2026-09-17 11:47:24
Anonymous:
Keep it simple: every item is one card (size, activation, effect, cooldown); neighbours activate each other
hold the flood/the pack.md ..
@@ 1,134 1,85 @@
# Hold The Flood — The Pack
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*Owner decisions, 2026-09-17: (1) the inventory is a Backpack Hero style grid with shaped items; (2) the pack can be opened whenever no enemy is around, and it opens when a new item is gained; (3) the bag should have plenty of ways to grow. Everything else on this page is a proposal written to be corrected, and the questions at the end are the owner's to answer. Where this page and the older "ten carrying units, four rig spaces" text disagree, this page wins. Nothing here is built yet.*
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*Owner decisions, 2026-09-17: (1) the inventory is a Backpack Hero style grid with shaped items; (2) the pack can be opened whenever no enemy is around, and it opens when a new item is gained; (3) the bag should have plenty of ways to grow; (4) keep it simple: every item is written like the owner's example card below. Everything else on this page is a proposal. Where this page and older wiki text disagree, this page wins. Nothing here is built yet.*
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## One trip with the pack
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## The owner's example, which is the template for every item
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Aboard the ship the pack lies open: a grid of squares. Everything you own is a shape made of squares, and you place each one by hand.
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> **Simple FoF detector:** 1x1 object. Self-activates 1 per second. When active: if an enemy unit exists within 500, all adjacent items get activated. Cooldown: 1 second.
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You turn the Threat Sensor until the little arrow on its foot presses against the side of the Pulse Projector. A seam lights between them: the rig will now shoot on its own. The Manual Trigger's arrow touches the Barrier Plate: one button, one shield. A tall oxygen canister stands to one side. Sixteen squares are still empty, and you leave them empty on purpose.
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Every item in the game is described the same way, in one line: **size · how it gets activated · what it does when active · cooldown.**
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In Cargo Turn you clear the aisle first. The Fork Relay sits in its cradle, a T of four squares. You take it, and the pack opens by itself, the world holding its breath while you find the T a home beside the canister. Two rooms later the isolation bridge comes free: a single bar eight squares long. It only fits if one whole row is clear. It is, because you kept it clear.
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## How it works
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Later, with the room quiet, you open the pack again, move the Manual Trigger aside and turn the Fork so that the Sensor feeds its stem and its two arms touch the Projector and the Barrier. Three seams light. The same parts, a different machine, and you can see why at a glance. When the crowd comes back the pack stays shut: what you arranged is what you fight with.
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1. **The pack is a grid of squares.** Every carried thing is a shape on it. You place each one by hand and can turn it.
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2. **Every square works.** There is no separate "switched on" area and no limit on how many items run at once, other than the room in the bag.
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3. **An item gets activated in one of three ways:** by itself on a timer, by a neighbour, or by the player's button.
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4. **When an item is activated it does its one thing,** then cools down. An item that is cooling down ignores being activated. That is the whole system.
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5. **Adjacent means sharing an edge.** Corners do not count.
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6. **Where you put things is the only wiring.** A detector next to a gun makes an automatic gun. The same detector next to a shield makes an automatic shield. Next to both, it drives both.
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7. **The floor strip.** Beside the grid is a strip showing whatever lies within reach. Drag out to put something down, drag in to pick it up. If a find does not fit, you rearrange, leave something on the floor, or leave the find. Nothing is ever discarded for you.
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8. **When the pack opens** *(decided)*: whenever no enemy is around, and by itself when a new item is gained. The world is paused while it is open. Aboard the ship it is always available.
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9. **Death and return.** Everything in the pack comes home, in the same arrangement.
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Much later the bag is not the bag you started with. The navigation coupler bolted a new column onto it. Yeva stitched a side pouch. A courier frame found in a locker added a long rail along the bottom. You chose where each new square went, so the outline is yours.
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## The items, in the owner's format
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## What is decided and what is proposed
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Only the first card is the owner's. The rest are my conversions of the existing parts, to be corrected.
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| | |
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|---|---|
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| **Decided by the owner, 2026-09-17** | The inventory is a grid. Items have shapes. It should feel like Backpack Hero: you arrange things by hand and the arrangement matters. |
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| **Decided by the owner, 2026-09-17** | The pack can be opened whenever no enemy is around. It also opens when a new item is gained. |
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| **Decided by the owner, 2026-09-17** | The bag should have plenty of ways to grow. |
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| **Already decided earlier, kept** | Equipment, spare oxygen and loot compete for the same space. Everything carried comes home on death. Nothing is ever discarded for you. The journal fully pauses the game. |
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| **Proposed on this page** | The starting size, every shape, how parts connect, the floor strip, the exact meaning of "no enemy around", the list of ways to grow, and how it looks. |
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- **Simple FoF detector** *(owner's card)*: 1x1. Self-activates 1 per second. When active: if an enemy unit exists within 500, all adjacent items get activated. Cooldown 1 second.
