acdream/docs/plans/2026-05-12-milestones.md

# acdream — milestones (morale + scope layer)

**Status:** Living document. Created 2026-05-12.
**Sits above:** [`docs/plans/2026-04-11-roadmap.md`](2026-04-11-roadmap.md) (the strategic phase index).
**Currently working toward:** **M2 — "Kill a drudge."** **M1.5 — Indoor
world feels right LANDED 2026-07-10** (pinned writeup in the M1.5 section
below): the building/cellar demo (prior sessions) AND the full dungeon
round-trip (enter via portal → navigate → exit to the outdoor world) are
both user-gated. Dungeon support (full Phase G.3) shipped — render / stream
/ teleport-in / collide / light / doors, each individually gated
(#133/#137/#95/#79/#93/#80 CLOSED; #138 closed by the round-trip gate).
Carried forward as post-M1.5 follow-ups (NOT M1.5 blockers): the far-town
teleport-OUT arrival cascade (**#145-residual, REOPENED** —
capture-harness-first) and #116 slide-response feel-debt.

---

## Why this document exists

The roadmap is a phase index — week- to month-scale, ~50 phases by the time
v1.0 lands. Phases ship in vertical slices (architecture-first, horizontal
completion deferred), which is the right strategy for a solo open-source
project at this scale — but it leaves a chronic "everything is half-built"
feeling because no single phase ship feels like a real milestone.

This document sits **one altitude above** the roadmap. Each milestone is:

- **~6–10 weeks of focused work** (not a single phase, not a whole year).
- Defined by a **concrete playable scenario** — when the scenario works
  end-to-end, the milestone lands.
- A **scope-freeze event**: when a milestone lands, the phases it covers go
  off-limits until v1.0's final polish pass (M7).

Crossing a milestone is a textual event — milestones doc gets the writeup,
the freeze list flips, CLAUDE.md's "currently working toward" line advances.
Phases ship; milestones **land**.

---

## Operating rules

1. **One active milestone at a time.** Everything not on the critical path to
   the current milestone gets filed in `docs/ISSUES.md` with a `post-MN` tag
   and explicitly muted until the milestone hits. This is what kills the
   jumping-between-things feeling.

2. **Frozen phases are off-limits.** "Frozen" means no rework, no polish, no
   follow-up commits unless something is actively broken (player crash,
   regression). Visual nice-to-haves, "while I'm here" cleanups, and
   architecture second-guesses are all post-M7. The freeze is the discipline
   mechanism that makes the milestone meaningful — without it, M0's many
   shipped phases keep silently consuming attention.

3. **The milestone log is the morale instrument.** When a milestone hits:
   - Pin a one-paragraph writeup at the top of this doc describing what
     works end-to-end (any caveats or known regressions are explicit).
   - Update the freeze list. Update CLAUDE.md's "currently working toward"
     line to the next milestone.
   - NO demo videos. User explicitly removed that requirement 2026-05-16
     ("pointless of recording videos, for what purpose?").

4. **State both altitudes at session start.** "Currently working toward M1.
   Current phase: L.2 collision. Next concrete step: L.2d slice 1 spec." This
   keeps the high-level orientation visible alongside the immediate task and
   makes mid-session drift obvious.

---

## The milestones

### M0 — "Connect & explore" — ✅ DONE (crossed months ago)

**Demo scenario:** Log in, walk Holtburg in chase camera, see other characters
animate, send a chat message and see the echo, watch day turn to night,
listen to footsteps and ambient audio.

**Phases included (frozen):**

| Phase | What landed |
|---|---|
| 1–3 | Terrain + per-vertex normals + per-cell texture blending |
| 4 | UDP codec + handshake + character login + WorldSession |
| 5 | ObjDesc: AnimPartChange + TextureChanges + SubPalettes + ObjScale |
| 6.1–6.7 | Motion + animation foundation (idle, frame playback, slerp, UpdateMotion, UpdatePosition) |
| 7.1 | EnvCell room geometry — walls/floors/ceilings |
| 9.1–9.2 | Translucent render pass + back-face culling |
| A.1–A.5 | Streaming landblock loader → two-tier streaming |
| B.1–B.3 | Outbound ack pump + player movement + physics MVP resolver |
| D.1, D.2a | 2D overlay + ImGui scaffold + `AcDream.UI.Abstractions` layer |
| E.1–E.5 | Motion hooks + audio + particles + combat wire + spell wire |
| F.1, F.2 | GameEvent dispatcher + item model + Appraise |
| G.1, G.2 | Sky + day/night + weather + dynamic lighting |
| H.1, I.1–I.8 | Chat wire + UI consolidation + holtburger inbound parity + combat translator |
| K, L.0 | Input architecture + retail bindings + Settings panel |
| N.0–N.6.1 | WB rendering migration (modern path mandatory) |
| C.1, C.1.5a/b | Particle system + portal/EnvCell static-script wiring |
| R.1–R.3 | Retail research infrastructure (PDB extract + named decomp) |

**Status:** This is everything shipped through 2026-05-12. ~25 phase ships.
**Worth saying out loud: this is the hard half of the project.** The engine
runs, the world renders correctly, the network connects, the input is wired,
the data layers for combat/spells/items/audio/particles all exist. What's
missing is the gameplay loop on top.

