Cinderwild/docs/ROADMAP.md

Roadmap

One milestone ≈ a chunk of working sessions. Each ends with something you can actually run and see. Timelines assume solo dev + heavy AI assistance, steady (not full-time) pace.

M0 — World skeleton (single-player) · ~2–4 weeks

Goal: walk around a lit, atmospheric terrain. Prove the look.

• Project scaffold, git repo, docs
• Godot installed, project opens
• First-person / third-person character controller (move, jump, mouse-look)
• One flat/heightmap terrain chunk with a material
• Atmospheric lighting: directional sun, sky, volumetric fog, tonemapping
• Place one low-poly tree + rock to set the mood
• Done when: you load the game and walk around a Valheim-ish lit field.

M1 — Survival loop (single-player) · ~3–5 weeks

Goal: the core game verbs.

• Resource nodes: chop tree → wood, mine rock → stone
• Inventory + simple hotbar UI
• Crafting (recipe: wood → tools / building pieces)
• Health / stamina, day-night cycle
• Snap-together building: place a wall/floor, resource cost, basic support rule
• Done when: gather → craft → build a tiny shelter, single-player.

M2 — Multiplayer · ~2–4 months

Goal: self-hosted, authoritative, 2–8 players.

• Refactor state to server-authoritative (single-player becomes loopback server)
• Headless dedicated server mode (--headless -- --server)
• ENet transport, client prediction for local movement, interpolation for others
• Replicate resource nodes, inventory, building, health
• Persistence: world save/load on the server
• Done when: a friend joins your self-hosted server and you build together.

M3 — Addon SDK + sandbox · ~2–3 months

Goal: the differentiator. Easy, safe mods.

• Embed sandboxed Lua VM in the server
• Capped API surface (events + safe world queries/commands)
• Per-addon CPU/time + memory quotas
• Addon manifest format (declare items/recipes/prefabs as data)
• 2–3 example addons (a new craftable item; a "welcome" message on join; a custom spawn rule)
• SDK docs for modders
• Done when: a modder drops an addon folder in and it safely adds content, and a deliberately-malicious test addon is contained (can't read files, can't hang the server).

M4 — Content & polish · ongoing

• More biomes, creatures, items, building pieces
• PvP / raiding rules, building damage
• Better UI, settings, controls
• Audio, music, weather
• Packaged builds for Win/Mac/Linux (+ Mac signing/notarisation)

Honest overall estimate

A genuinely playable self-hosted survival game with a working sandboxed addon SDK is roughly 6–12 months of steady solo work with AI help. The M0–M1 vertical slice (a few weeks) is what proves the concept and keeps you motivated.