An After-Action Analysis, a calmer computer opening on big maps, armed attack-move, sand and scrub terrain, and a playtest's worth of fixes.
This version answers the 5 October playtest. The after-action report was rebuilt so every tab fits a 1280×720 window and nothing moves when you hover, with per-team stats, a full chronicle, and a Key/All timeline, and it gains an After-Action Analysis that calls out what shaped your finished match, with a labelled field estimate when the analyst is not confident enough for a verdict. On large maps the computer opponent now holds its army near home for the opening minutes instead of grabbing five depots in the first minute, and it only taunts when something is really happening. Buildings cost a little more than your starting supply, R arms an attack-move that can combine with the Loose formation, maps gain sand, scrub, and dead trees, and figurines pick up rim light, muzzle flashes glow, and heavy blasts shake the camera.
Behind the scenes, a reclaimed lobby starts with empty seats, multiplayer rooms validate their durable command log, a score earned as a guest is kept and submitted after you sign in, and a bounded catch-up keeps the game clock at real time through slow frames. Because the economy, AI opening, and terrain generator all changed, saves and replays from 0.14.0 do not replay on this version. The open question remains the terrain's fill cost on small devices, which the new quality override and the recorded phone and tablet benchmarks help us measure.
- After-Action Analysis: plain-language callouts on what shaped your finished match, for solo and multiplayer, with labelled field estimates when the analyst is unsure.
- After-action report rebuilt: every tab fits 1280×720, hover never shifts the layout, per-team stats, and a Key/All timeline.
- Protected computer opening: Cadet and Commander hold off sieges and cross-midline attacks for the opening minutes (to 8:00 and 5:30 on Large and bigger), so an idle player now survives about 6–9 minutes on Large instead of roughly 2½–4½.
- Situational computer taunts only, with a cooldown, instead of a timer.
- Armed attack-move (R) with a banner and cursor, combinable with the Loose formation (Z).
- Sand, scrub, and dead-tree terrain with its own path cost and light cover.
- Rim light on figurines, bloom on muzzle flashes and impacts, explosion camera shake, and a ?quality= override.
- Minimap marks a scouted enemy HQ, and the map is larger and its right-clicks answer.
- Buildings cost more than the starting supply, HQ truck rebuild is 35 supply in 30 seconds, and drone, helicopter, and haul balance is retuned.
- Home-base defenders stay supplied: the HQ restock radius grows to 3200, with a resupply hint for cut-off units.
- A reclaimed lobby starts with empty seats, and a guest score is submitted after sign-in.
- Cleaner battlefield: AIR RAID banners, depot rings, capture bars, and selection wireframes are gone.
Six-slot command tables, maps twice as wide and tall, an AA battery, controls that answer every click, and a much cheaper simulation on small devices.
Matches are built around a six-slot command table where every commander brings their own brigade, wallet, and team bonus, and the maps are twice as wide and tall. Submarines get torpedoes, deck guns, and diving; a new AA battery lofts eight flak rockets at any jet it locks; and the computer opponent plans from the same fog of war you see. Trucks, depots, submarines, and the production queue now answer every click, with escort orders, capture feedback, surface and dive controls, and cancel with refunds, while the command deck keeps one column of common actions in view and the top bar becomes a compact icon plate.
Under it the game runs lighter on phones and tablets: infantry share a few draw calls instead of hundreds, fog scenery updates only where fog changed, and combat checks take about a fifth of the time they did on a measured tablet, while multiplayer rooms send smaller snapshots and recover from crashes. Each speed-up was proven to leave the simulation identical. The open question for the next version is the terrain, which fills the screen every frame and is the largest remaining cost on small devices.
- Maps twice as wide and tall, from Micro 60×46 to Colossal 164×122.
- Six-slot lobby command tables with slot claiming and ready checks, per-commander brigades and wallets, and one small team bonus per brigade for the whole side.
- AA battery: a new support building that locks enemy aircraft and lofts eight-rocket flak volleys.
