- New data-driven script (data/mastervega-tutorial.json) with intro modal and three callout steps over the fleet marker and side-panel ship rows/count controls.
- Split into Phaser-free VegaTutorialData.js (schema validation, interpolation, target-id registry) and Phaser VegaTutorial.js (darken overlay, accent rings, callouts, hotspot, skip confirm, state machine).
- Tutorial auto-opens on every brand-new game and is re-triggerable from the menu when the starting fleet is still in orbit; malformed JSON disables the feature with a warning instead of crashing.
- Add D.tutorial depth (just below detail) so an invited ship-detail window layers above the overlay, and expose VegaSidePanel.tutorialRegion() for screen-space panel regions.
- Register the tutorial asset in the manifest and add verifier section 12 covering schema, targets, voice clips, placeholders, and interpolation.
- Hulls: frigate turnRateBase 150→340, brakeSeconds 11→1.0 (X-wing agility);
destroyer turnRateBase 100→230, brakeSeconds 2.8→1.35 (midpoint leaning frigate).
- Fix battleship (and all slow hulls) no longer holding position: added
anticipatory retrograde pre-turning in computeShipMove, comparing
worstTurnTime vs timeToRange so the nose begins flipping before braking
range, with urgency-blended facing to avoid "running away" appearance.
(Was accidentally crutched by strong avoidAccel collision avoidance.)
- Fix parked ships coasting indefinitely: velocity now starts from 0 when
hasTask is false instead of carrying residual velocity forever.
- V2 damageMultiplier (2.8): scales weapon raw output before shield
mitigation, V2-only, doesn't touch live engine balance. Shortens battle
duration meaningfully across test scenarios.
- V2 maxDurationSeconds (240) and disengageFraction (0.9): decoupled from
shared rules.combat.maxRounds. Counterintuitively, the old disengage
timer was an implicit duration cap; extending it let genuine fights play
out while damageMultiplier handles the shortening.
- Species-colored beams: VegaCombatViewV2.js now renders beams in a
vibrant, saturation-boosted version of the firing ship's species color,
memoized. Missiles keep fixed orange.
- Mirror-match bias tolerance widened 0.25→0.30 (expected variance cost
of lower TTK from higher damage multiplier).
- Frigate stationary-target check inverted: now asserts it CAN hold
position (alongside battleship/cruiser/destroyer). Added agility ordering
data-integrity checks on hulls block.
Implement continuous velocity vectors (vx/vy) replacing the old
kinematic position clamp. Each hull gets brakeSeconds-derived
linearAccel so stopping distance naturally falls under or over beamRange,
producing battleship hold-position vs frigate strafe-run behaviour
without hull-specific tactic branches.
Key mechanics:
- Thrust magnitude scaled by facing alignment (cos of angle to task
direction), honouring "turn and engage thrusters" without locking
thrust to facing (which caused battleships to never stop).
- GOLDEN_ANGLE-spaced approach points fan out ships sharing a target.
- avoidAccel (60) is a gentle, hull-independent collision avoidance
budget — ships can overlap when objectives require it.
- Target avoidance uses reduced radius (0.35×) so engagement isn't
fought by personal-space calculations.
Data: add brakeSeconds to all hulls, avoidAccel to combatV2 constants.
Verifier: rewrite turn-rate check to time-to-range metric, add hold-vs-
strafe gradient and max-delta-speed checks, relax cloak/singularity to
"doesn't hurt" invariant.
Introduce `VegaCombatV2.js`, a parallel headless combat engine that simulates
individual ships (not stack aggregates) in continuous time rather than discrete
rounds. Ships have per-hull `sizeScale`, `sizeSpeedMult`, and `turnRateBase`
fields; every entity tracks its own cooldown, position, facing, and angular
momentum. Damage and movement are banked per-tick to preserve fairness.