---

### M1 — "Walkable + clickable world" — ✅ LANDED 2026-05-16

**Landing writeup (2026-05-16, after Phase B.6 ship `d640ed7`):**
All four M1 demo targets work end-to-end. You can log into `+Acdream`
at Holtburg, walk freely without getting stuck (L.2 collision is
retail-faithful through the doorway). Click any inn door at any
range, press R, the character runs (or walks if close) toward it
with the correct animation cycle including the leg-shuffle turn-first
phase, opens the door via ACE's server-side `MoveToChain` callback.
Same for clicking an NPC — runs over, body rotates to face, dialogue
fires from ACE without any client-side retry. Pickup items at any
range with F or R; spell components, food, money, weapons all work;
signs and other `BF_STUCK` scenery correctly block at the gate.
AP cadence matches retail (0 Hz idle, ~1 Hz smooth motion, per-event
on cell/plane changes). Run/walk threshold matches retail observation
(1m of distance left to walk). The earlier ladder of workarounds —
client-side retry, per-frame chatty AP, MoveToState suppression
grace period — all deleted via the Phase B.6 architectural refactor
(`d640ed7`). M1's demo path is now bit-for-bit retail-faithful end
to end.



**Demo scenario:** Walk through Holtburg without getting stuck on the inn
doorway. Open the inn door. Click an NPC and see selection feedback. Pick
up an item from the ground.

**Demo-target status (as of 2026-05-14):**

| # | Target | Status | Evidence |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Walk through Holtburg without getting stuck | ✅ met | L.2a/d/g shipped 2026-05-12; Holtburg doorway verified |
| 2 | Open the inn door | ✅ met | B.4b (interaction) + B.4c (swing animation) shipped 2026-05-13 |
| 3 | Click an NPC and see selection feedback | ✅ met | B.4b chain + chat handlers; verified 2026-05-14 (Tirenia + Royal Guard double-click → NPC dialogue in chat panel) |
| 4 | Pick up an item from the ground | ✅ met (close-range path) | B.5 + post-B.5 `PickupEvent (0xF74A)` fix shipped 2026-05-14; visual-verified at Holtburg; creature-pickup guard added in `a01ebd5` |

**Landing artifacts done 2026-05-16:**
- ✅ Landing writeup pinned at top of this milestone block (above the table).
- ✅ Freeze list applied (see below).
- ✅ `CLAUDE.md`'s "currently working toward" advanced to M2.

**Known polish items deferred to post-M7 (do not gate M1 landing):**
- **#61** — AnimationSequencer link→cycle frame-0 flash on door swing. LOW.
- **#62** — PARTSDIAG null-guard. Latent, not reachable today.
- **#63** — ✅ CLOSED by Phase B.6 (`d640ed7`). Server-initiated
  `MoveToObject` is now honored end-to-end; ACE's `MoveToChain`
  callback fires server-side on arrival.
- **#64** — Local-player pickup animation does not render (retail
  observers see it correctly). LOW.
- **#69, #74, #75** — all closed by Phase B.6 (`d640ed7`). Turn-first
  animation, retail-narrow AP cadence, body-direct auto-walk
  architecture.

**Phases that shipped to clear M1:**
- **L.2 (a + d + g sub-lanes)** — Movement & Collision Conformance.
  L.2a slices 1+2+3 + L.2d slice 1+1.5 + L.2g slice 1+1b+1c shipped
  2026-05-12 / 2026-05-13. Visual-verified via the B.4b doorway test.
- **B.4b** — outbound Use + `WorldPicker` + double-click detection +
  `CollisionExemption` widening + `ServerGuid→entity.Id` translation
  (the ID-mismatch trap surfaced during L.2g slice 1c). Shipped
  2026-05-13.
- **B.4c** — door swing animation: spawn-time `AnimationSequencer`
  registration + stance-value fix (`NonCombat = 0x3D` not `0x01`, which
  had been causing doors to render halfway underground). Shipped
  2026-05-13.
- **B.5** — `BuildPickUp` (PutItemInContainer 0x0019) + `SendPickUp`
  helper + F-key wiring + new `PickupEvent (0xF74A)` despawn handler.
  Shipped 2026-05-14.
- **B.5 polish** (`a01ebd5`) — guard `SendPickUp` against creature
  targets so F-on-NPC produces a "Can't pick that up" toast instead of
  the malformed pickup that triggered ACE's `WeenieError 0x0029` + NPC
  emote chain. (Briefly visited adding "You pick up the X." chat /
  toast feedback for ground pickups in `87ba5c9`, then reverted in
  `20ecb23` — retail doesn't show that line for ground pickups; only
  for items received from NPCs / other characters, and that path is
  separate.)

**Freeze on landing:**
- L.2 zone (collision, cell ownership, transition parity, wire authority)
- B.4 zone (interaction outbound)
- B.5 zone (pickup outbound + inbound despawn)

**What "M1 lands" looks like:** the existing Holtburg traversal works as a
retail player would expect. Doorways are walkable. Buildings have solid
walls. Outdoor cell seams report the right cell. Clicking an NPC selects it
and produces NPC chat. The Use action opens doors. F picks up items at
close range and the player sees "You pick up the X." in chat.

---

### M1.5 — "Indoor world feels right" — ✅ LANDED 2026-07-10 (building/cellar demo + full dungeon round-trip both user-gated; EXTENDED 2026-06-13 to include dungeon support / Phase G.3)

**✅ M1.5 LANDED 2026-07-10.** The indoor world reads as solid end-to-end.
A player can walk into a building and climb a multi-floor inn without
sling-out or wall-clip; descend a cottage cellar and ascend without falling
through; and — the piece that extended this milestone — **enter a dungeon
via portal, navigate its rooms, and portal back out to the outdoor world**,
with walls blocking, lighting reading correctly, and no position desync.
Both demo halves are user-gated: the building/cellar demo across the 2026-06
sessions, and the full dungeon round-trip (enter + navigate re-confirmed,
then the exit round-trip confirmed) on 2026-07-10. Dungeon support (full
Phase G.3) shipped with every sub-piece individually gated: teleport-in
(#133), collision (#137), portal-graph visibility (#95), doors (#187/#188),
lighting (#79/#93/#80). The indoor-physics workarounds (#90 stickiness +
`TryFindIndoorWalkablePlane` synthesis) were removed by A6.P4 — no duct-tape
left. **Explicit caveats carried forward (NOT M1.5 blockers — tracked as
their own follow-ups):** the far-town teleport-OUT arrival cascade
(#145-residual, REOPENED — a narrow far-teleport streaming edge case,
capture-harness-first) and #116 slide-response feel-debt. Next: **M2 —
"Kill a drudge."**

