partial information outside your view - footsteps, voices, gunfire. You make decisions based on what you can piece together.
Internal Monologue
Your character interprets what they sense in their own voice. Footsteps behind you. Thermal signatures through walls. A contact's nervous tells. The monologue bridges what the camera can't show and creates atmosphere. It can also be wrong.
Perception Modes
Different characters access different sensors. Natural vision shows detail but is blocked by walls. Thermal imaging shows heat signatures with no identity. Camera feeds give remote vision but can be spoofed. Unisphere tracking pings known contacts but can be masked. Each mode reveals different information with different trust tradeoffs.
Diegetic Interface
The map is your character's neural lattice - Settled Reach technology, not a game UI. Points of interest appear when you learn them through gameplay. Tips can be traps. Navigation is pulled by player intent, not pushed by map design.
Multiple Playable Characters
Every character starts in a different position with different knowledge and different tools. A cop has case files and legal authority. An investigator has contacts and freedom to operate. A politician has institutional access and public constraints. Replayability comes from perspective, not randomness.
Rimworld-Style Storyteller
Events emerge from simulation, paced by an AI director. No timers. No scripts. Consequences of what's already in motion. The storyteller knows what you've lost and can exploit it.
Wildly Asymmetric Combat
Balanced fights are the exception. You're outgunned or overpowered, rarely evenly matched. Tactical clarity from the top-down view. Z-levels create verticality - fights across floors of a building. Perception boundaries mean you can be ambushed. Victory often means not fighting at all.
The Setting
Humanity spread across hundreds of star systems by learning to activate alien gates it didn't build. The result is the Settled Reach - a civilization stitched together by infrastructure it doesn't fully understand.
You live in a society where death is temporary (if you can afford the backup), enhancement is political (who gets augmented and why), and the gates that connect everything were made by someone who hasn't introduced themselves.
Wormholes aren't fast travel markers. They're physical locations you traverse. Social chokepoints. Surveillance points. The infrastructure you depend on to move between worlds.
Something is breaking. Or something is waking up. You're in the wrong place at the right time to figure out which.
Built For Replayability
Structural randomness set at game start: who's compromised, where evidence is hidden, which contacts can be trusted. Play the same scenario as different characters and encounter a different game. The conspiracy's skeleton is fixed. The flesh changes every time.
Development Philosophy
Single-character perspective. Asymmetric information as core mechanic. Top-down camera locked to character position. Godot 4 client + Rust simulation server. Client-server architecture from day one, designed for multiplayer even though single-player ships first.
No fog-of-war as an afterthought. No tutorial popups. No omniscient map reveals. The game is built around what you don't know.
[LOREM IPSUM PLACEHOLDER]
Screenshots
[Gameplay screenshot: character navigating fog-of-war through urban environment] [Gameplay screenshot: thermal vision showing heat signatures through building] [Gameplay screenshot: conversation interface with internal monologue overlay] [Gameplay screenshot: tactical combat with vision cone and z-level interaction]
Media
[Trailer: Character selection → Investigation → Revelation → Crisis] [Dev diary: Information asymmetry as game mechanic]
Awards & Recognition
[To be populated as development progresses]
Community & Updates
[Discord link] [Development blog] [Steam community hub]
System Requirements
Minimum
OS: [TBD] Processor: [TBD] Memory: [TBD] Graphics: [TBD] Storage: [TBD]
Recommended
OS: [TBD] Processor: [TBD] Memory: [TBD] Graphics: [TBD] Storage: [TBD]
About This Project
Official Title: The Settled Reach (D-021) Repository: commonwealth (historical code name) Engine: Godot 4 + Rust/bevy_ecs simulation server via subprocess/IPC Setting: Original science fiction IP, inspired by space opera traditions Status: Pre-alpha development
For development documentation, see the decisions/ directory and TEAM.md.
The Settled Reach is in active development. All features, systems, and content are subject to change.