2026-09-06 19:03:34
Anonymous:
DES103 r5 (Design Document r11) against REV103 r1: stale seventh-slot sentence deleted and expedition one's timing and ledger fixed (REV103-1, EXT X25); collection rule restated (most room, linked or not, tie to the earlier battery) and expedition six re-tallied so the coil's battery is full before each discharge (REV103-2); plain licence clauses and the asset-licences page cited (Clarity Q41); nothing else moved
hold the flood/design document.md ..
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# Hold the Flood — Design Document
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**DES103 r4, the Design Document at revision r10 | 2026-09-06 | Lead Game and Systems Designer | In review | revised against PM's PMR002 findings 1 to 4, its closing review, and criteria 1 to 11**
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**DES103 r5, the Design Document at revision r11 | 2026-09-06 | Lead Game and Systems Designer | In review | revised against PMR002, REV103 r1 and criteria 1 to 11**
## Read this first: one page for the owner
@@ 141,7 141,7 @@
- When packing, you draw one **link** from each battery to the one module it powers. An unlinked module is dark and inert.
- A battery leaks into every bundle connected to it by touching bundles, whatever the links say: one unit a minute per connected bundle, shown as a drip per bundle. Insulation is the only slot that breaks a chain.
- A battery holds ten units. A discharge of the coil spends the whole battery. A kill mote is one unit; a stun sheds one large mote of five units per ten organisms stunned.
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- Charge has five states, and the ledgers in sections 12 and 13 track them: dropped (a mote on the ground), collected (walked over), stored (in a battery, up to ten), expired (a mote that faded, or charge collected with nowhere to go), spent (a discharge or a burst). A collected mote goes to the linked battery with the most room; a full battery takes nothing; a battery that the arc is drawing takes nothing until the burst ends.
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- Charge has five states, and the ledgers in sections 12 and 13 track them: dropped (a mote on the ground), collected (walked over), stored (in a battery, up to ten), expired (a mote that faded, or charge collected with nowhere to go), spent (a discharge or a burst). A collected mote goes to the battery with the most room, linked or not, and to the battery placed earlier when rooms are equal; a full battery takes nothing; a battery that the arc is drawing takes nothing until the burst ends.
- Modules go into an empty slot when picked up, wherever you stand; arranging and linking happen only in a shelter. A planted beacon and its battery come back only if two slots are free; otherwise they stay where they are until you free the slots at a shelter or the battery runs down.
You leave the dock with the cutter, one empty battery in an otherwise empty rack, and whatever starting module the workshop lets you choose. All numbers are proposals.
@@ 337,11 337,11 @@
C C B
S - S link: B → C; one drip, where the right-hand bundle touches the battery
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Back in the yard the player finds a third deposit on the far bank and drops the bundle into the empty slot. Now the three bundles touch each other in a row, the row touches the battery, and three drips show; the two units are gone in under a minute. The player does not yet know what a drip means, and will. Rack now: coil, battery, three bundles, one slot empty, and one drip, because a bundle touches the battery. The player does not yet know what a drip means.
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Straight after, on the far bank below the platform, the player finds a third deposit and drops the bundle into the empty slot. Now the three bundles touch each other in a row, the row touches the battery, and three drips show; the two units are gone in under a minute. The player does not yet know what a drip means, and will.
**8:00.** The second dispatch. Causeway again, eighty organisms, joining the first crowd. The press on the causeway now reaches halfway to the dock. The forecast reads: third surge in four minutes, intake causeway. The player decides to leave.
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**9:00.** The culvert, back toward the dock end. The player emerges at the causeway head, twenty metres from the dock, with the press's edge thirty metres up the road. Four organisms break off and pursue. The cutter takes two; the player takes one hit; the dock is a hard stop and the pursuers stop at its edge.
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**9:00.** The culvert, back toward the dock end. The player emerges at the causeway head, twenty metres from the dock, with the press's edge thirty metres up the road. Four organisms break off and pursue. The cutter takes two, and their two motes go into the empty battery and leak away again through the three bundles before the dock; the player takes one hit; the dock is a hard stop and the pursuers stop at its edge.
