The V2 polish + content build. Painted UI in engine. Power. Voice. NPCs. Procedural city. Currently dressing Ashgate. Then the demo ships.
Where AIRLOCK is right now. Painted UI shipped in engine. The voice pipeline real and end-to-end. Power systems with audible, visible cause-and-effect. The procedural city tool laying down Ashgate's bones. Module concept art turning into module reality. The demo arc, wake up, find Mara, reach the airlock, build, sleep, fetch, repeat, is being assembled stage by stage.
C++ backbone for every NPC. 9-state behaviour machine. 7-faction team system. Component stack for brains, combat, injury, tasking, dialogue. Every Settler, enemy, wildlife slots in cleanly.
Faction system. Behaviour state machine. Combat component. Injury component. Dialogue component. Voice component. Bump component. Every NPC inherits the spine; specialisations layer on top.
Voice pipeline with TTS + emotion tags. Per-NPC Data Tables. Subtitle Widget with stack mode. Activity Anchors so NPCs migrate between content. Bump knockback. Power-aware barks.
Mara has fifty-five voice lines, recorded with inline emotion tags through ElevenLabs and CF Flow. She greets, complains, reacts to power loss. Subtitles stack. NPCs walk between activity anchors. Real life inside the airlock.
Painted concept art direction landed in engine. Cream sumi-ink on near-black. Cormorant Garamond + Permanent Marker. Ink-wash backings. Module padlocks. Auto-flashlight that engages in the dark.
Painted sumi-ink HUD landed in engine. Inventory, build menu, compass, notifications, skill XP popups, every panel rebuilt on the painted style. Module padlocks. Auto-flashlight that engages when night falls or the lights die.
Stamina, hunger (28 days to zero), thirst (48 hours to zero), stress, morale. The body keeps score. Manage them or fall.
Ultra Dynamic Sky drives every timer. Hunger drains over twenty-eight in-game days. Thirst over forty-eight hours. Stress and morale react to the base around you. The body keeps score.
Fully dynamic day-night. 45 real-world minutes = 1 in-game day. Ultra Dynamic Sky drives every time-aware system. Toxic night queued.
Forty-five real minutes per in-game day. Sky shifts, lighting reacts, NPCs change schedule. Toxic night queued. Going to the surface after dark will not be optional, it will be a calculation.
Generators with green/amber/red status LEDs. Multi-generator networks. 5-second overload trip. Powered lights and ambient emitters subscribe by ID. Auto-flashlight engages in the dark.
Generators with green/amber/red status LEDs you can read across a room. Networks of generators. Five-second overload trips. Powered lights subscribe to a power source by ID. Pull the plug and the world reacts visually + audibly.
Subtitle widget pushes painted-monochrome speech. Stack mode for overlapping voices. Italic-paren for non-speech (humming, sighs). Generators hum, NPCs talk, ambient emitters push their own subtitles.
Subtitle widget supports stack mode, Mara talking, the radio crackling, the generator humming, all on screen at once without overwriting. Italic-paren convention for non-speech. Proximity-gated so the line only shows when you're near.
Procedural city tool. City Block Breaker for hand-art-direction. Foliage Cascade marketplace-ready PCG node. PCG Foliage Baker. PCG_Include / PCG_Remove tags. Ashgate has its overgrowth.
Custom PCG cascade node, designer drops a biome volume, the system spawns mature trees, then juveniles around them, then saplings around those, then ground cover. Tag-based include/exclude. Marketplace-ready.
Painted concepts for the demo modules. Cream sumi-ink, grounded post-apocalyptic modern. Operations Room, Workhouse, Bunkroom + reference paintings for the next batch.
Painted hero concepts for every demo module. Operations Room, Workhouse, Bunkroom, the three locked + dressed in engine. Reference paintings for Kitchen, Greenhouse, Aquaculture, Power Room queued.
Operations Room with the Planning Board, salvaged radio desk, lockers, fluorescent buzz, ivy creeping in. Workhouse, the multi-discipline crafting space. Bunkroom with the bunk migration mechanic.
Operations Room: Planning Board, salvaged radio desk, lockers, fluorescent buzz, ivy through the cracks. Workhouse: multi-discipline crafting space. Bunkroom: where rescued Settlers sleep before they migrate to their specialist module.
Ashgate streets traced + dressed. Hospital where Kore wakes. Gas station for fuel. Builders merchant. Abandoned airlock entrance. Mission scripting layered on top, survivor encounters, the first rescue, the night escort.
Ashgate streets traced with the new procedural city tool. Hospital where Kore wakes. Gas station for fuel. Builders merchant. The abandoned airlock entrance, a boarded-up cellar door, not a sci-fi blast hatch. Grounded.
14 Settler class Blueprints instantiated. Full ALS locomotion. Procedural names, traits, skill rolls. They walk into the airlock. They stand at their module. They react when Kore approaches.
Procedural names. Procedural traits. Procedural skill rolls weighted by class. Fourteen Settler classes ready to instantiate. They walk in. They stand at their module. They greet Kore by name when he passes.
Settlers unlock modules. No Engineer = no Tier 2+ upgrades. No Chemist = no explosives. Your rescue roster determines what your base can become. Rescue drives unlocks.
Kingdom Tale-style gating. No Engineer in the airlock means no Tier 2+ upgrades. No Chemist means no explosives. The rescue loop directly determines what your base can become. Strategy from the very first choice.
Module upgrades stop being instant. Time passes. Scaffolding appears. If the upgrade digs deeper, ore nodes spawn, mine them before the timer ends. Settlers shove Kore out of the corridor during construction.
Module upgrades stop being instant mesh swaps. A timer runs. Scaffolding visible. If the upgrade digs deeper, ore nodes spawn in the new cells, mine them before the timer ends or lose the haul. Settlers shove Kore back if he tries to walk in mid-build.
A 60+ minute guided experience. Wake up alone. Discover the airlock. Build your first rooms. Rescue your first Survivors. Survive the night. The hook that makes you need to know what happens next.
Sixty-plus minutes of the game's bones. Wake alone in the hospital. Step into the silence. Meet Mara. Reach the airlock. Build your first rooms. Survive the night. End on the hook that makes the player need the next chapter.