Accompanying files:
- `VegaCombatViewV2.js` — zoomable/pannable Phaser view with parallax starfield
- `VegaCombatCamera.js` — cursor-anchored zoom + drag-to-pan (listener cleanup
on destroy to avoid stacking across battles)
- `VegaFormations.js` — formation strategy plumbing (chosen per side, not yet
read by movement/targeting)
- Hull-specific destroy audio cues and vega buildings art
Wired behind `?movsim`'s Live/V2 toggle in `VegaCombatSim.js` — the live engine
and all real player battles are untouched.
Also fixes several latent bugs discovered during the rewrite:
- Trap 26: simultaneous wipe-out now checks draw before single-side wins
- Trap 27: movement is banked (two-phase) like damage
- Trap 28: weighted-random targeting tames chaotic nearest-neighbour sensitivity
- Trap 29: fleet gap clamped to 85% world width to prevent starvation
- Trap 30: `RANGE_EPS` tolerance prevents steering-induced standoffs
See `docs/mastervega-build-plan.md` for full design notes.
Move vega audio files into assets/fx/vega/ subdirectory and register them via
assetManifest.js. Add weapon and missile sound cues banded by ship Mark, with
staggered playback in VegaCombatView to prevent audio clipping during barrages.
Wire up two previously inert tech effects in combat:
- Stealth Field (cloaked): applies a flat accuracy malus via cloakEvasion rule.
- Black Hole Generator (singularity): adds passive shield pierce via
singularityShieldPierce rule on every weapon fired by the design.
Update tech descriptions, ship detail display, and designFor() to reflect
these effects. Fix a bug where singularity was never copied into the design
object.
Add vega-endturn cue to End Turn / Next Round buttons (no-op when busy),
remove hardcoded audio loads from PreloadScene, and add verification tests
that isolate each flag with A/B battle comparisons.
Replace the turn-report "New Turn" popup row with a cinematic vignette that
plays the moment the player plants a colony: the soundtrack ducks, the world's
1920×1080 backdrop fills the screen, a 960×544 clip of this world being settled
plays in a framed window, and the founding numbers are read out underneath.
Key changes:
- Add `colonyVideos` block (15 clips, one per colonisable planet type) to
artwork JSON; clips are fetched just-in-time via ensureColonyVideo() when a
colony ship reaches a settleable world, keeping the set (~19 MB) out of the
eager manifest
- Add `vega-colony-cue` audio to the eager manifest for the founding soundtrack
- Remove `colonised` from NOTABLE_TYPES and TYPE_LABEL so the event is no longer
announced twice (once in the vignette, once in the turn report)
- Add `sourceWidth()` guard in VegaArt.js to fix a Phaser Video placeholder
width bug exposed by the non-square 960×544 colony clips (2.5× scale issue)
- Apply `sourceWidth()` to portrait and commander video scaling paths as well
- Add depth entry `intro: 78` to VegaScreens.js for the vignette overlay
- Add section 6b to the verifier: checks manifest exclusion, key conventions,
sourceWidth() behavior, turn-report classification, and colony stats
See build-plan trap #23 for the full sourceWidth() explanation.
Introduce looping commander videos (256×256) alongside ship thumbnails in
the side panel and colony catalogue. Each species×hull combination loads
its officer clip from shipVideos, falling back to portrait video → still →
procedural sheet. A scene-lifetime pool (VegaShipMedia.js) prevents decoder
thrash on every panel rebuild.
Add VegaShipDetail — a full-resolution pop-over (D.detail depth 76) showing
the commander at 256px, hull at 192px, derived stat block, and knapsack
loadout. Opens from both the side panel and colony screen without stacking
through openModal.
Add a "New Turn" popup (VegaTurnReportScreen) that interrupts the player
for notable events (discovery, first contact, diplomacy, eliminations).
Events are classified and sorted by consequence in VegaTurnReport.js.
Logic now emits 'discovered' events when fleets enter unexplored systems.
