- Shrink the roster from 200 to 60 systems and drop spiral arms / core bulge for a uniform-in-area sparse disk (data/galaxy.json)
- Turn the jump network into a pure spanning tree (shortcuts off): exactly one route between any two systems, barren systems become single-gate dead-end leaves
- Remove the rendered Star entity; non-home system centers are now empty space with the star kept only as invisible dossier flavor
- Gate anchors restricted to planets (stations no longer anchor) and every non-barren system guaranteed ≥1 planet so a buildable world always exists
- Give barren dead ends 1–2 asteroid clusters drifting inside their gate's level-1 tether as the stop's only payload
- Bump save format to 2 and reject legacy format-1 saves with a clear toast message
- Update tests, docs, and README to reflect the maze layout, leaf dead ends, empty centers, and new barren cluster rules
- Targets beyond `farDistance` from the ship fold to a small text-less chip with a shrunken arrow, reducing visual clutter for distant objects
- Hovering a far chip expands it to the full readout after an intent delay; hovering off folds it back only after a grace period, so quick flicks don't pop or yank it
- Assign per-type compass accent colors: green for planets (data/planets.json), red for stations (data/stations.json), gray for asteroid clusters (already present)
- Export `isFarTarget` and `syncEntryMode` as pure helpers for Node testing; add far-display coverage to dev/discovery.test.mjs
- Add a headless integration driver (dev/compass-far.html + .mjs) that boots GameScene, parks the ship between near and far targets, and exercises the hover-intent lifecycle end-to-end
- Pass the ship position into `compass.refresh()` from GameScene so the compass can compute per-target far/near state each frame
- Introduce Star entity (procedural texture per spectral class) drawn at the origin of every non-home system; only the starting system's central body is the home world
- Freeze `homeSystemId` at roster build so lazily generated content for newly arrived systems no longer misreads as home and deals a second home world
- Anchor tether-l1 builds on newly discovered worlds (effects.tether in data/builds.json) and re-materialize installed tethers after jump cuts / scene rebuilds
- Discovery now reports the central body in every system ("Home World" vs. spectral-class star label); stars are solid but not comms targets
- Add dev tools: nav-reach-probe (soft-lock analysis), star unit tests, tether-newworld browser test; fix landing video references and Phaser stubs
- Introduce data/gates.json + js/galaxy/JumpNetwork.js: a strongly-connected, degree-limited spanning tree over the nearest-star graph (plus local shortcuts) so every system holds 1–3 gates, all jumps are local, and no system is closed or trapped
- Place each gate on the tether circle of an anchor (planet / space station / home world), facing its destination star; enforce radius band, clearance from anchors, and gap between gates in SystemGenerator.layoutGates
- Add the JumpGate entity (procedural twin-pylon portal) with the same solid contract as Planet/Station, discoverable in cyan, listed in the HUD dossier; wire into GameScene solids + discovery
- Guarantee every system holds at least one gate anchor (barren systems get a deep-space station); cap the home system at 3 objects so it fits the tighter band
- Rework solar-system layout to a full pairwise band [minSpacing, maxSpacing] with rotation tuned toward gate bearings; update tests and docs accordingly
- Change radiusGrowth from 1.25 to 2.0 so level N doubles the previous
level (L2 = 10240, L3 = 20480, L4 = 40960 px)
- Update all data descriptions, docs, and test defaults to match
- Add refreshHudTetherLevel() in SurfaceScene so the HUD line re-decodes
when a tether build completes while on-surface
- Rename rocky-planet-02 asset (typo fix), add 03-a/03-b variants,
point rocky frames at indices 6–8 in planets.json
- Add dev/tether-flow harness to exercise the full L2 build flow end-to-end
- Introduce a `takeoff` video entry in landing.json for each world; missing/
null entries leave the surface instantly (no regression)
- SurfaceScene.takeOff now plays the one-shot take-off clip full-screen,
hides the deck, and only then stops the scene and wakes GameScene
- Guard against a clip that never starts or runs past its duration so the
player is never stranded; finishTakeoff is idempotent
- Update surface-flow/surface-shot dev harnesses to assert and screenshot
the new take-off stage
- Re-map gas giant frames in planets.json from [0,1,2] to [3,4,5] to match
their sheet positions
- Replace the annular-band scatter (minOrbit/maxOrbit/minEdgeGap) with a ring-based placement: objects sit on one or two orbits around the home world, governed by center-to-center `minSpacing` and `maxNeighbor`
- Free-space stations (deep-space stations, waypoints) are now layout objects alongside planets; planet-bound settlements stay features of their planet
- Handle the N=11 case (9 planets + 2 stations) with an inner 3-ring + outer 8-ring; chain outward defensively for any larger N
- Update tests to verify the new spacing invariants, the two-orbit case, and determinism including station positions
- Refresh PROJECT_NOTES and the data-file comment to describe the orbit model
- Discovery rule: ship within `discovery.distance` (540 px) of a world's edge discovers it once per system; state is pure, save-ready (`Discovery.toJSON/fromJSON`)
- Off-screen compass (`DiscoveryCompass`): themed screen-edge arrows with type/name chips point back at discovered worlds; geometry helpers (`edgeAnchor`, `circleInView`, `lerpAngle`) exported for Node tests
- Solar-system layout: `layoutSystemPlanets` places generated worlds in a deterministic annular band around the home world, enforcing edge-to-edge separation and per-class scale/tint from `data/planets.json`
- All system planets are solid to the ship (collision + click-clamp), not just home
- Rim ping + HUD toast on discovery (`celebrateDiscovery`)
- New planet class pools (rocky/gas/ice/lava) with frames, `classScale`, `classTint`, and `typeLabels`
- Smoke-game dev hooks: `?ship=x,y` and `?near=px` for screenshotting discovery/compass states
- Node test suite (`dev/discovery.test.mjs`) covering rule boundaries, per-system state, JSON round-trip, layout bounds/determinism, compass geometry, and class pools
- Allow planet kinds to specify multiple sheet frames and pick one with a seed-derived Rng so the same galaxy always gets the same home world.
- Add Ethnocentric and Centauri font assets.
Adds the player's home planet to the starting system, rendered from the new
planets.png spritesheet. The planet is a solid disc: the ship may come within
shipClearance of its rim but can never cross it, and clicks on the planet
clamp to the keep-out rim so the ship always has a reachable destination.
- js/entities/Planet.js: solid-disc entity with a circle keep-out constraint
(constrainShip/resolve, pure and scene-free) plus edgePoint/aimPoint helpers
- data/planets.json (+ manifest entry): texture, frame size, scale, homePlanet,
shipClearance, spawnDistanceFromEdge
- Ship.js: exposes a radius (half the hull width) for the keep-out math
- GameScene.js: loads the spritesheet, spawns the home world at the origin,
starts the ship ~150 px off its rim in a seed-derived direction, and applies
the constraint each frame after the ship moves
- dev/planet.test.mjs: Node tests of the constraint against real config;
dev/test-game.html gains a <base href> so asset paths resolve from /dev
Brian Fertig
Brian Fertig