Coheronia - Variable Matrix

State: audited 2026-07-16 against the native HUD-kit stabilization, authored opening-cel integration, and 120-file body-specific player-gear program.

Authority Surfaces

All registries load through scripts/data/json_data.gd (load_dict, push_error + {} on failure).

Current Presentation Defects

Planned Authority Surfaces (Not Live)

These rows record operator-approved planning authority. (The FQ-09C opening cinematic and the FQ-09W backdrop/backing-wall/ambient planes are live — see the authority table above; docs/ART_DIRECTION_AND_CANON.md, docs/OPENING_STORYBOARD.md, and art/source_templates/BACKGROUND_TEMPLATE.md remain the style/copy/asset authorities for them and for later art.)

Scenic backdrops, natural backing walls, and foreground cells are separate planes (live as of FQ-09W). No wall dictionary or wall delta is a live save authority: natural walls are deterministic/derived; player-placeable walls require a later explicit save ownership and migration decision.

v0.6 Ownership Boundary

World Config Matrix

Character Matrix

FQ-01 Player Defaults (Health, Healing, Collapse)

All eight keys are read once via player._load_player_defaults() from BlockRegistry.character_data["player_defaults"] (same JSON-load pattern as traits/roles/appearances); missing keys fall back to the DEFAULT_* consts in player.gd.

FQ-05 Attunement (Player Magic Resource)

Extension points documented in docs/FUTURE_PROGRESSION_RESEARCH_AND_BASE_LEVELS.md ("Attunement Extension Points"). A non-magic character never spends or needs attunement; nothing existing is gated by it.

Health, Healing, And Collapse

Two healing sources are wired in FQ-01: eat food (active, bound to the eat_food input action — key H — consumes 1 food from the inventory for an instant food_heal_amount heal, no-op at full health or during its own cooldown) and safe passive regen (near the Town Hall center within safe_radius_px and clear of any "threats" group node within 200px, health trickles back at passive_regen_per_sec; logs "You feel safe near the Town Hall and begin to recover." once per regen streak). Damage still gates through the existing hurt_cooldown_sec i-frame window and flashes the player sprite red for ~0.2s. Reaching 0 health triggers a collapse: each carried inventory stack loses floor(count * collapse_loss_fraction) (deterministic, per stack) before the player respawns at the Town Hall at full health, with the log message "You collapsed and awoke near the Town Hall. Some of your supplies were lost." Crossing below low_health_fraction of max_health logs "You are badly hurt." once per crossing and tints the HUD health bar/label; it resets when health rises back above the threshold.

Core Gameplay Variables

v0.5 Enemy Variables

FQ-06 Perk Variables

v0.5 Progression Variables

v0.5 Ancestry Variables

C/L/R Inputs

coherence, load_value, and resilience are formula outputs from data/settlement_rules.json, clamped to 0-100.

Validation Hooks

FQ-11 adds 7 checks (fq11_*, suite total 269) covering: station gating (a station recipe is locked until its station is built, and a station cannot be built before its prerequisite); the workbench -> furnace build chain spending build costs from the stockpile; the furnace smelting raw ore + coal into an ingot placed in the stockpile (not the player's inventory); the anvil forging the iron sword from ingots (equipped, attack 5); the metal gate (with only raw ore and no ingots, the anvil cannot produce the sword); the bronze alloy (copper + tin ingots -> bronze at the furnace); and stations_built round-tripping through save/load. validate_repo.py additionally enforces the workbench->furnace->anvil prereq chain, that furnace smelt recipes consume ore and output ingots to the stockpile, that no anvil recipe consumes raw ore (the metal gate) and each equips a real gear item into the right slot, and that the iron gear exists and out-damages the crude tier.

FQ-10 adds 5 checks (fq10_*, suite total 262) covering: the six ore families all generating at meaningful counts in a large rich world (coal/ copper/tin shallow, iron mid, silver+crystal deep); the generic starter ore vein surviving alongside them; deterministic ore-family layout across two same-seed setups (never saved); the tier gate (iron behind the tier-2 pick, coal minable at tier 1); and ore_abundance 0 clearing every ore — families and generic vein alike. validate_repo.py additionally requires the six ore blocks (self-drop, pick-preferred, tier 1..2, deeper ores held at tier 2) and the ore_table contract (each entry a real block, valid depth band, threshold in (0,1), positive frequency, unique seed_offset).