Update asset manifest to load nested shipVideos, extend verification to
validate shipVideoKey conventions, bump ships sheet to 192px frames, and
document the new art contract.
Move colony management (sliders, build queue, catalogue) from the
system-view modal into a dedicated full-screen colony view
(VegaColonyView.js). The system view now inspects worlds read-only
with a "View Colony" button to open the management screen.
Key changes:
- Add VegaColonyView.js with colony screen, build queue flyout,
scrolling catalogue, allocation sliders with padlocks, and
planet-type backdrops
- Add world backdrop artwork support (1920×1080, one per planet type)
declared in mastervega-artwork.json worldBackgrounds
- Add headless queue helpers to VegaLogic.js: collapseQueue,
moveQueueRun, colonyBuildRate, queueEtas, enqueueMany
- Fix star map pointer blocking (drags no longer pan map through modal)
- Move ORBIT constant to VegaScreens.js, add D.colony depth layer
- Update docs (build-plan, sprites) and verification suite
The colony screen stacks over the system view without requiring a
second modal, hiding the system layer and pausing the orrery while
open.
Introduce VegaSidePanel, a right-hand command panel with three modes:
star (system summary), fleet (ship count selectors), and order
(distance, ETA, Accept/Cancel). Replaces the inline fleet-order flow
with a callback-driven architecture where the scene owns selection
state and the panel only reads the engine and reports clicks.
Add fleet detachment logic to VegaLogic:
- splitFleet: carve a new idle fleet from an existing one
- sendDetachment: validate against actual stacks, normalize duplicates,
probe reachability on a copy, and rollback on refusal
- etaTo: compute ETA scoped to the selected detachment (slowest hull
in the selection, not the whole fleet)
VegaStarMap gains blockPointer (prevent pan/zoom over the panel),
onEmptyClick (dismiss panel by clicking void), and a rotating selection
reticle.
Section 4b adds ~32 verification checks covering ETA accuracy, ship
conservation, out-of-range refusals, duplicate normalization, star-base
immobility, and the idle-fleet merge rule.
Updates mastervega-build-plan.md to document the new panel and
verification section.
- Add VegaZoom.js with Phaser-free zoom ladder builder, verifiable headlessly
- Replace hardcoded ZOOMS array with galaxy-sized ladder anchored so the
bottom rung exactly covers the viewport
- Remove 160 px of pan slack in clampPan so empty space can never be dragged
into view
- Key semantic-zoom thresholds (isFarZoom / isNearZoom) to ladder index
instead of absolute scale, keeping behaviour consistent across galaxy sizes
- Add section 3b to verifyMasterOfVega.js with 163 new checks covering
ladder coverage, covering-zoom invariant, top-rung reach, and tiny-galaxy
single-step collapse
Introduces Master of Vega, a turn-based 4X strategy game built on MOO1 rules with MOO2 conveniences. The implementation features a fully headless, deterministic engine (VegaLogic) with zero Phaser dependencies, enabling complete Node-based verification (809 checks) and reproducible galaxy generation via mulberry32 RNG.
Key features:
- Preset ship hulls with an auto-refitting Mark system and provably monotonic knapsack loadouts.
- Tactical grid combat with banked damage resolution to eliminate first-strike bias.
- Galactic Council diplomacy, stalemate-breaking, and invasion forecasting.
- Drop-in artwork compatibility with procedural stand-ins for all spritesheets.
- Hireable leaders (admin/captain) and colony building queues.
Architecture splits cleanly into headless modules (GalaxyGen, Logic, AI, Combat, Diplomacy, Ships, Leaders) and a render tier (StarMap, SystemView, CombatView, Screens, Nebula, Art, Fx). A comprehensive build plan documents 19 architectural traps discovered and resolved during development.
Registers the game in the registry, asset manifest, preload scene, and soundtrack service. Includes tools/verifyMasterOfVega.js for automated rule validation, art verification, economy balancing, and AI self-play soaking.
Brian Fertig