# Dusk Roadmap

Tracking upcoming milestones for the engine. See `PSP_OPTIMIZATION_PLAN.md`
for a memory/CPU optimization survey specifically targeting the PSP build
(milestone 4 below is its Priority 3).

## Upcoming milestones

1. Add a very basic physics engine, moving away from the current
   tile-based movement.
2. Give entities full freedom of movement (no longer locked to tile
   grid positions).
3. Update entity interaction, triggers, chunk management, and other
   systems that currently assume tile-based positioning so they work
   with the new 3D positioning/movement code.
4. Investigate and fix poor UI rendering performance. First pass done
   (2026-07-31): slider/tab/frame/textbox now cache their sprite
   geometry instead of rebuilding it every frame, and the console's
   vertex buffer is fixed-size instead of alloc/free churn (see
   `STATUS.md`'s "UI rendering performance" note for detail). Still
   open: per-widget material/color changes still force a sprite-batch
   flush each time (color is per-material, not per-vertex), so a row of
   alternating highlighted widgets still costs one draw call per
   widget.
5. Create UI elements for displaying status indicators, e.g. network
   connection state and save-in-progress.
6. Fully test saving end-to-end on all supported platforms.
7. Remove the tile system from chunks in favor of meshes, with
   dynamic hitboxes per chunk loaded in from the chunk file data.
8. Create UI elements for network status: a connecting modal, an
   error state, and a connected flag. Retire the test HTTP request
   once these are in place.
9. Build the socket server and client implementation, including
   handlers for the different packet types.
10. Add a dedicated multiplayer entity type, `clientplayer`, alongside
    the existing `npc` and `player` types. Limit to 8 (defined
    constant) for now.
11. Send and receive `clientplayer` position over the network.
12. Create a UI menu for creating a server and joining a server. For
    now, join IPs are hard-coded (testing against a fixed IP of
    10.0.0.94).
13. Create "handshake" packets. For now, just send the username,
    enforced to be under 10 characters long.
14. Server tracks all players' positions and broadcasts them to all
    connected clients.
15. Server sends disconnect packets for users who leave.
16. Server assigns each client a UUID; all clients know every other
    client's UUID (used to reference them across position updates,
    disconnect packets, etc).
17. Server notifies all clients (by UUID) when a user joins, leaves,
    or is disconnected, so clients can spawn or remove the
    corresponding `clientplayer` entity in the world.

## Infrastructure / debt backlog

Found during a full-codebase inventory pass (2026-07-30, see `STATUS.md`
for the full survey). These aren't new feature milestones so much as
loose ends worth closing, roughly in order of how cheap/safe they are to
fix:

1. Re-enable `test/item` (currently commented out in
   `test/CMakeLists.txt`) -- confirm it still passes and turn it back on.
2. Restore `itemgive.c/h` in `src/duskrpg/item/CMakeLists.txt` -- the
   textbox UI dependency it was waiting on (`ui/textbox/`) is already
   back.
3. Decide the fate of the `vita` target: `scripts/build-vita.sh` and
   `docker/vita/` reference `-DDUSK_TARGET_SYSTEM=vita`, but no
   `cmake/targets/vita.cmake` exists, so the build is currently broken.
   Either implement it or remove the dangling scripts/Dockerfile.
4. Per-PR CI build coverage for non-Linux targets: first pass added
   2026-07-31 as `run-tests-gamecube-dolphin`/`run-tests-wii-dolphin`
   (build the ISO, boot it in Dolphin under Xvfb) and
   `run-tests-psp-ppsspp` (build the EBOOT, boot it in PPSSPPHeadless)
   in `.github/workflows/test.yml`, plus matching
   `scripts/test-*-dolphin.sh`/`scripts/test-psp-ppsspp.sh` (+ `-docker`
   variants). Marked `continue-on-error: true` since none of these have
   actually been exercised on a real runner yet -- verify they pass
   before relying on them, and drop the flag once they do. Knulli still
   has no per-PR coverage at all.
5. Milestone 4 above (poor UI rendering performance) has a first pass
   in (2026-07-31, see `STATUS.md`) -- remaining concrete lead: sprite
   batch flushes are keyed on shader+material (including tint color),
   so per-widget color changes (e.g. focus highlight) still force a
   flush per widget; moving tint to per-vertex color would let a whole
   row of widgets batch into one draw call regardless of highlight
   state.
6. Revisit the GameCube/Wii networking static-IP workaround in
   `networkdolphin.c` -- it's standing in for an unresolved suspected
   memory-corruption bug in `if_config()`'s DHCP path.
7. Decide whether the PSP dialog-based network connect UI needs to come
   back -- it was removed entirely (not fixed) when the original
   dialog-tearing bug proved hard to resolve.
8. Backfill unit tests for the biggest untested surfaces: `ui/` (whole
   widget framework), `save/`, `script/` (JerryScript bindings), `event/`.

## Principles

- Never trust the network implicitly. Neither side (server or client)
  should assume the other's packets are well-formed or benign --
  validate all incoming packet data defensively, since either side
  may send garbage or malicious data. Use `errorret_t` /
  `errorThrow()` for these runtime checks, not assert macros --
  asserts are debug-only and won't guard release builds against
  malformed or malicious packet data.