FQ-09U3 adds 8 checks (fq09u3_*, suite total 257) covering: the five stinger OGGs loading as non-looping one-shots under 8 s with the director reporting all five kinds; a fired stinger ducking the Music bus below -3 dB while the context loop keeps playing (the stinger itself rides the SFX bus, so the duck lowers the bed UNDER it, never the stinger); the duck envelope releasing back toward 0 dB after the stinger ends; per-kind cooldowns blocking a repeat while allowing a different kind and then the same kind after the cooldown; the game-event surface reaching the director — music_event("nightfall") and the player's attunement_pulsed each fire their stinger (the deferred-wiring fix: the director connects these in a call_deferred _wire_events so game_root's @onready player is live by then); music/SFX volume settings applying to the runtime buses via AudioSettings from profile-level keys (music_volume/sfx_volume) and round-tripping; and the world save carrying zero music/volume/stinger keys. AudioSettings.apply(profile[, duck_db]) is the single bus-volume authority (Music and SFX buses created at runtime); stinger timing/duck numbers live in the manifest's stinger_config (duck_db, duck_attack_db_per_sec, duck_release_db_per_sec, cooldown_seconds). The director's process_mode = ALWAYS keeps the score breathing and the duck/cooldown envelope ticking through pause. This run also landed the concurrent Codex art integration (55 generated PNGs: blocks, items, enemies with variants, ten player bodies, Town Hall, backgrounds, back walls) plus its runtime wiring (data/player_visuals.json, scripts/player/player_visual.gd, Town Hall/backdrop nearest-filtering and sizing); those surfaces carry their own validator art-contract checks.

FQ-09U2 adds 8 checks (fq09u2_*, suite total 234) covering: the mandated nesting spike executed live and its finding recorded (Synchronized-inside-Interactive PLAYS in 4.6.1; the parallel LayerPlayer design ships regardless since the suite has one shared stem set); the stem bed live — six loops at the exact grid length on the Music bus; targets following settlement coherence/resilience; the pressure stem and the collapse-edge-only fracture stem; the storm texture floor; smoothing verified to the decimal (-40 -> -37.00 dB at 6 dB/s over 0.5 s, never snapping); a deliberately length-mismatched stem set disabling layering while the context stream plays on; and save round-trips carrying zero stem/music keys with the bed surviving load. validate_repo.py additionally requires the six stem OGGs and the manifest's stem_mix contract (all six layers, min<=max dB, positive smoothing rate).

FQ-09U1 adds 9 checks (fq09u1_*, suite total 226) covering: the manifest loads with all four context loops decoded and the 72/4/64 musical grid stamped onto every stream; the director is live on the runtime-created Music bus with a four-clip AudioStreamInteractive; night/dawn/underground resolution from clean baselines; crisis enter hysteresis (a brief spike never enters, sustained 2 s does); crisis exit requiring both the lower threshold and the 6 s delay; identical states never re-request the current or pending clip; the LIVE spike proof that a next-bar same-position crossfade actually reaches the requested clip during real playback (get_current_clip_index); missing assets disabling audio silently while the state machine keeps evaluating; and save round-trips carrying zero music keys with the director surviving load. All state-machine checks call evaluate(state, delta) directly with synthetic snapshots — no wall-clock dependence. validate_repo.py additionally requires the director script/ scene, the manifest loader, the Codex render/verify tooling, the m8patch, and the four context OGGs.

FQ-09M adds 7 checks (fq09m_*, suite total 217) covering: the swing phase tracks mining state (idle -1, active >= 0, back to -1 on reset); placing a block spawns exactly one placement pulse; the attunement cast spawns its ring at the fire moment; a landed player hit sparks and a collapse adds fall-and-respawn dust; enemy hits spark (hp/drops behavior stays pinned by the fq08 checks); a successful hand craft fires the shared confirmation burst (the four forge handlers use the same _craft_confirm_fx path); and every effect self-frees within its lifetime, so the "action_fx" group returns to empty — transient by construction, nothing can reach saves. validate_repo.py additionally requires scripts/fx/action_fx.gd.

