acdream/docs

acdream documentation map

This page is the entry point for project documentation. It distinguishes current sources of truth from implementation history so an old plan or issue banner cannot silently override the current program state.

Current snapshot — 2026-07-26

• Milestone state: M3, “Cast a spell,” landed 2026-07-21. M4, “Live in the world,” is active.
• M4 gameplay program (paused while the authorized performance program executes): the pre-M4 world-interaction completion program in plans/2026-07-23-world-interaction-completion.md. The eight-slice GameWindow decomposition and its connected visual matrix are complete.
• Current active engineering program: Slices A–I and J0–J5 of plans/2026-07-24-modern-runtime-architecture.md are complete. Production uses prepared world/collision packages, typed residence, retained render-scene/delta submission, bounded frame owners, and flat-authoritative collision without parsed-graph production residency. Runtime owns canonical session/transport, entity/object lifetime, J4 gameplay state, selection/interaction transactions, and combat/magic intent. App materialized projections and retained widgets borrow exact Runtime identity and action owners. Runtime also owns the sole per-session physics, collision, body/host, remote/projectile simulation, and cell-commit graph. J5 closed at cdee7a4b with one combined simulation ledger, a Runtime-only movement/use/combat/cast/projectile host, 8,596 complete Release tests / 5 skips, and exact-binary lifecycle plus nine-stop gates. J6 world/portal/environment and projection-handshake ownership is active in plans/2026-07-25-modern-runtime-slice-j.md.
• Completed gates: R6 locomotion/collision/projectile/teleport/radar and the final two-client portal-out/materialization observer comparison (#218).
• Separate visual verification: the shared-alpha lifestone/particle result in #225; its connected resource-lifetime and performance routes pass.
• Carried behavior debt: #153 (far teleport onto an unstreamed edge), #116 (two narrowed slide-response cases), and divergence rows TS-50/TS-51.
• Active engineering track: Slice J's presentation-independent runtime, composition root, shared generation reset, and no-window closeout are complete. Build the approved Linux/headless multi-session host in Slice K. K0 is complete and K1 is active. K0's exact rollback is git revert aada8a37c1e933f9f0a3f41dc4f05615b01023bc.
• Divergence audit: 178 active rows — IA 17, AD 37, AP 85, TS 34, and UN 5 — plus the retained retired TS-37 history note.
• Latest automated baseline: Release build succeeds; 8,708 tests pass and five are intentionally skipped. The exact J8 lifecycle/reconnect and canonical nine-stop gates match embedded binary/source commit, converge every backlog, and complete with graceful zero-code exits and zero failures.

Sources of truth

Read these in this order when deciding what to do next:

1. plans/2026-05-12-milestones.md — the active playable outcome, freeze boundaries, and visual gates.
2. plans/2026-04-11-roadmap.md — strategic phase ledger: shipped, active, deferred, and future work.
3. ISSUES.md — tactical defects and small follow-ups. The status inside an issue is authoritative; physical order is not.
4. architecture/retail-divergence-register.md — every known place runtime behavior can differ from retail.
5. architecture/acdream-architecture.md and architecture/code-structure.md — ownership, dependency, update-thread, and extraction rules.
6. architecture/worldbuilder-inventory.md — rendering/DAT code already owned in-tree versus mechanisms still ours to port.

If these disagree, milestones control the current outcome, the roadmap controls work ordering, the issue status controls the individual defect, and the architecture documents control implementation shape. Reconcile the stale document in the same change; do not leave both claims standing.

Research and implementation records

• research/named-retail/ is the primary retail oracle: named pseudo-C, headers, symbols, and types from the Sept 2013 build.
• research/decompiled/ is the older Ghidra fallback.
• research/ contains focused pseudocode, traces, fixtures, and gate reports. A dated research note records evidence; it does not become a new roadmap.
• superpowers/specs/ and superpowers/plans/ are per-slice design and execution records. Completed plans remain historical.
• audit/ contains completion and conformance audits.
• reference/ace-commands.md preserves the local ACE server's complete in-game command catalog and points to the authoritative per-command help surface.

Durable memory

• ../claude-memory/MEMORY.md indexes the live subsystem memories and the render/physics digests. Read a domain digest before changing that subsystem, especially its DO-NOT-RETRY table.
• ../memory/ contains stable engineering references such as the modern rendering pipeline, two-tier streaming, and toolchain notes.

Memory accelerates recall; it does not outrank the canonical documents above. When current truth changes, update the relevant canonical document and distill only the durable lesson into memory.

Historical and deprecated documents

• bugs.md is the April 2026 bug snapshot. It is preserved for archaeology and is not an active ledger.
• Dated plans and specs describe the decision at that time. Their completion wording is historical unless the current milestone/roadmap explicitly links the item as active.
• Old R1→R8 architecture sequencing is superseded. Current execution comes from the milestones and strategic roadmap.

Documentation maintenance rules

• Update milestone, roadmap, issue, divergence, architecture, and memory claims in the same commit when a shipped change affects them.
• Keep one issue ID per defect. Narrow an issue in place; do not reuse another issue's number as a shorthand.
• Mark automated, connected, and visual gates separately. An automated pass is not a visual acceptance, and an RDP throughput sample is not a local-display visual comparison.
• Preserve research history, but remove stale “current/next” claims from living documents once the state advances.