📋 Dying Star Meeting — August 11, 2026

72 min · ddurieux, Kainan, bitogno (Bardok absent)

🎮 Client & gameplay

Animations — warpzone_bar has integrated the animations: the placeholder astronaut gives way to an animated mannequin (walking, running, emotes). Crouching and grabbing/dropping an object are still missing. First tests with MakeHuman to put a real model on the rig.

Planet — it rotates in real time, with a day lasting 25 real hours (night shifts as the days go by). Orbital movement around the star is in progress. There is still a distance issue with the two moons.

Crates — only the small yellow crate can be carried, with its serial number displayed. To fix: it's carried 2 m away from the body instead of in the hands.

Sounds — new sounds by Pierrot: drill, torch, truck headlights, electric motor, crossing. CC licenses documented, as for models and textures.

Movement — Bardock's work on speed, jump height, vaulting and climbing.

VOIP — works, but can be heard from 10 km away and even from the menu 😅 The principle is validated, the tuning still needs to be done.

Repository — major reorganization of the files by warpzone_bar, in line with the wiki architecture.

Build — yesterday's update broke for a lot of people; the lead is a desynchronized version file, investigation in progress.

🤖 NPCs

Schedule integrated: 5 NPCs, 5-day rotations, home ↔ work commutes.

Key architecture point: NPCs connect just like players, same code and same constraints, driven by an external service written in Rust. The only difference: navigation from point A to point B via navmesh. Nice consequence: even with no player connected, the NPCs carry on with their lives.

🌍 Lore & game design

• Mission data management has started; proposal to open a "life on Sandbox" workstream (customs, food).
• Airlock: the air is breathable but very dry. If there's an airlock on the NPC side, there needs to be one on the player side too. Presence of plastic and CO₂ filters confirmed.
• Canteen: a simple "4 walls + ceiling" building, or rather a closed room at the back of the hangar, break-room style — no decoration to produce.
• Pads: no phones. Everyone, NPCs included, has a pad that displays over the suit, with no extra manipulation. Missions are triggered via a wall screen in the hangar (reusing the existing interaction animation).
• Magnetic tunnels: Sandbox's magnetic field and the moon's create non-fixed electromagnetic columns, visible in UV, with blue lightning during dust storms. Good news: the alumina plateaus are insulated, so no conflict with the space elevator.

🔋 Components & batteries

The discussion went all over the place and didn't reach the MVP. What was established:

• Dedicated meeting to be scheduled in the coming weeks, with Bardok (he's the one carrying the topic). Kainan will first prepare a summary of the document.
• Concept reframing: a component is a detachable element added to the vehicle, not the wheels or the built-in engine.
• 2 batteries, consumed one at a time (the second one takes over).
• Recharging only in towns and villages, not on the road: the player has to plan their trip.
• Undecided point: battery swapping (simpler) vs recharging your own battery (allows several battery types). Recharge time is purely a balancing matter.
• The T1 battery (60×40) must be carriable by hand, otherwise the notion of a removable component loses its meaning.
• Road signs: no need to go through game design, except for the height (to prevent a vehicle from passing underneath). Roads, on the other hand, require a game design pass.

🗺️ World & load tests

The map has been found again: big star = town, small stars = villages, big circle = capital. Villages are within a 10-15 km radius of the town, ~45 km between major towns. Three types of roads, the fastest supporting 150-180 km/h (lower gravity) — the current truck tops out at 45-50 km/h.

Test road — ddurieux will create an A → B section combining straight lines, curves and a hill, calibrated for a ~10-15 min trip, with kilometer-marked exits.

Load test late August / early September — spawning 200 to 350 permanent NPCs to simulate as many players and validate server meshing. Prerequisites: add housing (~20 min, duplication + coordinates) and rework the network part. Targets: UID collisions beyond about sixty players and the freeze during server meshing. Side idea: run NPCs from Quebec to test latency.

The truck physics can still be improved (shock absorbers), but vehicle fixes have landed on the Jolt/Godot engine side.

🔧 Miscellaneous

• Discord Kanban: /task add permissions have been opened to leads and subleads. You need to run /task add then /board to refresh the display.
• Localization: everything is written in English by default, translation is then done on the game side.
• In-game chat: white text is unreadable on a light background. Black outline as a first attempt, a shader detecting the background color as a fallback.

✅ To do

ddurieux

• Fix crate carrying and dropping, then put the NPCs in game (goal: this weekend)
• Call for animators next week for the 2-3 missing animations
• Test road, adding housing, network work before the load test
• Investigate the build / version file bug

Kainan

• Schedule the "components" meeting with Bardok

bitogno

• Summary of the components document
• Gather the food data
• Restore the elevation of biome 4.1