2c1c784c8c
Output of a brainstorming session after Phase 6/7.1/9.1/9.2 shipped and the lifestone crystal bug was isolated. Two documents: 1. docs/plans/2026-04-11-roadmap.md — strategic roadmap replacing the stale post-Phase-5 version. Reflects what's actually shipped, reorganizes upcoming work into Phases A (Foundation), B (Gameplay), C (Polish — includes VFX/particles, dynamic lights, palette tuning, double-sided translucents), D (UI + Sound), and E (long-tail). Updates the "when will my complaint be fixed" quick-lookup with the correct phase for portals (VFX, not shader tricks as previously claimed), smoke, fireplace fire, and everything we fixed this session. Phase ordering: A → B → (C/D in parallel) → E. 2. docs/superpowers/specs/2026-04-11-foundation-phase-design.md — detailed implementation spec for Phase A only. Covers the four sub-pieces (streaming landblock loader, frustum culling, net I/O thread, async dat decoding folded into the streaming worker), their components, data flow, error handling, testing strategy, and commit-point ordering. Includes non-goals to prevent scope creep. No code changes yet. The spec goes to user review next, then into the writing-plans skill for a detailed implementation plan. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.6 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
173 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
173 lines
11 KiB
Markdown
# acdream — strategic roadmap
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**Status:** Living document. Updated 2026-04-11 after Phase 6, 7.1, 9.1, 9.2 landed.
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**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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---
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## Phases already shipped
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| Phase | What landed | Verification |
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|---|---|---|
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| 1 | Terrain rendering, plugin host scaffold | Visual ✓ |
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| 2a | Static stabs/buildings (126 entities) | Visual ✓ |
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| 2b | Textured 3×3 landblock grid + FlyCamera + IGameState | Visual ✓ |
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| 2c | Procedural scenery (419 trees/rocks/bushes) | Visual ✓ |
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| 2d | Interior EnvCell walker (475 static interior objects) | Visual ✓ |
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| 3a/3b | Directional sun lighting + per-vertex terrain normals | Visual ✓ |
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| 3c | Per-cell terrain texture blending (alpha atlas) | Visual ✓ |
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| 4 | Full UDP codec + handshake + character login + WorldSession | Live ✓ |
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| 5 | ObjDesc: AnimPartChange + TextureChanges + SubPalettes + ObjScale + Placement.Resting | Live ✓ |
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| 6.1 | Idle motion frame resolution (MotionResolver MVP) | Live ✓ |
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| 6.2 | Server-sent `MovementData` stance + forward command honored | Live ✓ |
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| 6.3 | Server-supplied `MotionTableId` override (fixes drudge statue) | Live ✓ |
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| 6.4 | Per-frame animation playback (breathing, idle cycles) | Live ✓ |
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| 6.5 | Slerp between keyframes for smooth animation | Live ✓ |
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| 6.6 | `UpdateMotion` (0xF74C) parser + dispatch to animation tick | Live ✓ |
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| 6.7 | `UpdatePosition` (0xF748) parser + position reseating | Live ✓ |
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| 7.1 | EnvCell room geometry — walls/floors/ceilings via CellStruct + Environment dats | Visual ✓ |
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| 9.1 | Translucent render pass (AlphaBlend / Additive / InvAlpha + per-kind blend funcs) | Visual ✓ |
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| 9.2 | Back-face culling in translucent pass (fixes lifestone crystal) | Visual ✓ |
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Plus polish that doesn't get its own phase number:
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- FlyCamera default speed lowered + Shift-to-boost
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- SurfaceDecoder: PFID_P8 / PFID_R8G8B8 / PFID_X8R8G8B8 decoders
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- GfxObjMesh: emit both pos and neg sides of double-sided polygons
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- EnvCell mesh Z-lift to fix ground-floor / terrain flicker
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---
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## Phases ahead — agreed order
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### Phase A — Foundation (next)
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**Goal:** walk across 10+ landblocks without crashes, without hitches at landblock boundaries, and without framerate cratering.
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**Sub-pieces:**
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- **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.
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- **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.
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- **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.
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- **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.
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**Acceptance:**
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- Walk across 10+ landblocks in any direction, no crashes, no empty voids.
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- Landblock-boundary crossings produce no visible hitch.
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- Runtime window radius toggleable via environment variable.
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**Detailed spec:** `docs/superpowers/specs/2026-04-11-foundation-phase-design.md`
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---
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### Phase B — Gameplay / interaction
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**Goal:** actually play the game — walk the character on the server, click NPCs, pick up items, chat, basic combat loop.
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**Sub-pieces:**
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- **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.
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- **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.
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- **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.
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- **B.4 — `Use` / `UseWithTarget` / `PickUp`.** Outbound interaction messages. Drives opening doors, looting, talking to vendors.
