Ishtaria Logo

Overview

  • Vision
    • What Ishtaria is
    • What Ishtaria is not
    • Design principles
    • Platforms
  • World overview
    • A planet in layers
    • Base terrain
    • Environment: biomes and climate
    • Generated content
    • The world clock
    • Real planets from datadisks
    • Federation
    • Not finished yet
    • See also
  • Gameplay guide
    • Starting out
    • Controls
    • Staying alive
    • Gathering and crafting
    • Building, farming and fishing
    • Hunting and combat
    • Magic
    • Trading
    • Social
    • Pictures
    • Where to go next
  • Quests and characters
    • The pilot disks
    • Talking to characters
    • Dialogue model
    • Quests
    • A worked example: the Epic of Gilgamesh
    • Where and when a character stands
    • Generated characters
    • Writing a datadisk
  • Roadmap
    • Where we are (November 2026)
    • Milestones
  • Glossary

Architecture

  • Architecture overview
    • Building blocks
    • Distribution
  • Server
    • Sharding by cells
    • Tick rates
    • Process layout
  • Client
    • Large coordinates
    • Terrain
    • Avatar
    • Prediction
  • Simulation and persistent time
    • Levels of detail
    • Catch-up
    • Offline players
    • Inventory, survival and permanent memorials
  • Gathering and crafting
    • Tools
      • Durability
    • Resources
    • Logs and wood
    • API
    • Client
    • Experience and levels
    • RPG items
    • Animals and fish
    • Dropping items
    • Planned
  • Trading, ground loot and wayfarers
    • Merchants
    • Player exchanges
    • Dropping and ground piles
    • Buying from a finder
    • Wayfarers
    • Client
  • Story datadisks
    • Files
    • Generating a world with datadisks
    • HTTP API
    • Client
    • Settlements and harbours
    • Spawn point
    • Not yet
  • Persistence
    • Base world is a function
    • Stores
    • Current server implementation
    • Economy ledger

Federation

  • Federation model
    • Separate planets, linked by portals
    • Portals as gameplay
    • Trust
    • Identity
    • Discovery
    • Moderation
    • Chat
  • Federation agreement
    • Example
    • Fields
  • Portals and share links
    • Building a portal
    • Linking
    • Breaking the link
    • Operator configuration
    • Limits and safety
    • In the client
    • Not yet implemented
  • Travel ticket and handover
    • Contents
    • Two-phase handover
    • Guests and offline players
    • Death in the host world
  • Items and economy across worlds
    • The core risk
    • Provenance
    • Unknown item kinds
    • Currencies
      • Coins in the inventory
      • Portal toll
    • Custom content packs

Operating a world

  • Installation
    • Packages
    • Adding the repository
    • Playing
    • Running a world
    • Running a world with a story datadisk
    • Administration
  • Configuration
    • Limits, logs and metrics
    • Federation agreements
  • Hardening a public world
    • Network and TLS
      • HAProxy
      • nginx
    • Accounts and limits
    • The system service
    • Checklist
  • Monitoring
    • Logs
    • Metrics
    • Capacity: what one machine did
  • Backup, restore and upgrade
    • What to keep
    • Back up
    • Restore
    • Upgrade
    • Try the restore