**EXTENDED 2026-06-13 — dungeons pulled into M1.5 scope; G.3 SHIPPED.** The
building/cellar demo (below) is DONE + user-gated. Attempting the dungeon
demo initially surfaced that dungeons didn't work AT ALL — terrain-less
dungeon landblocks appeared unsupported anywhere in the streaming/load/
render/physics pipeline (`LandblockLoader.Load` returning null, no terrain
mesh, teleport snap Resolving before hydration — issue #133). That premise
was refuted at design time (commit `90786c19`: the dungeon `LandBlock` is
flat-terrain and streams via the existing pipeline). The user chose the
FULL Phase G.3 scope (dungeon streaming + portal-space loading screen +
multi-landblock dungeon LOD + `PlayerTeleport` handling), and it has since
**SHIPPED**: teleport-into-dungeon (G.3a hold-until-hydrate FSM closes
#133), dungeon collision (#137 CLOSED), the #95 portal-graph visibility
blowup (RESOLVED), dungeon doors (#187/#188), and A7 dungeon lighting
(#79/#93/#80/#154, all CLOSED). M1.5's dungeon-demo scenario (enter via
portal, navigate 3-5 rooms, walls block, smooth transitions) is
functionally met; M1.5 now awaits ONE recorded end-to-end dungeon
round-trip user gate. The sole remaining live-code residual is the
far-town teleport-OUT arrival cascade (**#145-residual, REOPENED** — see
below).

**Building/cellar demo — DONE + user-gated.** The indoor world reads as
solid. Across the
2026-06 sessions the holistic retail-faithful render port (Option A: ONE
`DrawInside(viewer_cell)`, no inside/outside branch — BR-2..BR-7 / T1..T6)
shipped and was user-gated, and the indoor physics/membership family was
brought to retail fidelity (the A6.P4 per-cell shadow architecture; the
#107/#111/#112 spawn + membership fixes; the cellar-lip wedge). End-to-end,
user-gated this milestone: walk into a building and climb a multi-floor inn
without sling-out or wall-clip; descend a cottage cellar and ascend it
without falling through (the #98 + cellar-lip + #108 grass-window closes);
walls block everywhere (indoor + stab-shell, the #99 door run-through
closed); cell transitions are smooth (the doorway "flap" family killed —
#119/#128, #112, #113, #124, #129/#130/#131/#132, #108-residual, #127 all
closed with user gates). The #90-stickiness + `TryFindIndoorWalkablePlane`
synthesis workarounds were removed by A6.P4. Remaining feel-level debt is
tracked (#116 slide-response, partial Ghidra fix shipped). A7 indoor/
dungeon lighting fidelity CLOSED 2026-07-09 (#79/#93/#80/#154).

**Interleaved parity tracks (reconciled 2026-07-04 — NOT milestones).** Two
work streams have run alongside M1.5, both driven by the user's live
side-by-side-vs-retail sessions, both issue-level per the operating rules
(observed defects → ISSUES → fix → user gate), and both stay subordinate
to M1.5 rather than becoming milestones of their own: (1) **D.2b retail
UI** — inventory window / paperdoll / item interaction shipped and gated;
next container-switching (`claude-memory/project_d2b_retail_ui.md`);
(2) **the R5 movement-manager arc — DONE 2026-07-05** — the retail
MovementManager family port (TargetManager voyeur system V2,
StickyManager/PositionManager V3, V4 behavioral items, V5 MovementManager
facade — every entity now holds ONE `MovementManager` owning its
interp+moveto pair) that closed the #170 chase-slide and #171 pack-melee
gates (`docs/research/2026-07-03-r5-managers/r5-wiring-handoff.md` has the
arc close-out). Rationale:
rule 1's "one active milestone" governs where NEW scope goes — these
tracks fix observed retail-parity defects in already-shipped systems,
which the operating rules have always allowed; declaring them milestones
would manufacture scope where a tactical ledger (ISSUES + handoffs)
already carries them.

**Modern Pipeline side track (Track MP — user-commissioned 2026-07-05; NOT
a milestone, NOT part of M1.5).** A performance modernization arc (baked
asset pipeline → retail distance-degrade → ECS render world with delta
submission → zero-alloc frame loop) targeting smoothness first, then 300+
FPS in dense towns. Spec:
`docs/superpowers/specs/2026-07-05-modern-pipeline-design.md`; phase table
in the roadmap ("Track MP"). **Freeze exception (explicit, user-authorized
2026-07-05):** this track may reopen the otherwise-frozen streaming and
WB-rendering subsystems — but only under its own gated phases (pixel- and
feel-identical conformance gates, legacy path deleted at each gate), never
as ad-hoc rework. Rule 2's freeze still binds all NON-MP work. MP runs in
dedicated side-track sessions; the M1.5 critical path wins every conflict,
and MP4 is hard-queued behind #137.