- Submarine warfare with torpedoes, deck guns, and diving, plus surface, dive, and fire controls that answer while submerged.
- Convoy escort orders, selectable trucks, depot capture feedback, and production cancel with refunds.
- A fixed Common actions column in the command deck, an icon-first top bar, opt-in soft-pause while browsing, and a simpler Quick Skirmish with an Advanced disclosure.
- Sigs achievement wallet with collectible brigade cards, a public recent-games board, and illustrated Combat Honors.
- Recalibrated difficulty and economy pacing, and an AI that plans only from what it can see, with pincer and feint maneuvers.
- Double-size infantry squads, sea depth shading, and brigade colors that agree across units and buildings.
- Faster on small devices: shared infantry draw calls, incremental fog scenery, and a combat phase about five times cheaper on a measured tablet.
- Multiplayer rooms recover from crashes, send gzip-compressed snapshots, and catch up after short stalls.
- A device frame-budget harness that explains why a phone or tablet is slow.
The briefing fits the screen, matches are built from seats, and splash damage spares your own side.
The tab rail is flat with Training as a top-level destination. Skirmish is a two-pane command table — force beside mission, battlefield strip below — that fits a 720p viewport with its launch button pinned, and the multiplayer create plate keeps its Open-command-room button in view. Starting units show full names and counts, difficulty hints wrap instead of truncating, tutorial filler is gone, and lobby-service failures read as plain English.
The simulation moves too. Splash damage no longer hurts the firing side in any mode, while strike bombs hit everyone in the blast; jets crash with a destroyed HQ, and co-op wingman jets fly from their own runway. Underneath, matches are now built from seats — up to three HQs per side, each AI seat at its own difficulty — with new third-commander colors, though three-player sides aren't playable until the lobby and protocol work lands. The open color question stands: with twelve brigades in play, minimap, HUD, and renderer identity stay on the fixed team scheme until that call is made.
- Flat four-tab briefing rail with top-level Training; instructional filler deleted.
- Skirmish command table and multiplayer create plate fit a 720p viewport with pinned launch buttons.
- Plain-English starting loadouts, wrapped difficulty hints, and readable lobby-service errors.
- Seat foundation for up to three HQs per side; splash spares the firing side while strike bombs hit everyone.
Added airlift infantry raids, linkable field-guide articles, and a three-currency economy tutorial.
Build a helipad, train an NH90 transport helicopter, load a full infantry squad aboard, and rope-drop them behind enemy lines. Anti-air fire is the hard counter — a helicopter caught without an escort loses its squad with it — and the computer opponent flies too, building helipads and raiding uncovered rear areas. Field-guide articles now have direct shareable links, and the tutorial and balance tools teach the full three-currency economy.
Airlift changes what a safe rear area means: static defenses can be bypassed from above, so screening depots and keeping mobile anti-air near valuable targets matters in every matchup. Behind the front line, the renderer was split into focused modules and the balance runner, study harness, and AI confidence evals were brought onto the same footing, so matches stay stable, fair, and replay-identical while the new air game beds in.
- Airborne infantry: helipad building, NH90 transport helicopter, load and rope-drop squad actions, anti-air hard counter, and AI airlift raids.
- Boarded squads count against the infantry cap, so airlift cannot bypass supply limits.
- Field-guide articles resolve via direct page URLs with aliases and browser-history sync.
- Tutorial, economy calculator, and balance reports now teach and model the full three-currency economy and echelons.
- Staff tuning view plays back 100-match batches with animation; AdminCP shows inline 3D asset previews.
- Winner-prediction eval with per-question confidence calibration and gates fitted from live calibration.
- Renderer split from one god-class into focused domain sync modules with no behavior change.
- Fixes: Echelon III reach study, 19200-tick study horizon, hardened observation validation, and plain-language tech durations.
Public-site copy cleanup.
This update makes Brightwater easier to understand before a match begins. Landing, account, support, legal, community, leaderboard, and error pages now use direct language that explains what players can do and what to expect.
