acdream/docs/plans/2026-04-11-roadmap.md

acdream — strategic roadmap

Status: Living document. Updated 2026-04-11 after Phase 6, 7.1, 9.1, 9.2 landed. Purpose: One source of truth for where the project is and where it's going. Every observed defect or missing feature has a named phase that owns it; when something looks wrong in-game, look here to find the phase that'll address it. Implementation details live in per-phase specs under docs/superpowers/specs/, not in this file.

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Phases already shipped

Phase	What landed	Verification
1	Terrain rendering, plugin host scaffold	Visual ✓
2a	Static stabs/buildings (126 entities)	Visual ✓
2b	Textured 3×3 landblock grid + FlyCamera + IGameState	Visual ✓
2c	Procedural scenery (419 trees/rocks/bushes)	Visual ✓
2d	Interior EnvCell walker (475 static interior objects)	Visual ✓
3a/3b	Directional sun lighting + per-vertex terrain normals	Visual ✓
3c	Per-cell terrain texture blending (alpha atlas)	Visual ✓
4	Full UDP codec + handshake + character login + WorldSession	Live ✓
5	ObjDesc: AnimPartChange + TextureChanges + SubPalettes + ObjScale + Placement.Resting	Live ✓
6.1	Idle motion frame resolution (MotionResolver MVP)	Live ✓
6.2	Server-sent MovementData stance + forward command honored	Live ✓
6.3	Server-supplied MotionTableId override (fixes drudge statue)	Live ✓
6.4	Per-frame animation playback (breathing, idle cycles)	Live ✓
6.5	Slerp between keyframes for smooth animation	Live ✓
6.6	UpdateMotion (0xF74C) parser + dispatch to animation tick	Live ✓
6.7	UpdatePosition (0xF748) parser + position reseating	Live ✓
7.1	EnvCell room geometry — walls/floors/ceilings via CellStruct + Environment dats	Visual ✓
9.1	Translucent render pass (AlphaBlend / Additive / InvAlpha + per-kind blend funcs)	Visual ✓
9.2	Back-face culling in translucent pass (fixes lifestone crystal)	Visual ✓

Plus polish that doesn't get its own phase number:

• FlyCamera default speed lowered + Shift-to-boost
• SurfaceDecoder: PFID_P8 / PFID_R8G8B8 / PFID_X8R8G8B8 decoders
• GfxObjMesh: emit both pos and neg sides of double-sided polygons
• EnvCell mesh Z-lift to fix ground-floor / terrain flicker

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Phases ahead — agreed order

Phase A — Foundation (next)

Goal: walk across 10+ landblocks without crashes, without hitches at landblock boundaries, and without framerate cratering.

Sub-pieces:

• A.1 — Streaming landblock loader. Runtime-configurable visible window (default 5×5, ACDREAM_STREAM_RADIUS env var override). Center follows the camera offline and the player in live mode. Background worker thread loads landblocks CPU-side (dats, scenery, interior, entities); the render thread drains a completion outbox and performs GPU upload. Unloads happen at radius + 1 distance to avoid churn.
• A.2 — Frustum culling + LOD. Per-landblock AABB test against the view frustum in StaticMeshRenderer.Draw, skipping drawn entities in culled landblocks. Per-entity culling deferred. No LOD mesh levels yet — that's Phase C or later.
• A.3 — Background net I/O thread. WorldSession runs its receive loop on a dedicated thread; parsed game messages are posted to a concurrent queue the render thread drains from OnUpdate. Event invocations still happen on the render thread (preserves existing handler assumptions). Removes packet drops under frame stalls.
• A.4 — Async dat decoding. Folded into the streaming worker — it's the worker's read path, not a separate subsystem. Called out here because regressions in dat caching could land on this surface.

Acceptance:

• Walk across 10+ landblocks in any direction, no crashes, no empty voids.
• Landblock-boundary crossings produce no visible hitch.
• Runtime window radius toggleable via environment variable.

Detailed spec: docs/superpowers/specs/2026-04-11-foundation-phase-design.md

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Phase B — Gameplay / interaction

Goal: actually play the game — walk the character on the server, click NPCs, pick up items, chat, basic combat loop.

Sub-pieces:

• B.1 — Outbound ack pump. Background timer that sends sequence acks every ~250ms. Without this the server drops idle clients after ~30s regardless of any other activity.
• B.2 — PlayerAutonomousMove outbound. Wire WASD + camera state (or a dedicated player-controlled movement mode) to an outbound movement message so the server's view of the character matches ours.
• B.3 — Collision against terrain. Required for the server to accept moves at all — ACE rejects client positions that are inside geometry or in disallowed Z ranges. Minimum viable: sample the terrain heightmap beneath the player and clamp Z. Proper: walk the CellBSP / PhysicsBSP we already parse.
• B.4 — Use / UseWithTarget / PickUp. Outbound interaction messages. Drives opening doors, looting, talking to vendors.
• B.5 — Chat. SendTell, SendChat outbound + receive/display inbound (display side depends on Phase D.1).

References:

• references/ACE/Source/ACE.Server/Network/Handlers/MovementHandler.cs
• references/ACE/Source/ACE.Server/Network/Handlers/UseObjectHandler.cs
• references/holtburger/src/session/send.rs for outbound packet-building patterns

Acceptance: walk on-server with your character, open a door, talk to an NPC, send a chat message and see the echo.