**Dungeon support (Phase G.3, issue #133) — SHIPPED.** The original
premise here (terrain-less dungeon landblocks unsupported anywhere in the
streaming/load/render/physics pipeline) was refuted at design time
(commit `90786c19`: the dungeon `LandBlock` is flat-terrain and streams
via the existing pipeline). Full G.3 scope (streaming + portal-space
loading screen + multi-landblock LOD + `PlayerTeleport` handling) has
shipped: teleport-into-dungeon (G.3a hold-until-hydrate FSM,
`7947d7a`/`2ce5e5c8`/`47ae237e`) closed #133; dungeon collision closed
#137 (`0efa7ed2`); the #95 portal-graph visibility blowup RESOLVED
(9.1M→~39k instances, `a40c38e8`); dungeon doors shipped (#187
`e2e285b8`, #188 `3284dd0a`); A7 dungeon lighting closed
(#79/#93/#80/#154, `44cced71`/`d275ed55`/`9ebb2060`). Remaining: one
recorded end-to-end dungeon round-trip user gate, plus the far-town
teleport-OUT arrival cascade residual (**#145-residual, REOPENED** —
capture-harness-first).

---

#### (historical M1.5 working notes below)

🔵 ACTIVE (resumed 2026-05-21 after Phase O ship)

**2026-05-30 — render-pipeline pivot.** The indoor *rendering* seam (seamless
in/out: the flap, missing/transparent walls, terrain bleed) will be solved by a
**single unified retail-faithful render pipeline (Phase U)**, replacing the
abandoned two-pipe inside/outside split (A8/A8.F, issue #103). The two-pipe split
is a WorldBuilder inheritance; retail uses one portal-visibility pass and is
seamless by construction. Decision + scope:
[`docs/research/2026-05-30-unified-render-pipeline-decision-and-handoff.md`](../research/2026-05-30-unified-render-pipeline-decision-and-handoff.md).
Camera-collision + a physics viewer-cap fix shipped 2026-05-30 and are kept (they
were a detour from the real seam fix, but retail-faithful and worth keeping). A6
(physics) and A7 (lighting) are unaffected.

**Phase O — DatPath Unification — shipped 2026-05-21.** ONE thing
touches the DATs. ~33 WB files (~7.7K LOC) extracted into
`src/AcDream.{Core,App}/Rendering/Wb/`; project references to
`WorldBuilder.Shared` + `Chorizite.OpenGLSDLBackend` dropped;
`DefaultDatReaderWriter` eliminated. Visual side-by-side passed at
Holtburg town, inn interior, and dungeon. Phase O pre-empted M1.5
per user direction 2026-05-21; M1.5 now resumes from the 2026-05-20
baseline with no code changes lost — Phase O did not touch dat-loading
infrastructure for physics or collision, only the rendering pipeline.
M1.5's planned phases (A6 + A7) are unaffected.

**Demo scenario (updated 2026-05-21):** The original demo target was
"enter the Holtburg Sewer dungeon" but that location doesn't exist on
this ACE server (discovered during A6.P1 capture session). Additionally,
A6.P1 surfaced **issue #95** (portal-graph visibility blowup) which makes
ANY dungeon visually unusable on entry. **[SUPERSEDED — #95 RESOLVED
(9.1M→~39k instances, `a40c38e8`); dungeons ship; see M1.5 section
above.]** Demo scenario revised in two parts:

**Building/cellar demo (achievable after A6.P3 lands):**
Walk into the Holtburg inn, climb to the 2nd floor, walk around without
sling-out or wall-clip. Enter a cottage cellar, descend without falling
through. Throughout:
- Walls block — no walk-through anywhere, indoor or stab-shell.
- Stairs work — ascend + descend without falling through or stuck-in-falling.
- Items block — furniture, decorations.
- Cell transitions are smooth — no CellId ping-pong, no flicker.
- Lighting reads correctly — torchlit rooms are bright, no spotlight
  artifacts, static decorations participate in env lighting.

**Dungeon demo (blocked on issue #95 fix; promote to post-M1.5 if
the visibility bug isn't addressed in M1.5 scope):** **[SUPERSEDED — #95
RESOLVED, dungeons ship; see M1.5 section above.]**
Enter any dungeon via portal (substitute for "Holtburg Sewer"). Navigate
~3-5 rooms without rendering corruption (no see-through-walls, no
other-dungeons-rendered-inside). Walls block, stairs work, items block,
lighting correct, cell transitions smooth.

**Why this is its own milestone:** M1 landed walkable + clickable as a
specification (the doorways open, NPCs select, items pick up — all visible
in the demo target). But continued indoor testing surfaced a deep family of
physics + lighting bugs (BSP push-back distance probably diverges from
retail, per-frame ContactPlane synthesis is a known unfaithful stop-gap,
indoor lighting + item-spotlight bugs reported during 2026-05-21 sessions).
Three workarounds shipped today (#89 sphere-overlap CheckBuildingTransit,
#90 sphere-overlap stickiness, #92 spawn-cell-id seed) closed the visible
symptom at Holtburg inn, but #90 specifically is a CLAUDE.md-rules
workaround (explicit retail divergence) that needs a proper root-cause fix.
The umbrella indoor-physics issue (#83) has been open since 2026-05-19 with
multiple aborted fix attempts. Promoting this to milestone scope forces the
fix to be central, retail-anchored, and complete — not another whack-a-mole
patch.

**Phases included:**

| Phase | What it does |
|---|---|
| A6 — Indoor physics fidelity (cdb-driven) | Capture retail's per-tick BSP collision response state at 9 scenarios (4 buildings + 5 dungeon sites). Analyze the gap vs ours. Fix BSP correction paths. Remove #90 stickiness + `TryFindIndoorWalkablePlane` synthesis workarounds. |
| A7 — Indoor lighting fidelity (RenderDoc + retail-decomp) | Capture per-cell light state + per-pixel attribution at the same 9 scenarios. Analyze cell-light association, visibility culling, per-entity light direction. Fix indoor lighting + #80 (upper-floor dark) + #81 (static-stab atmospheric) + the held-item-spotlight bug. |

