aetherbound-guild/docs/runtime/PHASE9_3_REFERENCE_FIDELITY_LOOP_CONTRACT.md

P9.3 Reference-Fidelity Core Loop Contract

Revision: p9.3-contract-r1 Baseline: 9c46112095bb12094ebc4b4c346f22437cccf8c6

Experience Boundary

P9.3 replaces only the first playable loop. The existing P9.0-P9.2 domain and presentation remain available for regression, but the shipped preview enters a new modular P9.3 controller instead of extending the historical 3,700-line compatibility facade.

Fixed First Loop

Initial state:

• 24 Coin;
• Company 1/10, containing Hearthguard;
• three standing offers: Wayrunner for 10, Farstring for 12, and Kindhand for 11;
• no offer preselected and no separate mission/formation page.

Recruit transaction:

• first actor tap focuses the offer in-world and exposes profession, one strength, one limitation and exact cost near that actor;
• the contextual hire action commits once when affordable;
• the hired actor moves into the horizontal line, Coin decreases exactly once, the offer becomes unavailable and Company reads 2/10;
• repeated input cannot duplicate the member or charge.

Encounter transaction:

Encounter	Visible pressure	Runtime difference	Reward
Open road	one contact enemy	ranged enemy absent	8 Coin
Crosswind	contact plus ranged enemy	standard starting distance	12 Coin
Bell breach	contact plus ranged enemy	enemies begin closer	16 Coin

The selected encounter must change the actual battle state before combat, not only its label or color.

Battle and return:

• the existing fixed-tick P9.2 battle rules remain authoritative;
• world positions interpolate continuously between authoritative ticks;
• member and enemy events drive anticipation/action/recovery animation, projectile or heal cues, damage/heal floats and bounded impact feedback;
• all living enemies at zero is Victory; all members at zero is Defeat;
• Victory grants the selected reward once, then returns to the Hall with the hired member and updated Coin;
• Defeat returns without a success reward and explains the terminal cause in one short line over the retained battlefield.

Presentation Contract

Reference viewport is 844x390 landscape.

1. First focal read: the horizontal Company and standing Recruit offers.
2. Second: the three encounter threats or active opposing line.
3. Third: Coin, capacity and one current contextual action.

Rules:

• world and actors occupy at least 82% of the visible surface;
• no full-height panel, repeated page cards, persistent paragraph, mission acceptance or formation-confirmation screen;
• settings, mute and restart live behind one compact pause control;
• characters share one side-view ground baseline, scale, light direction and shadow grammar;
• touch targets follow actor bodies or world objects and are at least 48 logical pixels;
• input feedback begins within 100 ms and every transient effect returns to rest;
• zh_CN/en, 130% text, reduced motion, mute, low power, 844x390, 1280x720 and portrait rotate notice remain bounded.

Evidence

• focused domain test for recruit, three encounters, exactly-once reward and return-state preservation;
• parsed ScreenTouch path for the complete first loop;
• normal-render frames for Hall before/after hire, three encounter states, contact, role action, result and returned Hall;
• one 20-35 second 844x390 recording with no fallback/direct callbacks;
• strict log scan for script, parse, resource/import, warning/error and cleanup failures;
• Owner game-feel, comprehension, visual and listening gates remain open.