Separately in the same run, the Codex lane's scripts/audio/verify_music_assets.py mechanically verified the FQ-09U asset suite (loop sample counts, stinger lengths, stem-combination headroom); it is Codex-lane tooling, not part of the Godot smoke.

FQ-09W adds 7 checks (fq09w_*, suite total 210) covering: the natural wall map is identical across two same-seed setups with the dirt band above stone, nothing at/above the surface row, and a wall tileset carrying zero physics and zero occlusion layers (structurally unable to affect collision, lighting, shelter, or settlement math); a mined below-surface block stays a normal air delta while wall_at still reports the wall behind it; at midday the underground ambient target reaches the cave tint while the surface stays exactly DAY_TINT (asserted on ambient_target_color, not the smoothing lerp); a freshly mined open shaft admits daylight to its floor while a sealed column at the same depth stays dark (live column skylight); the backdrop node sits behind the walls layer which sits behind the Blocks layer, with null image hooks falling back to code-drawn planes; a dropped-in back_walls PNG resolves through the registry and removal falls back (self-cleaning temp art); and the saved world restores cleanly afterwards. validate_repo.py additionally requires world_backdrop.gd, the backgrounds/back_walls categories, and their art directories. The screenshot tour adds 09_underground_midday_torch.

FQ-09C adds 13 checks (fq09c_*, suite total 203) covering: the smoke run itself proves the COHERONIA_SMOKE bypass (no prologue node in the tree); exact scene order and overlay copy walked live scene by scene; the title card's three exact engine lines including By Paul Peck; completion emits finished(true) exactly once with no double-advance past the end; skip finishes safely mid-sequence with the tick clock stopped and audio silent; the profile-level seen flag round-trips through a shell reload, is idempotent, and the operator's prior value is restored; a full replay touches no characters or worlds; scene durations/cues are data-driven (42.0s, every scene declares nontrivial animation cues); the authored surface is the locked 640x360 grid at 10 Hz; every scene's draw-command fingerprint changes across ticks (a fade-only scene fails); the same scene+tick always replots identically (determinism); the cel-shot hook (a temp frame pool plays in place of the plotted shot and removal falls back); and the title screen renders the exact title/authorship/tagline labels plus the Prologue replay button alongside intact Play/Continue/Quit wiring. validate_repo.py additionally requires prologue.gd/prologue_canvas.gd/prologue_puppets.gd, all eight opening_NN_ ids in both the storyboard and the runtime, and the exact title lines in the runtime.

FQ-09 adds 4 checks (fq09_*, suite total 183) covering: toolbelt slot tiles show live counts and the gold selected-slot highlight follows the selected slot; the inventory panel's icon grid mirrors injected counts while the panel opens normally; the town stockpile grid mirrors the hall stockpile; and the acceptance flow — grids track counts through mine (+1 dirt), craft (craft_torch: 3 torches appear), deposit (stockpile grid rises; torches are not depositable), and load (grid matches the restored inventory exactly). The FQ-07 hotbar item check was rewritten to art-vs-fallback semantics (hotbar_icon_is_art) because slots now always display an icon.

FQ-08 adds 6 checks (fq08_*, suite total 179) covering: a stone target's damage stage rises from 0 to 1-3 mid-mine; the stage resets on target change and on mining stop; partial damage is transient — it survives neither save nor load, the block stays intact, and finishing the mine still yields exactly one drop; and enemy damage is visible before death (hurt-bar ratio 1.00 -> 0.67 after a non-lethal hit, enemy alive, no drops rolled).