**Issues in scope (M1.5):**

- **#80** — Camera on 2nd floor goes very dark
- **#81** — Static building stabs don't react to atmospheric lighting
- **#83** — Indoor multi-Z walking broken (cellars, 2nd floors, intermittent falling-stuck)
- **#88** — Indoor static objects vibrate (suspected sub-step state corruption — A6.P2 maps to Finding 2 family)
- **#90** — CellId ping-pong (workaround in place; remove during A6.P4)
- **#95** — Portal-graph visibility blowup (filed 2026-05-21; **blocks the dungeon half of the M1.5 demo** but is NOT in A6 scope; either add a dedicated phase inside M1.5 to fix it OR promote the dungeon demo to post-M1.5) **[SUPERSEDED — RESOLVED, 9.1M→~39k instances, `a40c38e8`; dungeons ship; see M1.5 section above.]**
- **L-indoor** — Lighting indoors broken (file as new # during M1.5 kickoff)
- **L-spotlight** — Items projecting spotlight on walls (file as new # during M1.5 kickoff)
- **Stairs walk-through** — captured + characterized by A6.P2 (Finding 2 family); fix in A6.P3
- **2nd-floor walking** — captured + characterized by A6.P2 (Finding 2 — scen3 shows infinite CP-write ratio on flat 2nd-floor walk); fix in A6.P3
- **Cellar descent** — same physics family as stairs; fix in A6.P3
- **Indoor sling-out** (new symptom from A6.P1 scen4) — captured + mapped to A6.P2 Finding 3 (cell-resolver in ResolveCellId / CheckBuildingTransit); fix in A6.P3
- **`TryFindIndoorWalkablePlane`** — synthesis workaround removal (Bug A's original goal, finally unblocked; A6.P4)

**Frozen phases during M1.5:** all M0 + M1 phases stay frozen. Plus
specifically the recently-shipped A4 + #89 + #91 + #92 — those
land in main as the M1.5 baseline and shouldn't be revisited except as part
of A6.P4 removal of the workarounds.

**Frozen as of M1.5 landing (2026-07-10):** all M1.5 phases are now frozen
per rule 2 — the indoor render port (Option A `DrawInside(viewer_cell)`),
the A6 physics/membership family + A6.P4 per-cell shadow architecture, A7
indoor/dungeon lighting, and **full Phase G.3 dungeon support** (streaming
collapse/expand, teleport in/out, dungeon collision/lighting/doors). No
rework until M7 polish. Exempt from the freeze as still-open bugs (rule 2's
"actively broken" clause): #145-residual (far-town teleport-OUT cascade) and
#116 (slide-response) — these are tracked follow-ups, not frozen work.

**Estimated timeline:** 3–5 weeks calendar (17–26 days focused work). Bigger
than a normal milestone because lighting is open-ended (less existing
diagnostic infrastructure than physics). Could be shorter if the cdb
analysis surfaces a single-fix opportunity.

**What "M1.5 lands" looks like:** the indoor world reads as solid. Players
can navigate buildings, basements, multi-floor inns, and dungeons without
encountering walls they walk through, lighting that looks wrong, or
position glitches. The two known workarounds (#90 stickiness +
TryFindIndoorWalkablePlane synthesis) are removed; the codebase no longer
has indoor-physics "duct-tape." Dungeons are usable enough to support M2's
"kill a drudge" demo target (drudges live in dungeons; this milestone
unblocks that).

---

### M2 — "Kill a drudge" — 🔵 ACTIVE (M1.5 landed 2026-07-10)

**Demo scenario:** Equip a sword. Walk to a drudge. Swing. See "You hit
Drudge for 12 slashing damage (87%)" in chat. Watch the swing animation
play. Drudge dies, drops loot. Pick up the loot. Open the inventory panel
and see it.

**First port target when M2 starts (per the M2 combat-math research memo,
`docs/research/2026-06-04-combat-math-deep-dive.md`):**
`CombatMath.ComputeDamage` — damage-calc + armor-resists are port-ready
(ACE is the high-confidence oracle; two known scaffold bugs in
`CombatModel.cs` identified — additive attributeBonus + subtractive armor).
Hit-roll is well-documented client-side; the server sigmoid/crit +
weapon-timing (the x87 `GetPowerBarLevel` artifact) come after. NOTE: M2
was briefly started 2026-06-13 then re-deferred when M1.5 was extended to
include dungeons.

