I started the session wanting a stronger written foundation for Chromancers. Oh and telling my AI friend to add support for 3D assets and scene. Indeed, I plan on using 3D assets.

The documentation is broad enough. The useful work now is editorial: adjusting the vision and pillars, separating established rules from prototype defaults, and making the documents sharp enough to reject ideas instead of merely describing them.

I also reconciled the roadmap with a six-phase, nine-month plan. Each phase ends in a player-facing outcome, from understanding one move to shipping the strongest slice the evidence supports. The plan has about 165 hours of intended work and 30 hours of contingency. That buffer is scope protection, not room for more features.

I clarified the reference hierarchy as well. Puzzle Quest is the primary model for puzzle combat within an RPG. Empires & Puzzles, Puzzle & Dragons, and Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes provide narrower references for enemy variety, color and team depth, and lane-based combat. Still thinking about the meta. 🤔

The visual experiment also became a build-valid scaffold. The board and HUD remain crisp 2D as the primary interaction surface. Behind them, a transparent orthographic 3D stage provides replaceable anchors for the environment, hero, and enemy. The next test is whether animated characters and a small dungeon diorama add fantasy and consequence without competing with the board.

I also built an analyzer for Codex's local task logs. It reconstructs active work using a 15-minute inactivity cutoff, giving me an auditable estimate of actual project time. Now added below. 😉

Last bit. Chromancers' first publicized screenshot. Careful now, it's top quality!

First public screenshot of Chromancers

Next

Replace the primitive stand-ins with one coherent test set, and validate the composition in motion but I'll likely find something else to spend my precious AI tokens on and get diverted.

Workbench time: 1h 34m tracked on September 6, 7h 5m total since August 29, 2026. Estimated from Codex activity with a 15-minute inactivity cutoff.