The Free City finds its streets

What changed

The Free City is taking shape in a separate experimental world. Building scale was checked against doors, windows and character height. A residential lane now has ten houses on either side, with their entrances facing the shared street. Stone paving in the centre gives way to dirt roads on the outskirts, with groves, shrubs and grass around them. This is environment development, not a claim that the entire playable city is complete.

The square received a replacement well and two notice boards using newly supplied models. They retain their original dimensions; no new interactions have been added yet. The island plan can now be compared with street-level views. Every image in this issue was captured in Unity on 27 September: these show the separate Free City scene, not a recorded networked gameplay session.

Ships received a server-side movement simulation: the rudder changes heading, while sail settings, wind and the ship profile determine speed. Helm commands now cover steering, sails and the anchor, with movement updated by the server at a fixed step. This connects the mechanics to networked controls; a complete sailing session still needs separate validation.

A guild can now be founded through the game panel. In a test environment, the UI action created a database record and the server placed the guild hall in the founder’s actual hex. We also repaired the graphical client’s attack path on a dedicated server. In a regional test scenario, a player selected another character and fought through to a death event; the same target selection was blocked in the city.

A failed connection now returns the player to character selection with a reason. Typing in a text field should no longer trigger gameplay actions at the same time. We continued removing redundant work on entry: the chat land index reuses a preloaded chunk, and the terrain fan-out no longer sends a second full snapshot after subscription. These improve individual stages, not a promised total loading time.

Still in progress

The Free City remains an experimental scene: other streets need detailed placement, distant building visibility and some model details still need work. Dense vegetation has not been profiled in a standalone client. Server-side ship movement does not mean sailing gameplay has completed acceptance checks; guild and combat tests do not constitute a public release.

Visual material

The date and type of each asset are shown below the image. An issue illustration may have been created after the events described.