achimala/thelongsilence

Purpose and Runtime

THE LONG SILENCE is a browser-based procedural space-exploration game. It runs as a Vite-built WebGL2 application, with procedural geometry, hand-written GLSL, and WebAudio rather than authored runtime content. Browser startup flows from index.html to src/main.js; deployment is static-oriented, with Cloudflare configuration in wrangler.jsonc.

Application Composition

src/main.js assembles the runtime. src/core/Engine.js owns the Three/WebGL renderer, frame loop, dynamic render-scale/quality behavior, and scene-level rendering. src/core/Input.js normalizes desktop and touch controls into gameplay actions. src/game/Game.js is the primary world-state coordinator; src/game/Director.js sequences cinematic or scripted moments.

Flight, Progression, and World-State Control

Gameplay state centers on the player ship, scans, landing, fold travel, map navigation, discoveries, and progression toward the seven Resonators. src/game/Game.js coordinates these systems, while src/game/directives.js, src/game/encounters.js, and src/game/lore.js define authored progression/event content. A floating-origin boundary is fundamental: the ship remains near world origin and distant system objects are transformed relative to it each frame.

Seeded Universe and Spatial Modes

Universe generation is deterministic and seed-driven in src/world/generate.js. Orbital content is split into specialized procedural entities: src/world/Planet.js, src/world/Star.js, src/world/Station.js, src/world/Fleet.js, src/world/Asteroids.js, and src/world/Dust.js. Traffic is clock-derived analytic motion rather than persistent physics simulation, allowing stable positions after time skips and fold jumps.

Landing changes the rendering/world representation: src/world/Surface.js provides close-range radial terrain, while src/world/Planet.js represents worlds from orbit. These modes must share terrain and atmospheric assumptions to avoid discontinuities.

Ship and Shared Construction Kit

src/ship/Ship.js and src/ship/Player.js implement the vessel and flight-facing player representation. The interior/cockpit experience is separately composed through src/ship/Interior.js, src/ship/Cockpit.js, src/ship/HoloMap.js, and src/ship/HoloScreen.js. Shared hard-surface construction and surfacing lives in src/gfx/greeble.js; it underpins the player hull, stations, fleets, and derelicts, establishing a common material/draw-call strategy.

Rendering Pipeline and Performance Boundaries

Rendering features are layered around src/core/Engine.js, src/gfx/PostFX.js, and src/gfx/Sky.js. src/gfx/cubeBake.js bakes procedural planet cubemaps so costly terrain evaluation is not performed per visible pixel each frame. Planet shader implementations are concentrated in src/world/planetBakeShader.js and src/world/planetShaders.js; shared GLSL, including manual logarithmic-depth support, is in src/gfx/glsl/noise.js.

The engine dynamically trades render resolution for frame time, retaining feature parity. Logarithmic depth and floating origin are cross-cutting rendering constraints for all custom materials.

Presentation, Audio, and Asset Pipeline

src/ui/HUD.js and src/ui/Codex.js expose flight state, map/archive information, and discoveries; styling is in src/ui/style.css. Procedural sound is managed by src/audio/Audio.js through browser WebAudio. The notable packaged asset is the baked interior kit at public/models/interior_kit.glb, generated via the Blender/Python pipeline under tools/interior_bake/ and consumed with ship interior assets/material definitions in src/ship/interiorAssets.js and src/ship/interiorMaterials.js.