Deliverable #11 · 2026-08-18

Honest connections — the game never pretends to be online, and your home works without the realm

epic: connection-and-sync promised due with connection-and-sync/008

Promised 2026-08-18, the day the review landed. Kris played the phone and a browser side by side and watched them disagree; the review found why — a client that kept walking after its socket had silently died — and a dozen relatives of the same fault. This deliverable is the game becoming trustworthy about its own connection.

Acceptance criteria

On the phone: put the app in the background for 30 s and return, or switch airplane mode on for 20 s — the character freezes and a “Reconnecting…” notice shows within a few seconds; then either play resumes with the world caught up, or after ~15 s a “Connection lost” screen appears with Retry, and nothing moves until it’s back. Never a character walking through portal rings on a dead channel.
Two clients on the same account or two players in the same Area agree: the other body moves when it moves, and appears when it arrives — APK and browser alike.
A connection indicator on the HUD tells the truth (green / amber / red), and “Send diagnostics” delivers the phone’s own log to the server.
Areas carry single_player / multiplayer / either; the home is either: with no realm reachable, Start still puts you in your home (walk-only), and its doors to the shared world bump with “That way needs a connection”.
The server answers every step (ack, reject or superseded), delivers every kick with its reason, and never shuts an Area down under a player who is still standing in it.

Artifacts

Pending until delivery: the /play page and the APK; docs/handoff/connection-and-sync.md; the fault-injection harness and soak in game/director/test/.

← related epic: connection-and-sync

Also available as raw markdown.