**Phases to ship:**
- **F.2 (panels)** — Inventory panel reading `ItemRepository` (data already
  shipped in F.2 base; M2 ships the visual surface).
- **F.3** — Combat math + damage flow.
- **F.5a** — Visible-at-login dev panels (Attributes, Skills, Equipped,
  Inventory list) — minimal ImGui surfaces, retail-skin deferred to M5.
- **L.1c** — Combat animation wiring (draw/sheath, attack swings by
  stance/power/height, hit reactions, evades).
- **L.1c held-object foundation (implemented and live-gated 2026-07-11)** — exact
  equipment-aware default combat mode (bow→Missile, caster→Magic) plus retail
  CreateObject/ParentEvent child attachment and per-frame hand-follow rendering.
- **L.1c inventory weapon switching (implemented 2026-07-12; live gate pending)** —
  inventory double-click ports retail's two-stage `AutoWield`: return the occupied
  primary weapon to the main pack, then any incompatible shield/ammo, waiting
  for every server move confirmation before wielding the requested
  bow/sword/caster/two-hander. The shared transaction works
  in peace and war, remains busy through the exact final `WieldObject`
  acknowledgement independently of rollback bookkeeping, and prevents rapid
  switches from overlapping or remaining stuck; ACE owns stance-specific motions and its PropertyInt 40 update
  now drives the client `CombatState`.
- **M2 item giving (implemented 2026-07-13; starter-dungeon live gate pending)** —
  a physical inventory drag released over a 3-D creature now ports
  `ItemHolder::AttemptPlaceIn3D` through the exact `GiveObjectRequest 0x00CD`
  packet, including selected partial-stack quantities and authoritative-only
  inventory mutation. Release coordinates feed the existing world picker, and
  `PlayerDescription.Options1` preserves retail's player secure-trade
  preference. See
  `docs/research/2026-07-13-retail-give-item-pseudocode.md` and issue #216.
- **M2/M3 missile, effect, and portal presentation campaign (automated Steps 0–9
  complete and independently reviewed 2026-07-14)** — named-retail projectile and
  physics-script behavior is pinned in one oracle, the complete `PhysicsDesc`
  and F754/F755 wire surfaces are parsed with retail timestamp gates, and
  `LiveEntityRuntime` now separates logical lifetime from spatial rebucketing.
  Landblock churn and equipment attachment preserve one stable local entity and
  cannot replay create-time scripts. A narrow raw-hook seam now decodes retail's
  inherited `CreateBlockingParticle` payload for both PhysicsScripts and
  Animations, while exact stored-order `PhysicsScriptTable` threshold lookup and
  Setup-versus-network default precedence are pinned by conformance tests.
  `EntityEffectController` now replays pre-create F754/F755 once in mixed order
  against the canonical local owner; the Core scheduler uses one serial FIFO per
  owner, preserves duplicates, supports deterministic delayed `CallPES`, and
  routes default/part-default hooks through the complete hook fan-out. The
  update-frame clock is published before packet/default dispatch and republished
  before animation hooks. Existing cell-less/Frozen queues pause and resume with
  retail eligibility, while new plays on an already-created cell-less owner drop;
  attached children advance through their parent. Every sink shares canonical
  `WorldEntity.Id`, and static allocator overflow fails before aliasing another
  landblock. Live SoundTable ownership is installed independently of animation
  eligibility and replaced/cleared on each PhysicsDesc application; DAT statics
  retain Setup defaults. Concurrent-safe DAT reads stay off the streaming lock; malformed
  zero-time recursive chains fail diagnostically while valid timed weather loops
  continue. The
  live-pose step now publishes exact root/indexed rigid-part transforms after
  animation and equipped-child composition, then drains animation hooks,
  PhysicsScripts, attached emitters/lights, and particle simulation in fixed
  frame order. World-released particles remain at their birth positions while
  parent-local particles follow; normal/blocking/anonymous logical emitter
  semantics are exact; pending projections skip particle updates/draw while
  retaining absolute creation times, the same emitter, and its logical ID, so
  re-entry expires elapsed state once without backlog emission. Moving Setup lights follow top-level and held-object
  roots and honor authoritative Lighting/SetLight transitions; missing emitter
  assets diagnose without a fabricated fallback. Stable Setup-part indices do
  not collapse around missing visuals, nested attachments update parent-first,
  and per-child pose buffers are reused. Rigid attachment/effect frames exclude
  visual Setup scale, attachment withdrawal cascades through descendants, and
  later pose publication recovers the complete descendant chain parent-first;
  light registration follows final projection visibility. Step 6 adds the pure
  Core retail projectile driver: 0.2-second catch-up quanta, the 50-unit/second
  clamp, final-state gravity, world-space omega, full-3D AlignPath, scaled
  Setup-local sphere sweeps, exact missile target/ethereal exclusions,
  self-shadow rejection, retail collision response, and full-cell landblock
  rebasing. Missile adds PathClipped but never PerfectClip. AP-67, TS-2, TS-10,
  TS-11, and TS-12 are retired; AP-83/AP-91 remain dormant. Step 7 attaches
  that primitive to the canonical `LiveEntityRecord`: arrows, bolts, and spell
  missiles share one body and one renderer identity across prediction,
  authoritative State/Vector/Position/Movement corrections, full-cell
  rebucketing, pending-landblock residence, delete, session reset, and GUID
  reuse. MovementManager presentation shares the same body and the canonical
  live-record cell regardless of which component was created first;
  pending/leave-world shadows retain their registration for exact re-entry even
  if Missile classification changes while pending; static missile effect
  roots follow every predicted frame, and materialized rehydration never uses a
  stale spawn cell. No impact, damage, effect, or delete event is synthesized
  client-side. Step 8 ports retail's constructor-state → PhysicsDesc
  transition, ordered Lighting/NoDraw/Hidden state side effects, DAT-driven
  typed Hidden/UnHide effects, direct-child NoDraw propagation, retained
  particles/lights, mesh/collision/interaction suppression, and exact remote
  `teleport_hook` teardown followed by a placement snap before the airborne
  gate. Ordinary visible CreateObject does not fabricate UnHide; pending
  F754/F755 packets replay only after construction-state effects. TS-43 is
  retired. Step 9 adds a deterministic 96-owner whole-lifecycle gate spanning
  projectile ticks, repeated DAT-effect plays, loaded↔pending landblock churn,
  dynamic lights, particle bindings, collision shadows, rapid deletion,
  same-GUID generation reuse, unknown pre-create effect packets, and session
  reset. A separate 96-owner renderer-seam gate balances every
  `EntitySpawnAdapter` mesh reference. Teardown now proves zero retained live
  records/bodies/projectiles, render owners, spatial buckets/rescues,
  PhysicsScript queues/anchors, effect profiles/packets, emitters/logical IDs,
  poses, lights, and active/suspended shadow registrations. The hardening pass
  also fixed undrained persistent-rescue retention and rejects queued spatial
  visibility edges that no longer match current incarnation truth. A companion
  twelve-cycle gate drives exact recall motion `0x10000153` through CallPES,
  Hidden, unloaded-destination placement, hydration, and UnHide. Logical
  teardown is incarnation-specific across callback-driven GUID reuse; per-GUID
  epochs reject create resurrection after a nested delete/reset, resource
  registration is atomic, terminal session clear rejects registrations outside
  its teardown snapshot, and visibility fan-out drains all owners before
  aggregating observer failures. Canonical cell/projection state finishes
  committing before those aggregates rethrow; per-GUID epoch tombstones survive
  accepted delete until session clear, and superseded creates cannot discard a
  prior-incarnation cleanup failure. Per-record projection tokens also prevent
  an outer rebucket/withdrawal from overwriting a replacement incarnation or a
  newer same-record projection created synchronously by an observer.
  TS-26's
  `UpdatePosition` freshness gap is retired by the nine-channel timestamp
  gates; TS-49 remains the explicit
  DetectionManager/`LeftDetection` gap. The final two-client visual gate is
  still pending.
- **L.1c local attack receive path (implemented 2026-07-11; live gate pending)** —
  local non-autonomous mt-0 UpdateMotion now uses retail's wholesale interpreted
  funnel and action-stamp gate, so ACE's server-selected melee/missile action
  drives the player's motion table; direct command-list replay is removed.
- **M2 basic combat bar (implemented 2026-07-11; live gate pending)** — authored
  `gmCombatUI` LayoutDesc `0x21000073` now pops for Melee/Missile and shares one
  press/hold/release attack-request owner across DAT buttons and keybindings.
  Retail x86 resolves full charge to 1.0 s (0.8 s dual wield), also retiring the
  guessed jump-charge timing. The corrective gate ports the right-to-left red
  meter, silent AttackDone control status, target-frame Keep in View with
  retained manual orbit, persistent corpse motion protected from the AP-80
  velocity adaptation, and post-death nearest-target acquisition when Auto
  Target is enabled. Both multi-frame and static/reactive spawns now share
  retail's wire-driven description-before-enter-world lifecycle: the corpse's
  authoritative Dead state is retained and `HandleEnterWorld` strips its
  Ready→Dead transition before the first rendered tick. Corpse persistence was
  visually confirmed live on 2026-07-12. The follow-up #205 correction makes
  the toolbar consume the final reentrant Auto Target selection and restricts
  automatic candidates to hostile non-player monsters; live gate passed
  2026-07-12. See
  `docs/research/2026-07-12-death-and-auto-target-pseudocode.md`.
- **Retail client command families (implemented 2026-07-13; corrective live gate pending)** —
  both chat surfaces now route a named-decomp command catalog into an App-layer
  controller, keeping ACE administrator verbs on the explicit server-command
  path. The implemented set covers travel, character/time queries, local UI and
  location commands, named/automatic layout persistence, AFK/consent, emotes,
  friends, squelch/filter, and fill-components, with exact Core.Net messages and
  authoritative social-state parsing. See
  `docs/research/2026-07-13-retail-client-command-families-pseudocode.md`.
  The first connected gate passed the family except for raw suicide success
  code `0x004A` and the incomplete title-bar-only FPS toggle; the corrective
  pass maps retail's success text and mounts the authored SmartBox FPS element.
  Confirmation reuse now follows retail's `DialogFactory`: fresh DAT roots,
  property-backed results, context ids, independent queues/priority, callbacks,
  close notices, and server abort handling; `/die`, gameplay requests, and
  guarded item uses share the type-1 presenter.
- **L.1b** — Command router + motion-state cleanup (prereq for L.1c).

