ridgebound

Ridgebound

Ridgebound is a compact open-world Game3D demo about reconnecting five named beacon sites around a mountain lake. The release pass prioritizes dependable walking, a legible route network, a clear objective, and restrained outdoor presentation over unrelated showcase systems.

Run

From the repository root:

zanna run examples/games/ridgebound/

The demo opens on a scenic title view. Start a run, follow the dirt trails and dry lake causeways, aim at a beacon, and hold E to link it. Once all five are online, return to the central sanctuary.

Controls

• WASD or arrows: move
• Mouse: look; click the game view to capture the pointer
• Wheel: orbit-camera zoom
• Shift: sprint while stamina remains
• Space: jump (ordinary routes do not require it)
• E: hold while aiming at a beacon to link it
• V: toggle orbit and first-person views
• H: show the controls card
• Right mouse: cycle Performance, Balanced, and Cinematic quality
• F11: toggle fullscreen
• Ctrl: toggle diagnostics
• Esc: pause, resume, or go back

Release Design

• One connected, vegetation-cleared trail network joins spawn to every beacon. Broad causeways remain above the lake and every arrival site has a level pad.
• Character motion uses the production capsule controller with a 0.48 m step, a 52-degree slope limit, camera-relative input, and explicit surface swimming if the player leaves a causeway.
• The 15-minute day cycle starts in clear morning light. First dusk is 342 seconds into active gameplay; title and pause screens do not consume world time. Deep night retains moonlight, cool ambient fill, and a player-local visibility light.
• The five sites have distinct names, landmark silhouettes, compass directions, distances, activation pulses, light ramps, spatial chimes, and network feedback.
• A backpacked procedural explorer, subdued PBR palette, sparse imported-maple forest, bounded lake, low-bloom post-processing, compact HUD, and responsive menus replace the former debug-shape presentation.
• Survival meters and the physics-toy pile are opt-in. They are disabled in the default route-focused demo; ambient sentinels remain enabled.

Quality Presets

All tiers retain the authored exposure and color direction. They scale the expensive work instead of changing the game:

• Performance: short vegetation LOD, reduced weather emission, 768 px/one-cascade shadows, lower water reflection quality, and no occlusion pass.
• Balanced: medium LOD, weather, water, and two-cascade shadows.
• Cinematic: full vegetation and weather distances, 2048 px/three-cascade shadows, full water reflection, SSAO where supported, and the complete safe post-processing chain.

At 960x540 the release smoke gate budgets a warmed Cinematic frame at 50 ms on GPU backends and 250 ms on the deterministic software fallback.

Validation

The standalone gates use an existing Zanna executable. They never configure or rebuild Zanna and never invoke CTest.

ZANNA_BIN=build/src/tools/zanna/zanna \
  examples/games/ridgebound/run_probes.sh

On Windows:

$env:ZANNA_BIN = 'build\src\tools\zanna\zanna.exe'
.\examples\games\ridgebound\run_probes.ps1

The runner first checks the whole project, then executes:

• topology_probe.zia: dry route grades, submerged lake coverage, level pads, beacon count, and initial compass target.
• traversal_probe.zia: sustained real W input down every route branch and one off-route swim with no jump input, bounding progress, stalls, support, ground separation, and water entry.
• state_probe.zia: title/pause clocks, delayed dusk, calm opening weather, deterministic restart/quit-to-title resets, and quality-tier application.
• smoke_probe.zia: full and compact title/gameplay captures, compact pause/options/controls states, day/night luminance, HUD/minimap completeness, bright-blob coverage, diagnostics, and the warmed Cinematic frame budget.

The smoke probe writes visual evidence to /tmp/ridgebound_title.png, /tmp/ridgebound_title_compact.png, /tmp/ridgebound_current.png, /tmp/ridgebound_night.png, /tmp/ridgebound_compact.png, and compact pause/options/controls captures on POSIX hosts. See IMPROVEMENT_AUDIT.md for the 20-point implementation matrix and measured release evidence.

File Map

• main.zia: project entry point and packaged smoke path
• game.zia: lifecycle, state machine, orchestration, and quality application
• terrain.zia: mountain basin, lake floor, routes, pads, splat map, and grass
• playerctl.zia: character controller, stamina, gait, surface audio, and swimming
• camctl.zia: orbit/first-person rigs, damping, and collision-safe camera boom
• worldsim.zia: named beacons, landmarks, scanner, lighting, clock, and objective
• water_sky.zia: bounded water, shoreline, four sky keyframes, and reeds
• forest.zia: deterministic route-cleared imported/procedural maple forest
• assets.zia: shared meshes and restrained PBR material palette
• audio.zia: procedural surface steps, water, beacon, victory, and ambience audio
• postfx.zia: quality-aware post-processing, sprint dust, and scorch decals
• weather.zia: slow clear-to-storm cycle with quality-scaled rain and snow
• hud.zia, minimap.zia, menu3d.zia: responsive navigation and front end
• critters.zia, survival.zia: optional secondary simulation layers
• config.zia: centralized tuning and release budgets
• *_probe.zia: standalone release acceptance gates

The optional MapleTree_1.fbx is resolved from source, repository, and packaged locations. If it is unavailable, Ridgebound plants its dependency-free procedural fallback trees instead.