The Field Guide and game setup also label costs, times, objectives, and brigade effects more clearly. The development page keeps every release entry, with a player-facing summary and detailed feature and fix list for each version.
- Rewrote landing, account, leaderboard, support, community, privacy, terms, and 404 copy in plain language.
- Removed the inactive footer email signup and its promotional slogan.
- Clarified Field Guide resource descriptions, production times, map sizes, and brigade technology effects.
- Clarified in-game brigade effects, co-op mode, and the HQ-destruction objective.
- Updated development release summaries to focus on player-visible outcomes while retaining detailed bullet lists.
- Removed the public code-metrics panel and internal implementation details from the development page.
Added 12 selectable brigades, a clearer match summary, difficulty-based AI behavior, and phone installation support.
Choose from twelve historical brigades, each with its own starting forces, battlefield strengths, signature technology, and taunts. Every match also ends with a full-screen summary that compares the score side by side.
Lower AI difficulties occasionally choose a less effective plan, while Veteran does not. The game can be installed on supported phones, includes offline single-player support, and tunes graphics for smaller batteries. Quick Deploy also respects the difficulty selected in the briefing.
- 12 historical brigades: custom loadouts, asymmetric tuning, signature techs, voice taunts, mirror matchups, and brigade-aware replays and saves.
- Full-screen match summary with score breakdown and side-by-side comparison.
- Difficulty-based AI behavior: lower difficulties can make less effective decisions, while Veteran does not.
- Phone installation support: an install prompt, iOS home-screen guidance, safe-area fit, and a phone graphics tier.
- Quick Deploy inherits the briefing difficulty; strike confirmation, tabbed command deck, and in-game bug reporting.
Improved battlefield visuals, production, maps, onboarding, and staff tools.
The battlefield now has a brighter tabletop look, fog of war, damage effects, and readable unit symbols. Factories can queue several units at once with a full refund on cancellation; rally points, clearer movement markers, and idle-unit cycling make tactical control easier.
Random battlefields are generated as balanced islands with reachable supply depots, and Quick Deploy starts one immediately. The release also expanded the tutorial and improved staff tooling for reports, replay review, and risky actions.
- Updated battlefield visuals: a brighter tabletop look, fog of war, damage effects, readable unit symbols, and a lower-end graphics option.
- Production and tactical controls: multi-slot production queues with refunds, rally points, destination markers, and idle-unit cycling hotkeys.
- Procedural battlefields: a Random map generator with reachable depots and instant Quick Deploy solo skirmishes.
- Onboarding: an expanded seven-step tutorial mission and Cadet logistics coach.
- Staff tools: incident queues, replay review, release verification, and safety confirmations.
Improved battle interface reliability, consistency, and accessibility.
This release made the in-battle interface easier to maintain without changing match outcomes. The work creates a safer foundation for future interface improvements.
Battle panels now share consistent controls and visual rules. The interface also gained arrow-key navigation through panels and lists, a Q/E camera quarter-turn, an optional higher-contrast mode, and clearer public website copy.
- Reorganized battle interface code for safer future changes.
- Standardized battle-panel controls, visual rules, and regression checks.
- Battle panel keyboard control, roving list navigation, contrast preferences, Q/E camera quarter-turn, and plain-language public copy.
Stage-rail HUD layout, safe-zone panel positioning, and mission briefing readability.
The floating panels in the heads-up display — the audio mixer, notifications, status readouts — used to be placed with hand-tuned coordinates and sometimes ended up covering the battlefield. This release adds a layout system that automatically parks each panel in a safe corner, or a vertical stack on a phone, based on how important it is, so nothing sits on top of the action.
One set of rules now covers desktop, tablet, and phone instead of every panel carrying its own screen-size tweaks. The mission briefing screen also got clearer colours and more readable small text, and a developer-only overlay was added to show the panel zones during testing.
- Panels now reposition automatically so they stay clear of the battlefield on desktop and mobile.
- Mission briefing semantic colors and improved subtext readability; debug zone overlay for development.
