World Explorer: documentation
What the game is built on, how it is balanced, and what it asks of the player. Each file names the code it describes, so a change knows where to look.
Inspiration
The game's inspiration is Microsoft's Freelancer (2003): a pilot who docks at stations, takes contracts, trades between worlds and jumps through gates.
Pages
- principles.md: the rules the game keeps everywhere (what is solid, keys and buttons, seeded maps, the arcade apart from the campaign, the middle of the screen kept clear). A change that breaks one changes this file first.
- balance.md: every number that sets difficulty and economy, arcade and campaign: worlds, raiders, ships, weapons, modules, salvage, prices, elites, flagships, scoring, and where each lives.
- play-log.md: the log the game keeps as you play (sessions,
worlds, salvage in and out, kit, combat, deaths, frame rate), kept on the
device until Download in the pause panel; its file format and
bin/play-log. - goals.md: contracts and their stages, story chapters, side contracts, goals; how they are offered and what they pay.
- objects.md: every kind of object in space and its purpose, with the ones that have none yet.
- placement.md: where the station, gates and portals stand,
and why;
bin/map-checkholds every world to it. - scenario/: the story, its acts and chapters (chapters.md), and the planned career lines, reputation and world guards.
- agent/: the instructions for a coding agent that plays the campaign as your rival.
- playtest-2026-10-05.md: the arcade played by bots, judged, problems ranked.
- performance-2026-10-05.md: where a frame's time goes in every world, what was made faster, before and after.
- designer/missiles.md: the designer's brief for the homing missiles, their motors and module icons.