Introduce colony naming with a 50-name bank per species, shuffled
per-empire and displayed as defaults in naming prompts. Colony names
now appear across all UI layers (star map, side panel, colony view,
system view) with the astronomical designation as fallback.
Add three pure-flavor conversation topics to diplomacy: "Their People"
(neutral+), "Their Homeworld" (friendly), and "A Story" (friendly).
Each diplomacy-capable species receives unique lore-rich responses
(3 variants each) reflecting their culture, homeworld, and history.
Other changes:
- Switch ursaal videos from generic "human" assets to species-specific
- Widen diplomacy buttons to 200px; add auto-shrink for long labels
- Add ±5 population transport buttons to colony view
- Validate colonyNames (50+ entries, no duplicates)
- Enforce minimum lore variant counts in verification
- Add Colony Transport ('poptransport') hull, dispatched directly in transit
from a Send Population order rather than built from the queue. Shares the
Troop Transport's hull art and uses the colony ship's commander clip.
- Implement VegaLogic sendPopulation/deliverPopulation flow: clamped to
maxSendablePopulation (leaves 0.5 floor), creates poptransport fleet
immediately, auto-delivers on arrival capped at destination max pop.
- Add Send Population button and overlay picker in colony view with
destination list, ETA display, amount dial, and MAX button.
- Log populationSent/populationDelivered events in the turn report.
- Refactor VegaAudience mood visuals to play-once-and-hold-last-frame with
a clickable replay badge, mirroring VegaColonyIntro's video contract.
- Seed human audience mood clips (angry/neutral/happy) into artwork config
as placeholders for all diplomacy-capable species.
- Add verification tests for poptransport mechanics and video aliasing.
- Rewrite contact detection from proximity-based (parsec-range) to
star-scoped: empires now meet by sharing a system (colonies or fleets),
making first-contact a visible event rather than a silent background
check.
- Add full-screen Audience interface (VegaAudience.js) with species-specific
mood videos (or letterboxed portrait fallbacks), a typewriter chat log,
and contextual action buttons. Auto-opens on first contact via a queue
system in MasterOfVegaGame.
- Add VegaChat.js with unique dialogue pools for all 9 diplomacy-capable
species across 18+ situations (first contact, peace/alliance offers,
war declarations, tech trades, accept/reject responses, etc.).
- Introduce held diplomacy offers: AI proposals to the human are queued
(pendingOffers) instead of auto-resolved, with player Accept/Reject
buttons in the Audience screen and automatic expiry after 6 turns.
- Add audienceVideos config and JIT-loading infrastructure in VegaArt.js.
- Add ship videos for kkrix and mekhan species.
- Simplify openDiplomacyScreen to a single "Seek Audience" button.
- Fix colony view to filter out 'starbase' from building display list.
- Add comprehensive verification in tools/verifyMasterOfVega.js for
contact system, held offers, chat completeness, audience videos,
and serialization of new state fields.
- Remove obsolete contactRange rule from mastervega-rules.json.
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
- Add video, still, and procedural three-tier portrait system for all 10 species
- Add species-specific speech clips and UI voiceover (SpeechQueue integration)
- Add landing screen with New Game / Resume / Return to Arcade buttons
- Add species detail pop-over with animated expand/collapse and auto-introduction
- Add game-specific soundtrack (masterofvega-music.json, 4 tracks)
- Add video asset type support in assetLoader and PreloadScene
- Add portraitVideos and portraitStills sections to artwork manifest
- Add verification for portraits, speech clips, and music tracks
- Update sprites.md with documentation for new assets and filenames
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