Secure Google sign-in, opt-in replays, and a clearer mobile command deck.
Signing in with Google is now a fully checked flow: it confirms the request genuinely came from Google, that the email is verified, that the account is not suspended, and it can hand off to an authenticator-app code when one is required. Match replays changed from being recorded silently for every game to being switched on deliberately, one match at a time, and they stay private to the people who played.
On phones, the passive airlift status text was taken out of the play area while the anti-air button stayed within thumb reach. Behind the scenes, replay files and cosmetic images were moved onto the single cloud storage bucket the deployment already had, rather than two overlapping ones.
- Google sign-in now verifies identity, account status, account linking, name availability, and additional security codes before creating a session.
- Replay archival is opt-in per match, server-authoritative, private to participants, and resilient to temporary R2 failures.
- Mobile battle overlays keep the battlefield clear while preserving a reachable anti-air control.
Offline single-player and test-suite overhaul with determinism re-review.
After your first visit, single-player now works with no internet at all. The app keeps a local copy of the pages it needs and starts a skirmish without contacting the server; your saved games live in the browser's own storage. Multiplayer and sign-in still need a connection and simply stop cleanly when there isn't one.
The automated test suite was reorganised into clear folders by area and gained dozens of new checks — for repeatable simulation results, offline behaviour, rate limiting, and accessibility. A few testing shortcuts that had quietly stopped verifying anything were repaired so the guarantees hold again. (“Determinism” here means the same starting conditions always produce the exact same match, which is what makes replays and fair online play possible.)
- After the first visit, single-player can start offline; multiplayer and sign-in still require a connection.
- Improved automated coverage for repeatable matches, offline behavior, rate limiting, and accessibility.
Review follow-up and roster hardening for 0.6.0.
A cleanup pass for problems found straight after 0.6.0. That version added a larger set of unit models and stricter content checks, but left several internal reference values, unit names, and the published version number out of date.
This patch realigns those reference values, fixes three vehicles — the Mastiff anti-air half-track, the Thumper mortar, and the Jackrabbit jeep — that were falling back to old placeholder names, and makes the in-game version match the 0.6.1 tag so the changelog page stops failing its own check.
- Aligned canonical stateHash/contentHash baselines to 62ba23ae/d10376d4/a4e68562 and expanded roster expectations to 11 models.
- Fixed Mastiff/Jackrabbit/Thumper model names that previously fell back to legacy Mule/Rifle placeholders.
- Updated progression and balance-study diagnostics to handle expanded roster without miscounting.
- Hardened release versioning so GAME_VERSION matches the tagged 0.6.1 and /development reflects the patch.
Security, handshake, and HUD reliability polish plus new roster.
This release closed the gaps that kept 0.5.0 from feeling finished. The game can now be installed like an app, with a screen that still loads when you are offline. Tech upgrades became a timed investment an opponent can scout, rather than an instant boost. And the battlefield started showing its own state — supply trucks light up to say whether they are collecting, delivering, or idle, and the strike jet waits in a hangar until it is ready to fly.
Ranked play gained a visible skill rating, season badges, and a weekly challenge rhythm, and every match can now be re-watched from a saved recording. A diagnostics check was added to the release process so balance and deploys can be reviewed before they ship. This was the last big feature drop before paid cosmetics.
- Hardened prefilled-login admin flow and production content-hash handshake.
- Readable public copy, standalone PWA manifest, and distinct ribbon lanes.
- Single-row utility rail, timer-backed floating numbers, and camera-synced overlays.
- Mastiff AA half-track, Thumper mortar, and Jackrabbit jeep join the roster with dedicated models.
Boatyard, Barracks, drones, garrison, and a smarter battlefield.
The battlefield got the pieces it was missing. Three new production buildings change how you fight for the map: a Boatyard that builds the Sea Shadow gunboat, a Barracks that cycles three infantry platoons, and a Drone Pad that launches Aquila drones — fast flyers that tear through infantry but barely scratch tanks. Infantry can now take cover in towns and ruins for protection and extra range, and your headquarters defends itself with a short-range cannon and builds tanks on a real queue.