**Freeze on landing:**
- Combat math zone
- Inventory zone (data + dev panel; retail-skin reopens in M5)
- L.1b/c combat-animation zone

**What "M2 lands" looks like:** the gameplay loop is real. You can fight,
take damage, kill things, see loot, manage your inventory. The game becomes
a game.

---

### M3 — "Cast a spell" — 🔵 (~3–4 weeks after M2)

**Demo scenario:** Cast Flame Bolt at a drudge. Watch the cast animation,
the projectile, the impact. Self-cast a buff (Strength Self). See the
enchantment in a buff list. Recall to lifestone — full recall animation,
correct teleport, correct re-spawn.

**Phases to ship:**
- **F.4** — Spell cast state machine (buffs + recalls first, projectile
  spells second).
- **L.1d** — Spell-casting animation wiring (cast command classification,
  windup, release, fizzle/interruption, recoil).
- **F.5 (Spellbook panel)** — dev-skin surface for learned spells + active
  enchantments.

**Freeze on landing:**
- F.4 spell zone
- L.1d cast-animation zone
- Spellbook dev-panel surface

**What "M3 lands" looks like:** mages are real characters. Buffs work,
recalls work, the first projectile spells work. Combat from M2 + casting
from M3 = retail-equivalent gameplay loop for melee and casters.

---

### M4 — "Live in the world" — 🔵 (~6–10 weeks)

**Demo scenario:** Create a fresh character from scratch (no ACE admin).
Spawn. Talk to an NPC. Accept a quest. Walk to a dungeon entrance. Portal
in (pink-bubble loading). Walk through the dungeon. Complete the quest.
Walk back out.

**Phases to ship:**
- **H.3** — Emote scripts + quests + dialogs (122 EmoteType × 39 Trigger
  mini-VM).
- **G.3** — Dungeon streaming + portal space + `PlayerTeleport` handling.
  (Unblocked by L.2e from M1.)
- **H.4** — Character creation (`0xE000002 CharGen` + heritages + appearance
  picker + preview).
- **L.1e** — Emote + posture animation wiring.

**Freeze on landing:**
- H.3 dialog/quest zone
- G.3 dungeon zone
- H.4 character-creation zone
- L.1e emote-animation zone

**What "M4 lands" looks like:** the world feels populated and interactive.
You can do quests, enter dungeons, create characters. Combined with M2/M3,
the client is **functionally playable** — minus visual polish.