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- **Pulse Projector:** 1x2. Activated by a neighbour. When active: fires one shot at the nearest enemy it can see. Cooldown 0.6 seconds.
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- **Trigger button:** 1x1. Activated by the player's button, click or Space. When active: all adjacent items get activated. Cooldown 0.2 seconds.
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- **Barrier Plate:** 1x2. Activated by a neighbour. When active: raises a shield in the direction the astronaut faces for 1.2 seconds. Cooldown 1.5 seconds.
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- **Relay** *(the Fork Relay)*: 1x1. Activated by a neighbour. When active: all adjacent items get activated. Cooldown 0.2 seconds. It passes an activation along, so a detector can reach items it does not touch. It is still the part the Cargo Turn service board needs.
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- **Arc Emitter:** 2x2. Activated by a neighbour. When active: lightning jumps from the nearest enemy through up to six bodies standing close together. Cooldown 3 seconds.
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- **Oxygen canister:** 1x2. Activated by clicking it in the pack. When active: feeds the suit until the suit is full or the canister is empty. No cooldown.
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- **Isolation bridge:** 1x4 bar. Does nothing in the pack. It is cargo, and it is awkward on purpose.
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- **Scrap and other loot:** 1x1 up to odd shapes of five or six squares. Does nothing in the pack. Loot is where the awkward shapes live.
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## The rules
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## The starting bag
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**1. The pack is one grid.** It starts eight wide and five tall, forty squares. One old "carrying unit" equals four squares, so every earlier example in the wiki still adds up: ten units were forty squares, a one-unit part is four squares, a two-unit canister is eight.
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Four by four, sixteen squares. The starting kit uses eight, so eight are free for what the station holds.
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**2. Everything carried is a shape.**
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| Item | Squares | Shape |
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|---|---:|---|
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| Threat Sensor | 4 | an L: a stalk of three with a foot |
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| Pulse Projector | 4 | a straight bar of four, the barrel |
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| Manual Trigger | 4 | a two by two box |
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| Barrier Plate | 4 | a J, the mirror of the L |
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| Fork Relay | 4 | a T: a stem and two arms |
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| Impact Dynamo | 4 | an S |
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| Capacitor | 4 | a two by two box |
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| Arc Emitter | 8 | a fat U |
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| Oxygen canister | 8 | two wide, four tall |
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| Isolation bridge | 8 | one bar, eight long |
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| Navigation coupler, regulator core | 8 | awkward on purpose: an L of five with a block of three |
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| Scrap and other loot | 1 to 6 | irregular; loot is where the awkward shapes live |
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**3. Shapes turn, they do not flip.** Quarter turns only. No overlapping. A shape must lie wholly inside the bag. That is why the L and the J are different items.
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**4. Parts connect by where you put them.** *(Proposed; see the first open question.)* A part on its own does nothing. The Threat Sensor spots an enemy, but something has to be told to shoot. Today that telling is set up by picking pairs from a list in the journal: "Sensor goes to Projector". The proposal is to throw the list away. Each part that tells another part what to do has one small arrow on one edge. Put the parts down so the arrow presses against the other part, and they are connected: a seam lights up between them. Pull them apart and the seam goes dark. It is the same idea as a mana stone powering the wand next to it in Backpack Hero. The Fork Relay is a T because it takes one signal in on its stem and sends it out of both arms, so one Sensor can drive two things. The ship's power limit stays: if the lit seams ask for more power than the ship supplies, the newest seam stays dark and says why.
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**5. The floor strip.** Beside the grid is a strip showing whatever lies within the astronaut's reach: things you put down, a part sitting in a cradle, a canister on a shelf. Drag from the pack to the strip to put something down. Drag from the strip into the pack to pick it up. If a find does not fit, you rearrange, or you leave something on the floor, or you leave the find. A thing on the floor stays in that room until you come back for it.
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**6. When the pack opens.** *(Decided: whenever no enemy is around, and when a new item is gained. The details below are proposed.)*
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- Aboard the ship the pack is always available.
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- In the station the pack key works while no enemy is around. Proposed meaning: no living creature has noticed you, and none stands within about ten metres in plain sight. While enemies are around the key is refused with a short reason, and the HUD shows the pack thumbnail with a closed strap.