FQ-07 adds 4 checks (fq07_*, suite total 173) covering: visual_assets.json loads with the four categories; missing images return null lookups while generated block textures still render and hotbar icons stay hidden (no crash); a runtime-written block PNG wins over the generated texture and the fallback returns after removal (pixel-verified both ways); and an item PNG lights its hotbar icon then hides on removal. The smoke writes and deletes its own temp art (with leftover cleanup at section start) so the repo stays art-free. validate_repo.py requires visual_assets.json + the art/generated dirs, fails on broken explicit references, and reports convention gaps as INFO.

FQ-06 adds 6 checks (fq06_*, suite total 169) covering: perk data loads with 7 lanes and correct miner prerequisites; at level 1 with nothing purchased the root node is available, its child locked, points 0, and purchase refused; at level 3 (2 points) purchasing stone_recovery succeeds, leaves 1 point, and multiplies effective_mine_speed by exactly 1.15; prerequisites unlock children while the 2-cost node stays unaffordable and re-purchase is refused; purchased perks + level persist through the world save round-trip with the effect re-applied; and the panel opens, selects/inspects nodes (PURCHASED/AVAILABLE states, prerequisite names, description), and closes. The toggle_skills binding joined input_actions_bound; validate_repo.py enforces the perk node schema (fields, unique ids, cost >= 1, [x,y] positions, same-lane prereqs).

FQ-05 adds 6 checks (fq05_*, suite total 163) covering: data-driven defaults (max 50); the pulse spends exactly its cost, lights up, and respects its cooldown; insufficient attunement blocks the pulse without spending; attunement regenerates over time; ancestry (attunement_bonus 20 -> max 70, attunement_regen_mult 2.0) and gear (amulet_focus -> max 80) hooks raise the maximum and removal clamps back to 50; and the current value rides the world save (21.0 round-trips). The attune_pulse binding joined the input_actions_bound list; validate_repo.py requires the five attunement player_defaults keys and the amulet_focus item.

FQ-04 adds 8 checks (fq04_*, suite total 157) covering: bare-handed baseline (attack 1, armor 0); forging the sword equips it, consumes 2 wood + 3 stone, and cannot repeat; one real hit-path strike kills a 3 hp slime; forging the armor set equips helmet/torso/feet (armor total 4) and cannot repeat; a 10-damage hit loses exactly 10 - armor_total(); a 2-damage hit under 4 armor still chips exactly 1 (no immunity); combat gear round-trips through character save/load with ancestry/trait max_health untouched; and the equipment UI shows "Attack 3 · Armor 4" plus the equipped weapon/torso names. validate_repo.py additionally requires the four combat items with meaningful effects and the two forge recipes.

FQ-03 adds 7 checks (fq03_*, suite total 149) covering: equipment.json loads with the 12 expected slots in order; a new character record carries default gear (pick_basic + 11 empty slots); equipped tool slots mirror the live tool tiers both ways; slot/item mismatches are rejected and equipping never touches the backpack; an equipped inert item (ring_band) round-trips through character save/load while empty slots stay valid; the inventory panel shows every gear slot with (empty) placeholders; and a pre-FQ-03 character (no equipment key) migrates with tool tiers and inventory preserved and gear derived from tiers. validate_repo.py additionally enforces the equipment.json schema (slot list, required items, slot_type coherence, tool item tiers).

FQ-09V adds 5 checks (fq09v_*, suite total 190) with self-cleaning smoke_tmp_* temp art: pools resolve through both the <id>_01/_02 file convention and an explicit array entry while a pool-less block reports none; variant selection is deterministic (two setups of seed 777 render identical dirt variants over a 40-cell sample with at least 2 variants in use); a different seed (778) changes the selection somewhere in the sample (nothing is stored); removing the pool falls back to exactly one source with the generated texture; and the live world state is restored afterwards.

FQ-09S adds 1 check (fq09s_constellation_links_match_prereqs, bringing the suite to 185 at that point): the star-map canvas draws exactly one constellation link per prerequisite pair in the live lane, with the expected count derived from the same perk_lanes() data the buttons use — presentation cannot invent or drop an edge. All six fq06_* checks (states, purchase, prereq/cost gates, persistence, inspection text) pass unchanged against the restyled panel.

