The game is built like a theater.

• Narrator decides what happens.
• History creates Roles.
• Actors fill those Roles.
• Stage Manager decides how everything is presented.

Actors never create history.

History never cares what an Actor looks like.

The Stage Manager owns all presentation.

Stage Manager

The Stage Manager has become the presentation layer for the entire engine.

Responsibilities:

• 32-color palette
• semantic color meanings
• costume decks
• actor sprites
• tactical prefabs
• UI meanings
• strategic/tactical meanings
• galaxy meanings

Simulation scripts never choose colors or sprites directly.

Instead they ask:

StageManager.Instance.GetColor(index);  StageManager.Instance.GetActorSprite(actor); 

Stage Palette

Created a StagePalette asset that stores all 32 colors.

Each StageColorEntry contains:

Index Color Name Unity Color  Emotion Meaning Personality Meaning  Material Meaning Blackbody Temperature (Kelvin)  Galaxy Meaning Planet Meaning Strategic Meaning Tactical Meaning UI Meaning  Timeline Meaning Window Meaning Panel Meaning Card Meaning Button Meaning Selection Meaning Warning Meaning  Sprites Materials Prefabs 

The palette is intended to be the universal language of the game.

Example:

Black

Galaxy Void

Strategic Destroyed area

Tactical Rubble

Emotion No emotion

Material Void

White

Everything at once.

Creation.

Observation.

Yellow

Star

Sand

Joy

etc.

Blackbody Scale

Every palette color now has an approximate blackbody temperature.

Examples

Black 0 K  Gray 700 K  Brown 1400 K  Orange 2500 K  Yellow 5600 K  Green 6000 K  Blue 18000 K  Purple 28000 K  Magenta 35000 K  Radioactive 1,000,000 K  Hero White 999,999,999 K 

These will later drive

• stars
• heat
• radiation
• force powers
• energy visualization

Costume System

Created CostumeDeck ScriptableObjects.

Current decks planned:

CosmicBeingDeck CitizenDeck HeroDeck TroopDeck LifeformDeck 

Actors store

costumeDeckId  costumeSpriteIndex 

The Stage Manager assigns costumes.

Actors never choose costumes themselves.

Emotion Wheel

Major milestone.

Cosmic Beings now appear around the emotion wheel.

Pipeline:

Narrative  ↓  Role  ↓  Actor  ↓  Stage Manager  ↓  Costume Deck  ↓  Sprite  ↓  Emotion Wheel 

Currently

Four Actors appear around the wheel.

All four currently use the same silhouette (likely costume assignment bug).

Cosmic Beings

Important design decision.

Cosmic Beings have no locality.

Therefore they do NOT exist on

• galaxy map
• planet map
• strategic map
• tactical map

Instead they exist on the Emotion Wheel.

The Emotion Wheel is not a waiting room.

It is their coordinate system.

If they later manifest physically they can simultaneously have

Emotion Wheel sprite

Galaxy manifestation

Planet manifestation

Tactical manifestation

without changing Actor identity.

Roles

Current system

Narrative Cards create Roles directly.

Example

FIRST_SUPERHERO

creates

ROLE_FIRST_SUPERHERO

Future architecture

Narrative Cards  ↓  Role Cards  ↓  Actors 

This will make Roles reusable and data-driven.

Card Database

Currently contains

Narrative Cards

Occupation Cards

Future planned

Origin Cards

Power Cards

Technology Cards

Force Cards

Organization Cards

Form Cards

etc.

Time

Major design decision.

Time is event driven.

Not tick driven.

Concept

Resolve Event  ↓  Resolve next Event  ↓  Resolve next Event  ↓  If no valid events occur  quietTicks++  ↓  quietTicks exceeds threshold  ↓  Era Ends 

History advances because events happen.

Not because clocks tick.

UI

Created a blank retro comic-book UI layout.

Four main windows

Galaxy

Planet

Strategic

Tactical

Bottom

Timeline

Left

Emotion Wheel

Right

Cards / Logs

Plan is for each viewport to be expandable to fullscreen.

Using RenderTextures displayed inside RawImages.

Cameras

Each major layer will eventually have its own camera.

Galaxy Camera  Planet Camera  Strategic Camera  Tactical Camera 

Displayed through RawImages on Canvas.

Each window can expand to fullscreen.

Current Bug

Emotion Wheel works.

Only identical silhouettes appear.

Likely causes

• costumeSpriteIndex always zero

or

• presenter always requesting sprite zero.

Need to debug costume assignment.

Immediate Next Goals

1. Fix costume sprite assignment so different silhouettes appear.
2. Finish expandable camera windows.
3. Give Cosmic Being icons Stage Palette colors.
4. Create true Role Cards.
5. Begin event-driven Era progression.

This session established the presentation architecture of the engine. The biggest milestone was getting the first Actors visually represented on the Emotion Wheel through the complete chain of Narrative → Role → Actor → Stage Manager → Costume Deck → UI. That confirms the core "Actors on a stage" design is working end to end.