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Phase C — Polish / visuals

Goal: close the visible gaps that make the world read as "old / broken" compared to retail.

Sub-pieces:

• C.1 — VFX / particle system. PhysicsScript parser, per-entity ParticleEmitter state, billboarded-quad particle renderer that lives in the Phase 9.1/9.2 translucent pass. Delivers portal swirls, chimney smoke, and fireplace flames in one implementation.
• C.2 — Dynamic point lights. Fireplaces and lamps need local lighting; small upgrade to the mesh shader to accumulate N (e.g., 4) nearest point lights per draw. Uniform-buffer or UBO-friendly layout.
• C.3 — Palette range tuning. Small per-range offset/length tweaks to match retail skin/hair/eye colors. Mostly diff and verify work, no architecture change.
• C.4 — Double-sided translucent polys. Edge case left by Phase 9.2: neg-side translucent polys are culled because cull is always BACK. Fix by tracking per-sub-mesh CullMode and flipping GL state per draw (or drawing twice with opposite cull). Minor.
• C.5 — Shadow mapping (optional). Deferred unless it becomes a bottleneck in screenshots — dynamic shadows are a known complexity trap.

References:

• references/ACE/Source/ACE.DatLoader/FileTypes/PhysicsScript.cs for the emitter schema
• references/ACViewer/ACViewer/Physics/Particles/ for the visual model
• references/WorldBuilder/Chorizite.OpenGLSDLBackend/Lib/ParticleBatcher.cs for the Silk.NET-flavored implementation

Acceptance: portals look like swirly gates, chimneys smoke, fireplaces burn, character skin matches retail screenshots.

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Phase D — UI / HUD + Sound

Goal: chat window, nameplates, inventory, and audio. Can run concurrently with Phase B or C because it doesn't touch gameplay/net/rendering surfaces.

Sub-pieces:

• D.1 — 2D ortho overlay + font rendering. Separate shader and render pass drawn after 3D. Font: FreeType via Silk.NET bindings, or bitmap fonts as a simpler first pass.
• D.2 — Chat window + nameplates. First UI widgets. Chat consumes Phase B.5 messages; nameplates render per-entity 3D-to-2D projected labels.
• D.3 — Inventory / character / spell panels. Requires a widget framework (layout, focus, input routing). Scope unbounded — ship minimum viable first.
• D.4 — Sound. SoundTable parser, Sound dat decode, audio engine (OpenAL via Silk.NET.OpenAL), per-entity 3D positional audio, optional music.

Acceptance: see other players' chat in a chat window, see nameplates above NPCs, hear footsteps and sword hits.

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Phase E — Long-tail

Not detailed here; each gets its own brainstorm when it becomes relevant.

• Dungeon landblocks (0xAAAA0000 family) + teleport-on-door-click + server-side portal handling
• Phase 7.2 multi-floor stair walking — cells reachable via portals the cell-walker doesn't cross
• Player character full rig (held weapons, spell effects, death/revive animation)
• Weather + day/night cycle
• Spellcasting pipeline
• Group/fellowship UI

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Cross-cutting work tracked in parallel

• Test coverage. Each phase lands with unit + integration tests in tests/. Current count: 98 Core + 96 Core.Net = 194. Keep the ratio as new phases land.
• Memory files. Project state under memory/project_phase_*_state.md is updated when a phase ships. MEMORY.md is the index.
• CLAUDE.md discipline. Check all four references (ACE, ACViewer, WorldBuilder, Chorizite) before committing to an approach. WorldBuilder is the closest stack match and should be checked first.

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Explicitly out of scope

• Server emulation — we use ACE for server, never reimplement.
• Account creation — direct user to ACE tooling.
• Anti-cheat / GM tools / live-ops — irrelevant for personal use.
• Cross-platform support — Windows-only; the dat path assumptions depend on retail Windows install layout. Silk.NET is cross-platform but we don't promise.
• Custom game content — this is a client for existing AC data, not a toolchain.

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"When will my specific complaint be fixed?" — quick lookup

Observation	Phase
Drudge statue in wrong pose	6.3 FIXED ✓
Characters in T-pose / wrong idle	6.1 FIXED ✓
No breathing on NPCs	6.4 + sentinel fix FIXED ✓
Lifestone crystal has one side missing	9.2 FIXED ✓
Ground floor flickering with terrain	7.1 FIXED ✓
Houses missing second floors / walls	7.1 FIXED ✓ (interior mesh landed)
Character clothing missing / wrong	5 FIXED ✓
Statue wrong color / wrong scale	5 FIXED ✓
Holtburg sign half-buried	5 FIXED ✓
Can't walk past the loaded 3×3 window	Phase A (Foundation)
Frame hitch crossing landblock boundary	Phase A
Walking around doesn't move me on the server	Phase B (Gameplay)
Can't talk to NPCs	Phase B
Can't open a door	Phase B
Portals render as a rotating black disk	Phase C.1 (VFX)
Chimneys have no smoke	Phase C.1
Houses have no fireplace fire	Phase C.1
No fireplace / torch lighting	Phase C.2
Skin/hair color slightly off	Phase C.3
No chat window	Phase D.2
No sound	Phase D.4
Dungeons / foundry interior missing	Phase E

If you see something not on this list, add it here and assign a phase.