Development

  • Repositories
  • Local development setup
    • Prerequisites
    • A private server
    • Starting the client against it
    • Testing
    • What headless tests cannot show
  • Project rules that never change
    • Authority and trust
    • Persistence
    • Game rules owned by the project
    • Security and secrets
    • Assets and licences
    • Honest reporting
  • Tour of the server code
    • How a request is handled
    • Modules
    • Data files (etc/)
    • Tests
  • Tour of the client code
    • Principles
    • Files
    • Look of a new window
    • Keys and Settings
    • Tests
  • Cookbook: adding things to the game
    • Add an item
    • Add a recipe
    • Add a spell
    • Add a crop, a thing to place, or fishing
    • Add a merchant or a shop
    • Add or change an animal
    • Add an endpoint
    • Add a window or a key to the client
    • Add an NPC or a quest
  • Audit (November 2026)
    • How this audit was made
    • Executive summary
    • Current state of the systems
    • Security
      • B-01 – passwordless accounts can be taken over and destroyed (P0, small)
      • B-02 – GET /world/objects writes, and needs no sign-in (P1, small)
      • B-03 – a character can be bricked by its own move sequence (P2, small)
      • B-04 – federation hardening gaps (P3, small)
    • Visual quality
      • V-01 – the target look already exists, outside the engine (P1, medium)
      • V-02 – the client has no post-processing at all (P1, small)
      • V-03 – the detail terrain is too coarse, so the world reads as flat (P1, medium)
      • V-04 – NPC name labels do not scale sanely (P1, small)
      • V-05 – the game is effectively silent (P1, medium)
      • V-06 – characters are about twice the size of the architecture (P1, large)
      • V-07 – the water has nothing to reflect (P2, small)
      • V-08 to V-10 – interface defects
      • V-11 – market stalls read as a board game (P2, small)
      • V-12 – untextured buildings and glTF import errors (P2, small)
    • Gameplay
      • H-01 – tools cannot be made, yet gathering requires one (P1, small)
      • H-02 – the crafting tree consumes nothing (P2, small)
      • H-03 – the materials are not those of Early Dynastic Sumer (P2, medium)
      • H-04 – finished work that nobody has seen (P1, large)
      • H-05 – the first quest is mostly walking (P2, medium)
      • H-06 – the world is not inhabited (P1, large)
      • H-06a – residents should sleep at home and come out in the morning (P1, medium)
      • H-08 – a new character can be killed before it can move (P0, small)
      • H-07 – land leases are finished and unreachable (P3, small)
    • Story and content
      • O-01 – the story gives the player nothing material (P1, medium)
      • O-02 – player choices have no consequences (P1, medium)
      • O-03 – the achievements demand roughly 70 to 100 hours of walking (P2, medium)
      • O-04 – Achaemenid architecture stands in for Uruk (P2, revised)
      • O-05 – 66 of 71 pinned cities have no content (P2, medium)
      • O-06 – the easter eggs are never packaged (P2, small)
      • O-07 – the protocol does not describe content the server loads (P2, small)
      • O-08 – withdrawn
      • O-09 – the public site lost English (P2, small)
      • O-10 – ishtaria-content is inert but documented as required (P3, small)
      • O-11 – documentation contradicts itself (P2, small)
    • Technical
      • T-01 – the recommended way to play is probably broken (P0, medium)
      • T-02 – the terrain is rebuilt every 100 m of walking (P1, medium)
      • T-03 – per-frame work that can be removed safely (P2, small)
      • T-04 – the kilometre scene scale is a standing trap (P2)
      • T-05 – the client has no diagnostics (P2, small)
      • T-06 – every object request scans all graves (P1, small)
      • T-07 – further queries that will scan (P2, small)
      • T-08 – tables that are never pruned (P2, small)
      • T-09 – transaction and data details (P2/P3, small)
      • T-10 – ishtaria-core is effectively dead, and the cost is real (P2, medium)
      • T-11 – the client architecture blocks visual iteration (P2, large)
      • T-12 – props are drawn without batching (P2, medium)
      • T-13 – build and packaging friction (P3, small)
    • Prioritised backlog
    • Quick wins
    • Suggested order of work
    • How to verify the work
  • Building packages
    • Notes per repository
    • CI
  • Publishing on Steam
    • The decisions that come first
    • What Valve requires
    • Technical requirements for a Linux build
    • Store page and graphics
    • Content rules and disclosures
    • Money
    • Achievements
    • Where Ishtaria stands
    • Checklist
    • Sources
  • Contributing
    • Before you start
    • Working with Claude Code
    • Definition of done
    • Conventions
    • Security

Decision records

  • Decision records
    • 0001 – Separate planets linked by portals
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Consequences
    • 0002 – Rust server and core, Godot client
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Consequences
    • 0003 – Debian packages, Linux only
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Consequences
    • 0004 – Licensing
      • Decision
      • Consequences
    • 0005 – Portal pacts start with a player invitation
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Consequences
    • 0006 – Monetization with real money: land leases, imported models, custom avatars
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Consequences
    • 0007 – Text chat and friends
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Implementation (same world)
      • Consequences
    • 0008 – Story datadisks
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Consequences
    • 0009 – Portals are built alone and linked by a share link
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Consequences
    • 0010 – Magic: mana, scrolls and a small set of data-driven spells
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Consequences
      • Change (2026-10): day and night
    • 0011 – Sharing achievements and memorials on social networks
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Steps
      • Alternatives considered
      • Consequences
    • 0012 – Datadisks bring buildings of their own
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Consequences
      • Addendum: many buildings (buildings/*.yaml)
      • Addendum: the sky of a disk’s world (astronomy)
    • 0013 – Datadisks bring local terrain
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Consequences
      • Addendum: cleared ground (2026-10-13)
    • 0014 – A datadisk may give the player a character
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Consequences
    • 0015 – Characters of a datadisk may walk
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Consequences
      • Addendum: a character that is talked to stands still (2026-10-13)
      • Addendum: wayfarers on the roads (2026-10-22)
    • 0016 – Places of a datadisk lie where history puts them
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Consequences
    • 0017 – Datadisks bring the whole real planet
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Consequences
    • 0018 – Datadisk wildlife overlays and cover / ambient music
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Consequences
    • 0019 – Characters tell what they know: knowledge cards
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Consequences
    • 0020 – Relief is generated into the world map
      • Context
      • Decision (proposed)
      • Choices
      • Consequences
    • 0021 – The number of a life on a memorial
      • Context
      • Decision
      • Consequences
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© Copyright 2026, Vítězslav Dvořák / VitexSoftware (CC BY-SA 4.0).

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