**9:40.** Extraction, three bundles and a coil, one point of health down, an empty battery. The player banks three bundles. The notebook holds: the culvert is safe and marked; the surge comes in where the lamp flashes; the yard lamp is dark and the hatch is shut; there is a switch at the causeway head with cables to both lamps; something drains a battery that touches salvage.
| 5:00 | same, arranged; one drip | two motes dropped and collected; stored 2 |
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| 7:30 | coil 2, battery 1, bundles 3; full | three drips; 2 leak away within the minute; stored 0 |
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| 9:40 | extracted with 3 bundles, coil, empty battery | expired by leak 2; spent 0 |
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| 5:30 | coil 2, battery 1, bundles 3; full | three drips; 2 leak away within the minute; stored 0 |
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| 9:00 | same | two motes dropped and collected; leaked away before 9:40; stored 0 |
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| 9:40 | extracted with 3 bundles, coil, empty battery | expired by leak 4; spent 0 |
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@@ 379,11 380,11 @@
**6:00.** The yard, then the hall, and the tally board read again for the inked route. Outside, the crowd from the causeway arrives at the yard beacon, into the channel at the door, and holds. The player is inside with the Flood at the door. This is the moment the design is built around.
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Options, all readable: the hatch is powered and open, so the door is a chokepoint where organisms in pursuit range come in one at a time; the cutter can hold it for a while at a cost in health; the coil's battery has two units and a discharge needs ten; the arc's battery is empty. The player holds the door with the cutter and kills eleven, picking up motes between the bodies: eight go to the coil's battery, which is now full, and three to the arc's.
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Options, all readable: the hatch is powered and open, so the door is a chokepoint where organisms in pursuit range come in one at a time; the cutter can hold it for a while at a cost in health; the coil's battery has two units and a discharge needs ten; the arc's battery is empty. The player holds the door with the cutter and kills sixteen, picking up motes between the bodies; by the collection rule they go to whichever battery has more room, so the two fill together: the coil's battery from two to ten, the arc's from nothing to eight.
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**7:50.** Discharge. The twenty-nine organisms still standing in the channel stop, stunned for eight seconds, and shed two large motes, ten units. The coil's battery, emptied by the discharge, takes them all back; the arc's stays at three. The player is clear of the crowd before it moves.
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**7:50.** Discharge. The twenty-four organisms still standing in the channel stop, stunned for eight seconds, and shed two large motes, ten units. The coil's battery, emptied by the discharge and now the one with the most room, takes them all back; the arc's stays at eight. The player is clear of the crowd before it moves.
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**8:00.** The second dispatch, yard, eighty organisms, into the channel where the stunned crowd is recovering. The player is at the channel's edge in insulation and discharges again into the fresh surge: about sixty of them are in the water; six large motes, thirty units, of which the coil's battery takes ten and the arc's takes seven to reach full; thirteen expire on the ground. Both batteries full.
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**8:00.** The second dispatch, yard, eighty organisms, into the channel where the stunned crowd is recovering. The player is at the channel's edge in insulation and discharges again into the fresh surge: about sixty of them are in the water; six large motes, thirty units, of which the coil's battery takes ten and the arc's takes two to reach full; eighteen expire on the ground. Both batteries full.
**8:20.** The burst. The stunned surge is packed in the doorway and the channel mouth, and the player triggers the arc: for ten seconds the cutter's hits jump body to body through the crowd, and the arc's battery runs from ten to nothing. These organisms have already shed, so the burst returns no motes; it is a pure spend, and it thins the doorway crowd by dozens before they recover. That is the genre's moment, bought with the surge before.
| 12:00 | extracted; no cargo | | | 10 lost at the dock | 10 | |
@@ 434,9 435,9 @@
| Turned sign, cart wear, tally board, inked plan | Prop plus text inspection | Prop sprites | Not yet selected | Text inspection alone, which is acceptable for clues but not for live combat cues |
| Health | Bar | UI kit | Not yet selected | Text |
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**Sources checked today, read-only.** OpenGameArt's published FAQ states that hosted assets are offered under one of CC0, CC-BY 3.0/4.0, CC-BY-SA 3.0/4.0, OGA-BY 3.0/4.0 or GPL 2.0/3.0, that each asset carries its own uploader-chosen licence, and that commercial use is allowed under those terms; no specific pack has been selected. Kenney's asset listing page does not state a licence on the listing itself, but the individual page for its "Top-down Shooter" pack states "Creative Commons CC0" and describes 580 files of 2D top-down sprites including tiles, furniture and zombie-style figures; that makes it a plausible candidate for tiles, props and a reworkable creature sprite, subject to a suitability check nobody has done yet. No asset has been downloaded, purchased or created.