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- **B.5 — Chat.** `SendTell`, `SendChat` outbound + receive/display inbound (display side depends on Phase D.1).
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**References:**
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- `references/ACE/Source/ACE.Server/Network/Handlers/MovementHandler.cs`
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- `references/ACE/Source/ACE.Server/Network/Handlers/UseObjectHandler.cs`
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- `references/holtburger/src/session/send.rs` for outbound packet-building patterns
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**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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---
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### Phase C — Polish / visuals
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**Goal:** close the visible gaps that make the world read as "old / broken" compared to retail.
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**Sub-pieces:**
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- **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.
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- **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.
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- **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.
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- **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.
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- **C.5 — Shadow mapping (optional).** Deferred unless it becomes a bottleneck in screenshots — dynamic shadows are a known complexity trap.
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**References:**
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- `references/ACE/Source/ACE.DatLoader/FileTypes/PhysicsScript.cs` for the emitter schema
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- `references/ACViewer/ACViewer/Physics/Particles/` for the visual model
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- `references/WorldBuilder/Chorizite.OpenGLSDLBackend/Lib/ParticleBatcher.cs` for the Silk.NET-flavored implementation
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**Acceptance:** portals look like swirly gates, chimneys smoke, fireplaces burn, character skin matches retail screenshots.
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---
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### Phase D — UI / HUD + Sound
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**Goal:** chat window, nameplates, inventory, and audio. Can run concurrently with Phase B or C because it doesn't touch gameplay/net/rendering surfaces.
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**Sub-pieces:**
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- **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.
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- **D.2 — Chat window + nameplates.** First UI widgets. Chat consumes Phase B.5 messages; nameplates render per-entity 3D-to-2D projected labels.
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- **D.3 — Inventory / character / spell panels.** Requires a widget framework (layout, focus, input routing). Scope unbounded — ship minimum viable first.
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- **D.4 — Sound.** `SoundTable` parser, `Sound` dat decode, audio engine (OpenAL via Silk.NET.OpenAL), per-entity 3D positional audio, optional music.
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**Acceptance:** see other players' chat in a chat window, see nameplates above NPCs, hear footsteps and sword hits.
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---
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### Phase E — Long-tail
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Not detailed here; each gets its own brainstorm when it becomes relevant.
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- **Dungeon landblocks** (`0xAAAA0000` family) + teleport-on-door-click + server-side portal handling
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- **Phase 7.2 multi-floor stair walking** — cells reachable via portals the cell-walker doesn't cross
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- **Player character full rig** (held weapons, spell effects, death/revive animation)
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- **Weather + day/night cycle**
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- **Spellcasting pipeline**
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- **Group/fellowship UI**
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---
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## Cross-cutting work tracked in parallel
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- **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.
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- **Memory files.** Project state under `memory/project_phase_*_state.md` is updated when a phase ships. `MEMORY.md` is the index.
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- **`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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---
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## Explicitly out of scope
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- **Server emulation** — we use ACE for server, never reimplement.
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- **Account creation** — direct user to ACE tooling.
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- **Anti-cheat / GM tools / live-ops** — irrelevant for personal use.
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- **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.
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- **Custom game content** — this is a client for existing AC data, not a toolchain.
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---
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## "When will my specific complaint be fixed?" — quick lookup
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| Observation | Phase |
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|---|---|
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| Drudge statue in wrong pose | **6.3 FIXED** ✓ |
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| Characters in T-pose / wrong idle | **6.1 FIXED** ✓ |
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| No breathing on NPCs | **6.4 + sentinel fix FIXED** ✓ |
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| Lifestone crystal has one side missing | **9.2 FIXED** ✓ |
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| Ground floor flickering with terrain | **7.1 FIXED** ✓ |
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| Houses missing second floors / walls | **7.1 FIXED** ✓ (interior mesh landed) |
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| Character clothing missing / wrong | **5 FIXED** ✓ |
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| Statue wrong color / wrong scale | **5 FIXED** ✓ |
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| Holtburg sign half-buried | **5 FIXED** ✓ |
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| Can't walk past the loaded 3×3 window | **Phase A (Foundation)** |
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| Frame hitch crossing landblock boundary | **Phase A** |
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| Walking around doesn't move me on the server | **Phase B (Gameplay)** |
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| Can't talk to NPCs | **Phase B** |
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| Can't open a door | **Phase B** |
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| Portals render as a rotating black disk | **Phase C.1 (VFX)** |
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| Chimneys have no smoke | **Phase C.1** |
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| Houses have no fireplace fire | **Phase C.1** |
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| No fireplace / torch lighting | **Phase C.2** |
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| Skin/hair color slightly off | **Phase C.3** |
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| No chat window | **Phase D.2** |
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| No sound | **Phase D.4** |
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| Dungeons / foundry interior missing | **Phase E** |
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If you see something not on this list, add it here and assign a phase.
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