Aircraft finally behave like aircraft — they roll the full lengthened runway, climb, bank a 180° on return, and land in reverse. Under the hood, the computer opponent was rebuilt as clear layers (what it can see, what it wants, what to build, how squads move), and the economy was tuned so an early lead is harder to snowball into a win. This version also added the twelve-language support and the versioned content registry the later releases depend on.
- Coastal Boatyard and Sea Shadow (cap 6), Barracks with three 13-figure platoons (cap 6), and Drone Pad Aquila drones (cap 4) — new queued arms.
- Infantry garrison in towns/ruins for cover and range; HQ now has a land cannon and a real queued tank line.
- Runway takeoffs roll the full 4× strip and bank a 180° on return; rally points, surrender/timeout, and veterancy 0..3.
- Improved movement, depot regeneration, and economy balance.
- Layered AI (perception → utility → composition → squads → tactics → difficulty → openings → bot ladder).
- Four deterministic formations, floating numbers, win/loss music, telegraph + counter-hit FX.
- Improved multiplayer reliability and replay verification.
- Versioned content registry, 12-language i18n, website/HUD/DevTools overhaul, and docs/economy.md.
Scenery variety, public lobbies, and a staff control room.
The island stopped looking like a grid of identical pines. Towns, ruins, several tree and rock shapes, and four terrain types chosen from the match's random seed make each map read like a scene while preserving gameplay and performance.
Players also got a public lobby browser and a radio mixer, and the website copy was rewritten. Staff gained a locked-down admin console with user management, an activity log, emergency off-switches, and a browser-based simulation lab for checking balance.
- Towns, ruins, three tree and rock silhouettes, and four seed-driven biomes on the same instancing budget.
- Public multiplayer lobby browse, visual lobby UI, and a radio mixer.
- Staff AdminCP with users, audit, kill switches, and a browser simulation lab.
- Economy regen, path smoothing, and support slots that stay clear of blocking scenery.
Command, logistics, and mobile play.
This is the first version that feels like commanding an army rather than clicking on individual toys. Units can line up in formation, face a chosen heading, reverse away while laying a smoke screen, and refill ammunition from a supply depot; groups of units can be saved to on-screen chips you tap to reselect. All of it works with touch, so a phone or tablet is a real way to play.
Brightwater is a game about supply lines and positioning, and until now you could stack every tank on one click or run out of shells with no way to recover — which hid the decisions the game is built around. Private guest multiplayer lobbies and a compact format for sending commands over the network were added as groundwork for full online play.
- Line formations, hull facing, and tactical reverse with smoke concealment.
- Persistent task-group chips and depot ammunition restock.
- Touch-first battlefield controls for phones and tablets.
- Private guest multiplayer lobbies and a quick upgrade dashboard.
Public site, soundtrack, cameras, and a playable deployment.
The project became publicly playable in the browser. It gained a public website, an 18-track soundtrack, and in-game radio controls.
Commanders can pin extra camera feeds and save camera bookmarks to jump around the map. Local development was also made to run from a fresh copy of the code without needing a Cloudflare account.
- Public browser launch.
- Brightwater Radio playlist controls and an 18-track soundtrack.
- Pinned camera feeds and camera bookmarks.
- Local development that starts on a fresh checkout without a Cloudflare login.
First tagged snapshot: simulation core, public site, accounts, and field guide.
The first tagged version — a working foundation rather than a finished game. It carried the core real-time-strategy simulation: land and water units, supply logistics, combat, a computer opponent, diagnostics, and audio.
It also shipped the public website with account sign-up and commander profiles, the in-game field guide, and the groundwork for server-authoritative multiplayer, where the server (not any player's computer) is the single source of truth for a match.
- The Brightwater field guide.
- Core RTS mechanics: land and water units, logistics, combat, AI, diagnostics, and audio.
- Account platform and public site with registration, sessions, and commander profiles.
- Foundations for server-verified multiplayer.