aetherbound-guild/README.md

Aetherbound Guild / 裂脉远征团

An original landscape 2D Japanese hand-drawn guild-expedition strategy game.

This repository is currently in pre-development design review. Formal game implementation, bulk final-asset production, packaging, and publishing are forbidden until the owner approves the complete product, content, presentation, balance, and interactive-design package.

Current Product Boundary

• Generated run-bound Recruits with no fixed story protagonists
• 12 base, 24 advanced, and 6 hidden Professions; 36 mechanical Traits
• 320 equipment identities and 60 run-wide Artifacts
• 100 ordinary/elite enemies and 16 bosses across 8 Regions
• 15-25 hour first clear and 60+ hour mastery breadth
• Landscape 16:9, premium cross-platform target, English and Simplified Chinese
• 2D Japanese hand-drawn presentation using modular Recruit assemblies, profession/equipment overlays, authored key poses, and readable silhouettes

The game may learn structural lessons from authorized private reference research, but its setting, characters, enemies, names, art, audio, UI, progression, formulas, and expression must be original.

Review The Design

The owner-facing HTML in prototype/site/ is the current responsive landscape design prototype. It replaces the superseded coverage audit and reads the current authorities directly when the Gallery bundle is built.

1. First play: inspect 23 states from Contract setup through two-of-four run creation, two separate Market hires, party ordering, risk, automatic battle, diagnosis, reward, equipment adaptation, casualty, and recovery.
2. Screen atlas: inspect exactly 50 current page/state IDs. Every ID has a page-specific composition plus loading/empty, error/confirmation, and interruption/return variants; SYS-005 exposes its five staged states.
3. Regions: inspect all eight Region directions, encounter pressure, enemy identities, and two bosses per Region.
4. Catalogs: search 42 Professions, 36 Traits, 320 equipment items, 60 Artifacts, 100 ordinary/elite enemies, and 16 bosses.
5. Review gates: open the six critical Owner review groups and keep human comprehension, visual, fun, listening, and device approval separate from deterministic HTML checks.

Run it locally from the repository root:

python3 -m http.server 8766 --directory prototype/site

Then open http://127.0.0.1:8766. The published Artifact Gallery link is a disposable presentation copy; this repository remains the design authority.

Gallery publication must use the self-contained bundle because the Gallery viewer intentionally sandboxes HTML and may not forward its access cookie to relative CSS, JavaScript, JSON, or image requests:

python3 tools/build_gallery_bundle.py

The build command regenerates prototype/site/data/catalog.json, verifies the current exact counts and unique IDs, and writes prototype/gallery/aetherbound-guild-prototype.html. Browser verification is in prototype/site/verify-r6.js; it requires an already-provisioned Playwright Node module and Chrome, starts no external service, and writes screenshots to prototype/gallery/evidence/r6/.

Evidence Boundary

The HTML is an interactive design prototype, not a playable build. Existing image boards are labeled concept direction only. The current one-line party, transactions, readable UI, stable IDs, and text are independently authored in HTML; no board is a final background, sprite, item icon, animation, integrated asset, runtime screenshot, or human-approved result.

See docs/README.md for the complete authority map and docs/reviews/PRE_DEVELOPMENT_READINESS_AUDIT.md for the exact completed and open gates.