Valheim-like Survival Game (working title)

A stylised-realistic, low-poly survival game built in Godot 4, inspired by Valheim (look/feel) and Rust (survival depth, player-run servers). Cross-platform (Windows / macOS / Linux). Self-hosted authoritative dedicated server. Sandboxed addon SDK with guard rails.

North star

• Look: low-poly meshes + atmospheric lighting + fog/post-processing. Mood over texture detail. (Valheim recipe — a 5-person team made it run on potatoes.)
• World: mesh/heightmap terrain, procedurally generated, biomes. NOT voxels.
• Building: snap-together prefab pieces (walls, floors, roofs) with structural rules.
• Survival loop: gather → craft → build → defend. Health/stamina, day/night, enemies.
• Multiplayer: authoritative headless dedicated server, same codebase, self-hostable on any OS. Clients are never trusted.
• Addons: sandboxed (Lua), capped API, CPU/memory quotas, no host filesystem/network/escape. Guard rails from day one.

Status

See docs/ROADMAP.md for milestones and docs/ARCHITECTURE.md for the design.

Current milestone: M0 — playable single-player world skeleton (scaffolding on disk; needs Godot 4 installed to open & run).

Requirements

• Godot 4.3+ (standard build; no C# needed — this project uses GDScript).
• Git.

Quick start (once Godot is installed)

# Open the project
godot --path . --editor        # or open Godot and import this folder's project.godot

# Run the game
godot --path .

# Run the headless dedicated server (later milestone)
godot --headless --path . -- --server

Packaged builds

tools/export.sh          # build/Emberwild-<version>-macos.zip and -windows.zip
tools/export.sh macOS    # or just one ("macOS" / "Windows")

Needs the Godot export templates for your Godot version (Editor > Manage Export Templates). The version number is application/short_version in export_presets.cfg.

• Mac: a universal .app, ad-hoc signed but not notarised. On another Mac, the first launch needs right-click > Open (or System Settings > Privacy & Security > Open Anyway).
• Windows: unzip and run Emberwild.exe (keep Emberwild.pck beside it). It's unsigned, so SmartScreen says "Windows protected your PC": More info > Run anyway.
• A packaged copy is also a dedicated server: Emberwild.app/Contents/MacOS/Emberwild --headless -- --server (Mac) or Emberwild.exe --headless -- --server (Windows). Saves and settings live in the same user folder as a copy run from source.

Trailer and download page

tools/trailer/make_trailer.sh   # build/Emberwild-trailer.mp4: recorded in-game (Movie Maker), needs ffmpeg
tools/site/make_site.sh         # build/site/: index.html + poster.jpg + trailer.mp4 for the current release

The page's download links point at the Gitea release named in build/version.json, so rebuild it after each tools/export.sh release. Gitea doesn't serve HTML pages: copy build/site/ to any static web host.

Layout

project.godot          Godot project definition
scenes/                game scenes (.tscn)
scripts/               GDScript (.gd)
  core/                shared systems (world, net, save)
  player/              player controller, camera
  world/               terrain, chunks, generation
  building/            snap-together building system
  addons_sdk/          the sandboxed addon host + API
addons_examples/       example mods written against the SDK
assets/                models, materials, textures (low-poly)
docs/                  architecture, roadmap, addon SDK spec

License

TBD (lean toward MIT or a source-available license — decide before first public release).