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**Sources checked today, read-only.** OpenGameArt's published FAQ states that hosted assets are offered under one of CC0, CC-BY 3.0/4.0, CC-BY-SA 3.0/4.0, OGA-BY 3.0/4.0 or GPL 2.0/3.0, that each asset carries its own uploader-chosen licence, and that commercial use is allowed under those terms; no specific pack has been selected, and "free" is not one thing: a CC0 dedication imposes no conditions; a BY licence requires credit; a share-alike licence attaches its own terms to anything made from the asset; a no-derivatives licence forbids adapting it at all; and tinting or resizing a sprite, which is exactly what this section proposes for a humanoid Flood, is an adaptation, so each asset's own licence, not its host's general statement, decides whether that cheap route is allowed. The team's Reference Researcher has tabled these terms from the stewards' own texts on the wiki's asset-licences page, which also notes that a free-of-charge store item is a licence to use, not a public-domain dedication; the Brief's rule that every shortlisted asset is recorded with its source, creator, terms and intended use applies, and the intended use must say whether it is a derivative. Kenney's asset listing page does not state a licence on the listing itself, but the individual page for its "Top-down Shooter" pack states "Creative Commons CC0" and describes 580 files of 2D top-down sprites including tiles, furniture and zombie-style figures; that makes it a plausible candidate for tiles, props and a reworkable creature sprite, subject to a suitability check nobody has done yet. No asset has been downloaded, purchased or created.
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**Coverage gaps, honestly.** The enemy sprite is the likely custom-art request as the enemy is currently proposed, and the reason is the proposal, not the market: the one free pack checked (Kenney's "Top-down Shooter", CC0, whose page describes zombie figures among its 580 files; PM confirmed the terms and commercial use on 2026-09-06, without approving suitability) supplies humanoid zombies, and the bioelectric organisms proposed here are not humanoid. Zombies are among the owner's own examples of the Flood. So the cheapest route is a design lever, not an art request: if the Flood were a humanoid mass, tinted and size-varied from a free pack, the enemy would be covered at no cost and the rule would not change, since what conducts is bodies standing in water either way. That option is put to the owner as part of decision 2; nobody has inspected the pack's sprites in the engine, and this document does not claim they fit. Everything else in the table can be carried by generic top-down tiles, a UI kit, engine particles and text, at the cost of some atmosphere. Sound is not designed here.
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**Coverage gaps, honestly.** The enemy sprite is the likely custom-art request as the enemy is currently proposed, and the reason is the proposal, not the market: the one free pack checked (Kenney's "Top-down Shooter", CC0, whose page describes zombie figures among its 580 files; PM confirmed the terms and commercial use on 2026-09-06, without approving suitability) supplies humanoid zombies, and the bioelectric organisms proposed here are not humanoid. Zombies are among the owner's own examples of the Flood. So the cheapest route is a design lever, not an art request: if the Flood were a humanoid mass, tinted and size-varied from a free pack whose licence permits adaptation (CC0 does; a no-derivatives licence would not), the enemy would be covered at no cost and the rule would not change, since what conducts is bodies standing in water either way. That option is put to the owner as part of decision 2; nobody has inspected the pack's sprites in the engine, and this document does not claim they fit. Everything else in the table can be carried by generic top-down tiles, a UI kit, engine particles and text, at the cost of some atmosphere. Sound is not designed here.
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@@ 520,7 521,11 @@
## Appendix B: bookkeeping
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**Status.** DES103 r4, which is this page at revision r10, In review, on Hold the Flood/Design Document; r9 (fb6b6d), r8 (d37cbf) and r7 (44984c) are page history. Revised against PM's PMR002 and its closing review (Pm Reviews/Pmr002 4f18c7; Tasks ab97dc), Design Review REV102 r5 and r6 (e2db8b, 538724), External Critique EXT102 r2 and r3 (d3b19b, d325f9), World and Mystery r15 and r16 (dca569, 812fd6), and Clarity Q39 and Q40.
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**Status.** DES103 r5, which is this page at revision r11, In review, on Hold the Flood/Design Document; r10 (8afa59), r9 (fb6b6d), r8 (d37cbf) and r7 (44984c) are page history.
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**Sources read for r11.** Design Review REV103 r1 285925 (the critic's first per-beat-ledger review, of r9: PMR002 findings 1, 2 and 4 met on the page, 3 met on the world page; four findings, of which 3 and 4 were met by r10 and 1 and 2 are met here). External Critique r4 72ae82 (X24a retracted; X25 is the same stale sentence as REV103-1). Clarity Q41 (licences differ, and tinting is an adaptation). Reference: Asset Licences r1 e89c3c (REF104). Pm Reviews 6e8d12 (PMR002 recorded as the last completed checkpoint; nothing new assigned).
