RPG — Perchance Generator

Official project name: TBD.

An RPG built as a Perchance generator. The game is a normal web app (TypeScript + Vite + Preact + three.js); the Perchance platform provides the hosting shell and the two AI plugins used at runtime (generateImage, generateText).

This branch (perchance) is the minimal upload set for the Perchance workspace. It contains the app code plus this README — nothing else (no configs, no CI, no specs, no dev tooling).

What runs here

• Onboarding flow: a title screen ("CHRONICLES" + New Game / Load / Settings / Credits / Help; Load is disabled until a save exists) leads to the New Game identity wizard (name → appearance archetype, which generates your sprite → background story template or custom → review → creates a save slot and enters the game). The identity is locked to the save. Load Game shows the 3 manual slots + autosave. Settings has a working Language tab (en / zh / hi / es / ar — the AI responds in the selected language; other tabs are stubs). Saves persist in IndexedDB (save table).

• Scene (type C — open variant): a 3D scene built with three.js — a floor plane and a landscape backdrop, each textured by an AI-generated image (see prompts in src/rpg/src/scene/manifest/openPlains.ts). Two character sprites (the player from identity creation + a picked NPC from the seed pool) stand on the floor. A subtle fog effect drifts over the scene frame (declarative in the manifest). Each sprite is generated by the image plugin on a solid-white background with its ground shadow baked into the image (so it reads grounded wherever the generator placed the feet), removed client-side by RMBG-1.4 (@huggingface/transformers + ONNX Runtime Web), cleaned, and rendered with a black outline plane behind it.

  ⚠️ On first boot the browser downloads the ~45 MB removal model from huggingface.co (cached afterwards) — an animated loading screen reports the live stages, including a "Downloading AI model…" stage with a percentage, and a corner chip shows removal progress ("Removing background 1/2…"). The inference runs off the main thread (ONNX Runtime proxy worker) so the UI stays responsive, and the ORT WASM engine is fetched from the jsdelivr CDN at runtime (wasmPaths — the local build/assets/*.wasm is intentionally not uploaded; a 404 for it is NOT expected). A sprite generated before the model is ready waits for it; if the model CDN is unreachable, the app falls back to the platform's removeBackground (console warning — the fallback is never cached, so the next boot re-attempts the model).

  Processed cut-outs are cached: after the first removal each sprite's cut-out is stored in IndexedDB (cutouts table). Reloads serve them with no re-inference — expect a fast reload (seconds) and the console line [rpg] cutout-cache: hit <id> (skip inference).

• Narrator opening: after the scene loads, the world narrator speaks once (2-3 sentences describing the scene and who is present — it knows the scene and the characters from the art prompts; it never sees the player's background).

• Dialogue (multi-turn): a Preact overlay. Talk to <NPC name> (in the top-left HUD) asks the text AI for a line with the full context payload (who the NPC is, their background, the player's appearance, the scene, the bounded conversation log, the language). If the AI includes a [choices] block (see below), the options become clickable buttons; choosing one appends it to the conversation and asks the AI for the follow-up, which may carry new choices — the loop continues until Leave (always-escape, fixed button, always available, even while the AI is thinking).

• Sprite re-roll: a Re-roll sprite HUD button regenerates the current NPC's sprite with a new seed (cache bust → fresh image → fresh cut-out). The player's sprite is part of their identity and is never re-rolled.

Platform ↔ code mapping

Known current-state notes

• The removal model download, cut-out cache, and CDN WASM behavior described above still apply exactly (see the round-7 notes).
• The NPCs are seed-authored content (3 types × 3 backgrounds in src/rpg/src/content/npcPool.ts); one is picked per new game.
• [choices] format: dialogue text, blank line, a line with exactly [choices], then 1. <option> lines (max 4). The parser also degrades gracefully when the AI omits the block.

The game code boots against window.root:

• root.generateImage(opts) → AI image generation (floor/backdrop textures and RAW character sprites on a solid-white background with a baked ground shadow)
• root.generateText(opts) → AI text generation (dialogue)

How to test (for the Perchance AI agent)

Read src/test-prompt.txt first — it lists exactly what to check, click, measure, and report for this round. The AI plugins only execute inside the platform; the generator runs in a cross-origin iframe, so runtime validation is your job.

For local development

Local development, tooling, CI, and specs live on the main branch of https://github.com/Fahell/chronicles. This branch is generated by ./scripts/ship-perchance.sh — do not edit it by hand.