Transmission #019: April 7 — Server-backed items, Joy’s catalog, and a persistent inventory

Last week game-facing progress slowed a bit while we were heads-down on the server. That kind of week is never fun in the moment, but it paid off: we are now pulling all item data from our self-hosted server, which is really fire—a proper pipeline instead of hard-coding or guessing in the client.

What that unlocks

The client can stay dumb about what exists—we can evolve definitions, loot, and drops on the server side without shipping a new build for every tweak. Long term that is the shape we want for a live game.

Content at scale

Joy has a spreadsheet with a huge number of items lined up. We are not far from being able to bulk that into the game and actually see the world fill out with real catalog breadth instead of a handful of placeholders. Expect population work to ramp up pretty soon.

Inventory and persistence

We also have a working inventory wired through this stack. In practical terms, things should persist now—pick something up, leave, come back: your stuff ought to stick with you instead of evaporating when the session ends.

April 7 in one line: server first, then items from the wire, then a pile of content ready to land, with saves that mean something.