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**What r11 changes, as DES103 r5.** REV103-1: the leftover sentence in expedition one that asserted a seventh slot and one drip is deleted; the third bundle now goes in straight after the first arrangement, so the three-drip moment is what drains the battery, and the two motes from the pursuers at nine minutes are in the ledger. REV103-2: the collection rule now says a mote goes to the battery with the most room, linked or not, with a tie to the earlier-placed battery, which is what both scenes do; expedition six is re-tallied so the coil's battery is genuinely full before each discharge (sixteen kills, twenty-four stunned, the arc's battery at eight then ten, eighteen units expired), and the ledger closes to the unit. Q41: section 14 says in plain words that free licences differ, that tinting or resizing is an adaptation, and that each asset's own licence decides the cheap route, citing the Reference Researcher's asset-licences page. Nothing else moved. Revised against PM's PMR002 and its closing review (Pm Reviews/Pmr002 4f18c7; Tasks ab97dc), Design Review REV102 r5 and r6 (e2db8b, 538724), External Critique EXT102 r2 and r3 (d3b19b, d325f9), World and Mystery r15 and r16 (dca569, 812fd6), and Clarity Q39 and Q40.
**What r10 changes, as DES103 r4.** Section 11's finale is now the world designer's merged chain, which their page owns and this section mirrors: the access chain this document proposed in r9, their relay chain inside the room, and their endings table, with the two reconciliations they made (shut keeps the fifteen-minute window and the hard-stop docks; fix clamps the signal cable only, so intake is fixed and power still switches, and the "doors open or shut forever" wording is dropped). The intended player is stated in PM's provisional wording, with mystery players as a possible second audience. The owner page says the document has been reviewed and revisions remain open, and no longer describes a critic's finding. Two stale sentences that said criterion 11 and the critic's standing awaited PM are corrected. The profitable two-battery electrician is drawn leak-free under a stated rule that a module accepts one link, so the second battery is storage until relinked at a shelter; the burst's nominal and actual durations are stated as equal; PM's vertical-coil arrangement, three bundles with one drip, is added as the cleverer fix. The world designer's alternative failure (the hatch shutting on the surveyor inside) is recorded beside the routing one. Appendix A's module roster now lists all seven, and the battery has its own entry (Q39). Section 11's early-stop paragraph already cites no achievement figures (Q40).
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**Criterion 11, where it is answered.** The owner page's recommendation paragraph; section 1's audience paragraph; section 6's payoff design and tradeoff; section 11's length, early-stop and ending paragraphs; section 17's recommendation and decision 4, with the observed data, its limits and the prediction separated.
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**PM report.** Task DES103 r4 against PMR002 and its closing review; artifact Design Document r10 (r9 fb6b6d, r8 d37cbf, r7 44984c, r6 12779d, r5 bc134b, r4 46b320, r3 d35209, r2 c4ad51, r1 d828a4 in history); PMR002 findings 1 to 4 are answered on this page, with finding 3 now the world designer's chain mirrored here; handoffs: the critic's REV103 on this exact revision, with the per-beat ledger method they announced; the world designer to check that section 11 mirrors their r16 without drift; the reader's CLR102 on the owner page; the world designer's page is aligned and the map exists in one place; no canonical decision changed; reasoning is written design against the cited revisions, no player data; two outside facts are cited with their sources and caveats (Steam's refund terms, read directly; the researcher's measured price bands, not independently verified); risks and tuning bounds are listed in sections 15 and 16; the independent critic's verdict on r3 is ready for owner review, and r4 and r5 add only the residual and the pitch layer. Next handoff: PM to accept DES102 and either open DES103 on this revision or say what more the owner packet needs; the world designer to align their page to sections 2 and 4; the critic to confirm the residual. One PM request: rule on the routing model, since it decides section 4 and both scenes, and say whether the alternative still goes to the owner as a decision.
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**PM report.** Task DES103 r5 against PMR002 and REV103 r1; artifact Design Document r11 (r10 8afa59, r9 fb6b6d, r8 d37cbf, r7 44984c, r6 12779d, r5 bc134b, r4 46b320, r3 d35209, r2 c4ad51, r1 d828a4 in history); PMR002 findings 1 to 4 are answered on this page, with finding 3 now the world designer's chain mirrored here; handoffs: the critic's REV103 on this exact revision, with the per-beat ledger method they announced; the world designer to check that section 11 mirrors their r16 without drift; the reader's CLR102 on the owner page; the world designer's page is aligned and the map exists in one place; no canonical decision changed; reasoning is written design against the cited revisions, no player data; two outside facts are cited with their sources and caveats (Steam's refund terms, read directly; the researcher's measured price bands, not independently verified); risks and tuning bounds are listed in sections 15 and 16; the independent critic's verdict on r3 is ready for owner review, and r4 and r5 add only the residual and the pitch layer. Next handoff: PM to accept DES102 and either open DES103 on this revision or say what more the owner packet needs; the world designer to align their page to sections 2 and 4; the critic to confirm the residual. One PM request: rule on the routing model, since it decides section 4 and both scenes, and say whether the alternative still goes to the owner as a decision.
