# Open Questions

Parking lot for things to come back to. Not blockers, just decisions to make eventually.

## Identity & flavor

- Working title — `tgame` as placeholder, real title deferred until the game has more shape. When implementing: route the name through a single config constant, never hardcode `tgame` anywhere.

## Art style detail (palette + 640×360 + late-90s era + first-person backdrops + 4 fps animation decided)

- Pixel font choice and fallback rules
- Pixel rule exceptions for special moments (cinematic Legendary HD splashes)?
- Inventory grid: uniform 1-cell cards vs. Diablo-style multi-cell items?

## UX / UI

- Time-of-day cycling for Guild Hall backdrop: real time vs. game time vs. fixed sequence?
- Richness of "alive hall" minion overlays — do equipped weapons show, do they animate?
- Push notifications for AFK expedition completion — opt-in granularity?
- Accessibility: color-blind palettes for quality bands and effect auras.
- How "discoverable" is the scene navigation — do players figure out the forge corner is tappable, or do we add subtle UI hints?

## Visual composition

- Where does the composition QA step live in the asset pipeline?
- Do non-card UI uses (inventory icons, list views) re-render at low detail or use a baked thumbnail cache?
- Expose composition recipes to players (layer breakdown panel) or stay opaque?
- Color-clash policy: gameplay-prevent dissonant combos, or embrace them as feedback?
- Shader budget on mid-tier mobile — how many simultaneous focused cards with full shader stack?
- Atmosphere layers: ever animated (scrolling UVs) or static + shader animation only?

## Materials & crafting depth

- Scrap / salvage mechanic — break a finished card for partial refund?
- Quality progression curve — does the Crude floor rise with zone tier?
- Special material properties beyond quality (moonpetal is fundamentally magical regardless of band)?
- Pocket gating — are gnomish/necromantic materials zone-locked or do they crosscontaminate?
- Total material entry count for v1 (~30 raw / ~25 refined / ~20 components target).

## Game systems

- Mechanical depth of minion relationships (pure flavor vs. real meta-game).
- How recipe book is surfaced without becoming a spreadsheet.
- How aggressive experimentation penalty is for wasted rare ingredients.
- Quality cascade rules — can a great engineer rescue a Crude component?
- Destination granularity for expeditions — region/zone/encounter or just region/zone.
- Real-time progress bars vs. silent timers vs. push notifications for expeditions.
- Chained expeditions (24h follow-ups)?
- Hire pool: daily refresh? Cost to reroll? Special "fated" hires?
- Workshop parallelism — how many concurrent crafts allowed at each Guild Rank?

## Tech

- Engine: Unity vs. Flutter vs. Godot vs. native.
- Save format and signing.
- Cloud save provider (Firebase, Supabase, custom).
- How the future bazaar would be hosted (self-host vs. managed).

## Scope

- Minimum viable content for v1 launch.
- Asset budget per category.
- Style consistency across AI-generated assets.
- Original score vs. licensed audio.

## Future

- Bazaar / auction house — when + how.
- Leaderboards — what's measured (reputation, masterworks, rare discoveries)?
- Seasonal content — desirable, or live-ops trap?
- Mod / content tools so the catalog can grow community-side eventually?