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- Taking an item opens the pack by itself so the item can be placed, even in the middle of a fight. Everything in the pack can be moved at that moment, not just the new item. A player could put something down and take it again to reopen the pack during a fight; that costs them the pickup time in front of the crowd, and I propose to allow it.
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- While the pack is open the world is paused, like the journal. Because it only opens when it is safe or when something was just taken, the timed mounting from the 2026-09-16 build is no longer needed.
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**7. The bag grows, in plenty of ways.** *(Decided: it grows, in many ways. The list is proposed.)* New squares are always added by the player, Backpack Hero style: each gain is a small piece of new bag that you attach wherever it touches the existing outline. So two players end up with differently shaped bags.
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- **Ship assemblies.** Installing the navigation coupler aboard adds a column of five. The second ship assembly adds another. This replaces the older idea that these assemblies enlarge a "rig area".
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- **People you bring home.** Each rescued survivor gives the bag one thing in their own style. Yeva stitches a side pouch of four squares.
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- **Frames and pouches found in the station.** Physical finds at fixtures, each with its own outline: a courier frame that adds a long rail, a medic's roll that adds a block. Permanent once carried home.
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- **Home projects.** Later workshop projects add squares for materials and time.
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- **What the languages unlock.** A builders' carrying rail read from an inscription can be reproduced aboard: an odd, long extension nobody human would have designed.
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- **Temporary room on a trip.** Growth earned by fighting can offer a few extra squares for that expedition only. They vanish on return like every other temporary upgrade, and anything sitting in them goes to ship storage.
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```
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D P P . D detector P projector
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. . . . B button S shield (Barrier Plate)
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B S S c c canister
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. . . c
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```
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**8. Canisters.** A canister is coupled by clicking its valve in the pack, when the pack can be open. It then feeds the suit while you move, exactly as now. Its position in the grid does not matter.
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The detector touches only the gun, so the gun shoots by itself. The button touches only the shield, so the shield is yours to time. Slide the detector down one square and it touches the button too, and the shield starts going up by itself every time an enemy comes near. Whether that is clever or wasteful is the player's discovery.
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**9. Station machines.** Seating the Fork in the service board, freeing the bridge and handing air to a survivor stay as timed work at the fixture. The object leaves or enters the pack when the work completes. Work that ends with an object entering the pack checks first that a place for its shape exists, and refuses before any time is spent.
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## The bag grows, in plenty of ways
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**10. Death and return.** Everything in the pack comes home, in the same arrangement.
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*(Decided: it grows, in many ways. The list is proposed.)* Each gain is a small piece of new bag that the player attaches anywhere along the outline, so every bag ends up a different shape.
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## Does every square work? The older "switched on" limit
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- **Ship assemblies** installed aboard each add a strip of squares.
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- **People you bring home** each add something in their own style. Yeva stitches a side pouch.
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- **Frames and pouches found in the station,** each with its own outline.
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- **Home projects,** later.
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- **What the alien languages unlock:** a long, odd carrying rail nobody human would have designed.
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- **A few temporary squares earned by fighting,** gone on return like every other temporary upgrade.
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The older design had two separate limits. One was how much you can carry. The other was how many parts can be switched on at the same time: four at the start, more after ship upgrades. A carried part beyond that number was dead weight until you swapped it in.
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## What falls away
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In the first draft of this page I drew that second limit as a glowing area of the grid, the "lit block": a part only worked if it sat inside the glow. That is not how Backpack Hero works. There, everything in the bag counts, and the limit is simply the bag.
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Making it this simple removes these things from the older design. I read the owner's example as asking for that; say so if any should stay.
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My recommendation is to drop the second limit. Every square of the bag works. A spare part that touches nothing does nothing, which already gives you a way to carry a part without using it. What stops a player from running everything at once is the size of the bag, the shapes, and the ship's power supply. The ship upgrades that used to raise the "switched on" number now make the bag bigger instead, as listed above. This is the second open question.
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- Arrows, ports and the journal's list of links. Placement is the only wiring.
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- The limit on how many parts can be switched on at once.
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- The ship's power supply number, heat, and "charge" passed between parts. A part's only brake is its cooldown.
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- The Fork Relay as a splitter. A detector already activates every neighbour, so the Fork becomes a plain relay.
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- The rule that one old "carrying unit" is four squares. Each item now simply has the size written on its card.
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- Timed mounting in the station. The pack only opens when it is safe, so nothing needs a timer.
