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HEXWORK - A Lantern in the Deep: 3D ASCII terminal roguelike RPG in Rust.
Entirely designed and built by Muse Spark 1.3 to evaluate if I like the model.
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hexwork docs
31 files
README.md
HEXWORK — A Lantern in the Deep #
Pre-Production Bible — Index #
Logline: The Witcher meets NetHack inside a dead god-machine, rendered as 3D ASCII in your terminal. A first-person/orbitable 3D roguelike RPG. Witcher-and-Elder-Scrolls-style low fantasy on the surface; retro-futurist machine-ruin underneath. Emergent, systemic, unapologetically cruel — but every cruelty is deducible, every death is a story, and every system compounds with every other system in 3D space.
| # | Document | Audience | Answers |
|---|---|---|---|
| 00 | Vision Pitch | The suits | Why this game, why now, why us, what it costs |
| 01 | Player Experience | Everyone | What players see, do, feel, think — minute by minute |
| 02 | Lore Bible | Writers, designers, artists | The world of Vael, the Aetherium, gods, factions, tone |
| 03 | Systems Design | Designers, engineers | Every feature: items, magic, NPCs, dungeons, emergent sim |
| 04 | Software Architecture | Engineers | Rust workspace, crates, sim, ECS, data flow, saves, tests |
| 05 | Renderer Spec | Engine team | How 3D ASCII actually works, looks, and performs |
| 06 | Implementation Checklist | Everyone | Ordered checkbox list to ship the game start → finish |
Design laws (memorize these; they govern every doc):
- TDTTOE — The Devteam Thinks Of Everything. Any interaction the systems imply must work. If acid melts iron grates, it melts iron helmets.
- HWISKT — "How Was I Supposed To Know That?" is a compliment — but only when the answer is "by reasoning about consistent rules." Never random gotchas. Deducible cruelty only.
- Illiteracy, not nostalgia. The goal is making veterans feel like first-time NetHack players again. Verticality + 3D physics + machine-law magic exist to break expert instincts.
- Every death is a story. Permadeath stays. Death replays (
.hexdemofiles) ship in v1. If a death isn't worth retelling, the system that caused it is unfinished. - Modern kindness, ancient soul. Auto-explore, message log, search, colorblind and screen-reader support — QoL is sacred. Hand-holding is not.