A post-FQ-09R hardening run adds 1 check (fq08_crack_mask_inside_sprite, suite total 184): world.block_opaque_mask is fully opaque for stone, opaque at the trunk bar but transparent at both tile edges for tree_trunk, and null for air — pinning that the crack overlay's per-pixel mask keeps degradation inside the visible sprite.

FQ-09R replaces the 8 FQ-02 checks with 8 fq09r_* checks (suite total unchanged at 183) covering: tree_density 0 clears trunks and leaves; default generation produces trees with leaves (trunk and leaf counts both > 0); every generated tree cell is non-solid and bare-hand mineable (one tree class — no walk-past-only kind); density 2.0 grows more trunks than default on the same seed; mining a trunk yields exactly 1 wood through the normal drop path and leaves an air delta; clearing a leaf cell changes no inventory count; and the live traversal pair — a surface trunk is found on flat terrain and the player walks past it using only move_right (no jump, no mining). The baseline mining checks (mineable_blocks_found, hardness_orders_mining_time, wave_f_*) now harvest tree_trunk, preserving the dirt < trunk < stone ordering and the axe speed-up on the same wood-hardness value.

FQ-01 adds 8 checks (fq01_*) covering: i-frame damage gating and the post-cooldown hit; eat-food healing (consumes 1 food, clamps to max_health) and its full-health no-op; passive regen near vs. far from the Town Hall; collapse inventory loss (floored per stack) plus respawn-at-hall-at-full-health; health save/load round-trip with max_health preserved; and enemy contact damage read from data/enemies.json scaled by difficulty("enemy").

The v0.6 smoke suite (122 checks) additionally verifies: ancestry detail text (dwarf effects + constraint, planned label for non-live); world_settings ui_help coverage of all six axes and preset deviations; character inventory isolation (two characters, one world; second world; no starter-item duplication; legacy migration); toggle_inventory binding and panel open/close/content; berry-bush support cleanup on mine/load/regrowth; axe crafting, axe-vs-pick speed differentiation (33 -> 24 frames at wood hardness — originally on solid wood columns, harvested from tree_trunk since FQ-09R; stone unchanged), and {pick, axe} save round-trips with legacy tool-tier migration.

The v0.5 smoke suite (90 checks) additionally verifies: enemies.json loads with 3 live defs; each live enemy spawns with its def id; drops enter the inventory; enemy save/load round-trips id/hp/max_hp/hall_dps; progression JSONs load; XP awards accrue (including human fractional bonus 21 vs 20 over 20 events); level curve; base level advances camp -> hamlet; population caps at 4/6/8 by level and growth is gated; underground threats survive dawn while surface threats are freed; peaceful rule blocks cave spawns; ancestry effects (dwarf mults, orc health, goblin reduction, elf jump) and unknown-species baseline.

The v0.4 smoke suite verifies:

• shell character/world persistence
• presets and world config overlay
• role items and character trait effects
• input bindings
• movement, jump, mining, drops, hardness order
• ore/tool-tier gate and tier-2 speed
• berry food and regrowth
• farming: till, plant, grow, harvest, no-float/no-regrow, timer save/load, food-yard score
• placement, torches, occlusion, lanterns
• deposit, population food use, population floor/cap/growth
• rule toggles for food, weather, darkness
• enemy difficulty and impressionability scaling
• enemy variety (FQ-13): thornrat crop-eating, ore tick near ore, torchbearer hall burn, per-def hp/dps profiles, drops
• goal panel (FQ-14): state-derived objectives, prefix-latch (no regress), toggle, no save state
• map/scouting (FQ-15): reveal-on-explore bands, hall/player/ore/threat markers, discovered-band persistence, biome_reveal scouting hook
• C/L/R reaction to light and threats
• storm pressure, damage, and roof mitigation
• save/load of player, terrain, stockpile, lights, threats, tool tier, regrow timer, crop-growth timers, storm state, discovered map bands
• world size, ore abundance, density controls, and per-block seed variation

Required Audit Behavior

After implementation runs, update this file when variables are added, removed, renamed, or moved between authority surfaces. A run is not SIGNABLE if C/L/R values are decorative or disconnected from world state.