## What the screen looks like
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- The grid sits left of centre at a size where one square is about a thumbnail. The floor strip is on its right.
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- Each item is drawn as its object, filling its squares, tinted by kind: parts, air, objectives, loot.
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- Arrows are small bright chevrons on the edge of the part. A lit seam is a bright line along the shared edge, with a short label on hover: "Sensor triggers Projector".
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- Dragging shows a ghost: green where it fits, red where it does not. Right click or R turns the held item. Releasing over a red spot returns the item to where it came from.
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- Hovering an item shows a small card: its name, what it does in one sentence, what its arrow sends and what it accepts.
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- Beside the grid: squares used and free, power drawn against the ship's supply, and the suit's air.
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- In the station the HUD shows a thumbnail of the pack, so the player always sees how full it is without opening it. A closed strap on the thumbnail means enemies are around.
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- A new piece of bag is placed the same way as an item: drag it against the outline, green where it may attach.
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## What this replaces
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- **Survival And Loadout**, "What the astronaut can carry and use": carrying units become squares.
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- **Player Information And Options**, "Manifest and property": the four text sections become the grid, the floor strip, and a list of things left elsewhere.
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- **Build Rules** and **Equipment Catalogue**: costs written as units convert at four squares a unit. "Links are edited in the journal" becomes "parts connect by where you put them", if the owner agrees.
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- **Equipment Acquisition And Rig Growth**: ship assemblies enlarge the bag instead of a rig area, if the owner agrees to drop the "switched on" limit.
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- In the game as built today: the text pack panel on the I key with its timed mounting, the ship's manifest list, and the journal's link editor.
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## Checked on paper
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I tested these shapes by brute force before writing them down.
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- The four starting parts can be laid out with both connections made, in eight different arrangements inside a four by five corner of the bag.
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- The Fork machine, Sensor into Fork into Projector and Barrier, can also be laid out, in twenty arrangements.
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- The opening rig, one canister, the Fork and the bridge all fit the starting bag together. With two canisters the bridge does not fit until something goes on the floor. That is harsher than the old example, where it still fitted, and is easy to tune by moving an arrow or by the first bag growth.
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```
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Leaving the ship After Cargo Turn and the rack
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M M S . P c c . P B B B . f c c
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M M S . P c c . P S S B f f c c
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. B S S P c c . P . S M M f c c
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. B B B P c c . P . S M M . c c
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. . . . . . . . b b b b b b b b
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The Fork machine, Manual set aside
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P . B B B m m .
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P F F F B m m . S Sensor P Projector M Manual B Barrier F Fork
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P . F S c c c c c canister b bridge lower case = not part of the machine
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P S S S c c c c
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b b b b b b b b
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```
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- The grid sits left of centre, the floor strip to its right. Each item is drawn as its object, filling its squares.
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- Dragging shows a ghost: green where it fits, red where it does not. Right click or R turns the held item.
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- Hovering an item shows its card, in the same one-line format as above, and highlights the neighbours it would activate.
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- When an item activates in play, its square flashes on the HUD thumbnail of the pack, so the player can watch the chain run.
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- A closed strap on the thumbnail means enemies are around and the pack cannot be opened.
## Open questions for the owner
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1. **Should where you put parts be the only way to connect them?** See rule 4. If yes, the journal's list of connections goes away. If two parts that do not touch must sometimes be connected, a small "conduit" piece could carry a connection across a gap.
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2. **Does every square work?** See the section above. My recommendation: yes, drop the older "switched on" limit.
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3. **Which ways to grow do you want?** Rule 7 lists six. Should the player choose where each new piece of bag attaches?
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4. **What counts as "no enemy around"?** Proposed: nothing has noticed you and nothing stands within about ten metres in plain sight.
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5. **Does position matter beyond connections?** Backpack Hero has rules like "works better in the top row" or "stronger next to armour". Wanted here, or are connections enough?
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6. **Turn only, or turn and flip?**
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7. **Is four squares per part the right grain?** Bigger, stranger parts make harder puzzles and fewer parts per machine.
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8. **What is drawn in each square?** The art kit has no pictures of these objects. Free art would have to be found, or the objects drawn as simple silhouettes.
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1. **What is 500 measured in?** The game as built measures in metres; a room is about 14 metres across and the current gun reaches 12. My placeholder for 500 is 12 metres.
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2. **Do corners count as adjacent?** I assumed no.
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3. **Is a four by four starting bag right?**
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4. **Which ways to grow do you want,** and should the player choose where each new piece attaches?
