EscapistsReintroduced/docs/current-status.md

Current development status

Updated 19 September 2026, through the clean refreshed mortar salvo 112900 and packed five-addon startup 113315. Commit 7c53b4b remains the clean development checkpoint: companion 103025, ordinary Chat 102737 and casualty 102037 have identical addon-source manifests. Newer flight, spectator and mortar changes mean the current-source clean runtime gate remains pending. Packed startup qualifies its archived artifact snapshot, which predates the latest mortar changes; it does not qualify the current source or build process. All seventeen first-release cases remain pending.

The primary deliverable is an independently authored replacement for the abandoned Escapists base mission, with companion behavior integrated through its interfaces. Five successor addon projects have their own identities, authored Everon sites and vanilla asset references. The first release targets up to twelve players completing prison → scavenging/intel → radio defence → helicopter extraction without the original mod or dependent extensions. Scripted development checkpoints exist; a dependable, manually playable multiplayer release is still unfinished.

Established development checkpoints

Area	Evidence	Practical limit
Integrated base loop	Core 100619 completes two rounds, 612 assertions and zero errors, including canonical participant rejection/restored document recovery, rough/exact native markers, radio feedback, extraction and restart. Companion 103025 completes two rounds, 96 assertions and zero errors at the committed checkpoint.	Scripted local integration with deliberate state/position changes, not a normal-input escape. Later addon edits require new source-bound checks. Earlier failures remain archived.
Ordinary game startup	Chat 102737 loads all five addons in the regular game, verifies the header/MissionSystems and admits the real local controller to a living canonical prisoner, then observes a clean ready interval.	Explicit diagnostic noSplash and a scoped standalone round-local identity; no complete ordinary route, remote identity or manual input proof. Admission design.
Packed addon consumption	Packed Core 110729 passes ordinary startup from the archived project/PAK/resource database plus installed vanilla: exactly three expected addons, real canonical prisoner, a 15-second ready interval and zero captured errors. Package and log hashes are retained.	Artifact-bound startup with explicit noSplash; no loose successor addon was loaded. The artifact predates current mortar edits. Packed Chat 113315 also passes startup from all five archived 111731 addons (fifteen exact artifacts), with no loose successor source, a real prisoner and zero captured errors. Native packaging remains unqualified: an empty-addon control reproduces the same UI resource-leak errors, without fixing or suppressing them.
Prison and scavenging	Prisoner capacity uses one real player plus eleven physical characters, exact starter kits and native clue transfers. Prison boundary 100148 covers the gate/progression corrections.	Extra physical actors are not twelve connected clients. Native action completion and deliberately repositioned boundary crossings do not prove held input or walking through the gate/debris. Equipment scarcity and combat balance need playtesting.
Medicine and extraction casualties	Medical treatment demonstrates finite supplies and native recovery at its earlier snapshot. Casualty 102037 passes 101 clean assertions at the committed checkpoint: grounded-aircraft checks, real incapacitation, helper rejection, seat/LOS constraints, one owner-handshake load and idempotent stop. Native removal proves the inherited exit mechanism.	Casualty loading explicitly adapts helper membership and invokes action completion. Held input, real remote ownership, competing rescuers and disconnect/death/deletion races remain separate. The older medical snapshot retains its historical catalog errors.
Infantry and HQ	Actual perception response carries an original soldier's observation through both physical radio legs and HQ to a different original squad, which physically moves. Patrol/preemption/resumption are implemented.	The prisoner is arranged and temporarily protected. Broader combat and interrupted/captured support require additional qualification; no response force is created for this test.
Finite support	Mortar expiry verifies fresh native commitments followed by stale-report withholding without duplicate orders. Courier 095513 passes 154 clean assertions through actual radio, original-patrol walking, exact depot-shell delivery and patrol restoration.	Mortar observations are synthetic; impact accuracy and genuine late callbacks remain unproved. The new refresh now passes the bounded112900 fixture: three actual radio updates, eight physical launches, native event completion, 19 surviving original shells and 25 seconds without replay. Current expiry and broader support-loss checks remain separate. Courier depletion is arranged by physically sequestering the original 27 rounds, not firing or replacing them. Broader losses and multiplayer remain unqualified.
Aircraft mechanism	Flight 110458 demonstrates consumed actor-local native controls and powered takeoff, with normal engine operation and finite fuel use. Correcting the yaw feedback field keeps observed heading near its 1.45-degree target.	The run fails its unchanged physical safety envelope: controlled hover/landing are not qualified. Later manual angular damping112502 kept drift below 8 metres but exceeded the 18 metre height bound; signed collective consumption is the next bounded diagnostic. This is a fixture-owned aircraft experiment, not an operational HQ flight service or extraction-piloting acceptance. Earlier input-consumption failures remain archived.
Independent runtime controls	Linux dedicated startup prepares the empty Core mission in an isolated network namespace. Its four resource errors reproduce in a vanilla control. Vanilla ordinary 102533 reproduces the initial splash unknown-class error with exactly two vanilla addons and no successor.	No real dedicated client joined. The vanilla ordinary control remains failed despite entering the menu; it does not test scenario reload or input. Splash diagnosis.

Immediate work

1. Prove the ordinary player route. Use normal gate, inventory, document/map, radio and medical interactions; travel the authored route, board and pilot the actual extraction helicopter, and verify partial escape. Keep finite supplies, vanilla recovery and explicit round abandonment intact. Direct-completion fixtures cannot settle these usability questions.
2. Stabilize the bounded flight experiment without weakening its gates. Actor-local input consumption and powered takeoff are demonstrated. The yaw-axis correction holds heading, but pitch oscillation still prevents a hover/landing pass. Keep experimental controls separate from operational HQ support, retain failed observations, and re-run applicable integration checks after source changes.
3. Establish real multiplayer behavior. Test accepted client identities, simultaneous/late joins, preload cancellation, reserved-body reconnect/expiry, spent lives, spectator streaming, remote task/map/radio/result updates and seat contention. Local controller injections and helper actors are not substitutes for connected clients.
4. Qualify current support and observer changes. The refreshed full salvo now passes a source-bound native check; finish current expiry and support-loss regressions. Spectator reason messages and survivor-cycling guidance have been added and compiled; visible behavior and real-client streaming remain unverified. Exercise actual interrupted reports, captured/dead couriers, pending inventory callbacks and support losses. Preserve stock and original patrols; retain historical failures alongside source-bound successful regressions.

First-release qualification

The acceptance ledger still requires the complete ordinary escape loop, death/unconsciousness/recovery, reconnect/respawn/spectators, partial escape, defeat/restart, interrupted/stale reports, support/ammunition losses and duplicate-free cleanup with up to twelve connected players. A passed development checkpoint does not promote those pending cases.

Collect matched original/successor workloads with repeated client-frame and server-tick measurements. No FPS improvement is demonstrated; the comparison tool has synthetic regression evidence only. Complete provenance/dependency review, obtain a clean native build and satisfy the release checker. The packed Core startup is now demonstrated for its exact archived PAK, while the packaging shutdown/control failures remain unresolved and unqualified. The development source bundle provides editable projects; it is separate from that native candidate and from a qualified release. No release package is published.

Original missions remain untouched. Engine tests use private profiles/prefixes, hidden displays and muted test audio. RHS, additional terrains, complete original feature parity, alternate starts and distant-unit simulation remain later scope. The validation ledger preserves the detailed historical checkpoints and failures.