---

### M5 — "Looks like retail" — 🟢 PARALLELIZABLE WITH M3/M4 (~4–8 weeks)

**Demo scenario:** Side-by-side screenshot of acdream vs retail at the same
location, same time of day, same character. Hard to tell apart at a glance.
Open the inventory panel — retail-skinned with the right font, icons, and
9-slice panel borders.

**Phases to ship:**
- **C.1.5c** — Sky-PES dispatch chain (closes #2 lightning, #28 aurora,
  #29 cloud thinness).
- **C.2** — Dynamic point lights (fireplaces, lamps, torches with proper
  local lighting).
- **C.3** — Palette range tuning (skin/hair/eye colors match retail).
- **C.4** — Double-sided translucent polys.
- **D.2b** — Custom retail-look UI backend. **In progress:** vitals + chat + toolbar + inventory (window manager, B-Grid, B-Controller, B-Wire, drag-drop, container-switching) + paperdoll (equip slots, 3-D doll UiViewport, Slots toggle) + **Character window** (Attributes tab, visually confirmed 2026-06-26) + **UI Studio** (standalone panel previewer + 26-window retail dump + interactive click-routing + headless screenshot) + **importer dat-fidelity** (Fix A/B/C: justification, FontColor, per-element FontDid resolver [studio-only; #157 tracks live-game path]) are shipped. Current campaign: shared retained-widget/window architecture, then selected-object mana/stack completion. **Retail correction:** the main toolbar is object-only; the eight favorite-spell lists drive separate spell bars. Execution plan: `docs/superpowers/plans/2026-07-10-retail-ui-fidelity-completion.md`.
- **D.3–D.7** — AcFont + dat sprites + core panels reskinned + HUD +
  cursor manager. **D.6 radar/compass shipped 2026-07-10 and the separate retail
  jump power bar was implemented 2026-07-13; D.7 complete retail
  cursor catalog/precedence shipped and user-confirmed 2026-07-11.** The radar uses the retained
  UI architecture using the retail DAT layout and recovered runtime behavior;
  the jump bar uses the same retained composition with movement-owned charge timing.
  Live-game visual confirmation remains the user gate.
- **L.1f** — NPC/monster + item-use animation coverage.

**Freeze on landing:**
- Visual polish zone (C.1.5c, C.2, C.3, C.4)
- D.2b → D.7 UI-skin zone
- L.1f NPC-anim zone

**What "M5 lands" looks like:** the client visually convinces. Screenshots
become postable. The "old / broken vs retail" feeling that drives most of
the chronic ISSUES.md entries is gone.

---

### M6 — "Plugins ship" — 🟢 (~4 weeks)

**Demo scenario:** A third party (not you) writes a small plugin against
the published API — XP tracker, loot logger, simple chat filter — and it
loads cleanly. Sample plugin lives in the repo with documented build steps.

**Phases to ship:**
- Plugin API surface: stable contract over `AcDream.Core` + `AcDream.UI.Abstractions`,
  versioned, with the world-state interfaces exposed.
- Plugin host: load isolation, lifecycle, error containment.
- Sample plugin (XP tracker or loot logger) — proves the API by using it.
- Plugin docs page.

**Freeze on landing:**
- Plugin API v1 surface (additive changes only post-freeze).

**What "M6 lands" looks like:** the differentiator vs the retail client is
real. acdream offers something retail never did, and the API is documented
well enough that other people can build on it.

---

### M7 — "v1.0" — 🟢 (open-ended polish)

**Demo scenario:** Long-running stress test: log in, play for 4 hours
across outdoor + dungeon + portal + combat + spell + chat scenarios,
reconnect once mid-session, log out clean. No crashes, no protocol errors,
no visual regressions, no audio dropouts.

**Phases to ship:**
- **Phase M** — Network stack conformance (retransmit, ACK piggybacking,
  echo/keepalive, fragment splitting, typed actions). Deferred until now
  because ACE handles loss gracefully — but v1.0 needs proper network
  hardening.
- **H.2** — Allegiance.
- **N.6 slice 2 + N.7–N.10** — Finish WB rendering migration (EnvCells,
  sky/particles via WB, visibility manager, GL infrastructure
  consolidation).
- **Phase J long-tail** — Player rig polish, group/fellowship UI, trade
  window, salvage/tinker UI, house ownership, society UI, dev-mode tools.
- **L.1g** — Animation polish + conformance.
- Final visual + audio polish pass against ISSUES.md chronic backlog.

**What "M7 lands" looks like:** v1.0. Ship.

---

## Estimated timeline

| Milestone | Effort | Cumulative |
|---|---|---|
| M0 | DONE | DONE |
| M1 | ~4–6 wk | ~5 wk |
| M2 | ~6–10 wk | ~13 wk |
| M3 | ~3–4 wk | ~17 wk |
| M4 | ~6–10 wk | ~25 wk |
| M5 | ~4–8 wk (parallel) | overlaps M3/M4 |
| M6 | ~4 wk | ~29 wk |
| M7 | open-ended | v1.0 |

**Roughly 9–12 months of focused solo work from 2026-05-12 to v1.0.** That's
honest for an open-source project of this scale. The biggest single rock is
M2 (combat math + animations + inventory panels lining up); M5 can be
chipped at in parallel by subagents while you drive M3/M4.

---

## What this document is **not**

- **Not a release schedule.** Internal morale + scope layer only. If acdream
  goes public-alpha at some point, that's a separate decision built on top
  of one of these milestones.
- **Not immutable.** When reality and the milestones diverge, update the
  milestones in the same session you discover the divergence. Same rule as
  the roadmap.
- **Not a replacement for the roadmap.** Phases are still where the
  implementation details live. This doc is the orientation layer above them.
- **Not granular enough for daily work.** Daily work happens at the phase /
  sub-phase / commit level. The milestone is the multi-week target you're
  aiming at.