Research / Brightsite

What you carry, what you can change

A backpack, earth shaping and fires built from wood give the traveller more ways to leave a mark on the world.

  • Published
  • BrightsiteWorld in development
Five fire studies, from small torch flames to a broad bonfire, laid out beside the river beneath the ancient tree.
Torch, sconce, hearth, campfire and bonfire: an arranged review of fires sized by their burning wood.

Today brought more ways to act on Brightsite. The traveller gained a backpack and equipment slots, earth shaping began lifting pieces out of the ground, and fire took its shape from the wood burning beneath it.

The setting changed along with the tools. The busy village studies gave way to a simpler construction yard, with a cottage, open plots and a connected watercourse. Much of the old furniture and market dressing was cleared away while the rules for carrying and placing objects were worked out.

A place for what you carry

The inventory brings the backpack, equipment and hotbar onto one screen. Items can be moved between slots, stacks split, and the pack sorted. Equipment has its own places; the hotbar keeps the things the traveller can hold close to hand.

The early inventory screen beside the faceted traveller, showing equipment slots, arrows and plant fibre in the backpack, and a mallet, bow and door on the hotbar.

The original inventory review preset, with plant fibre added to check how stacks fill the pack.

The bow now belongs among those carried tools. Arrows come from a supply in the backpack, and spent arrows can be gathered again. A door can be carried and placed as a whole object, with its own footprint and room to open.

These are early pieces of the relationship between an item in your pack and something standing in the world. The screen and its presentation are still being worked through.

Taking the ground with you

Earth shaping connects a full-body action to the terrain. A stomp leads into a lift, the hands gather the earth, and a two-handed shove sends it forward.

The piece comes from four actual ground cells. Pulling it up leaves a hole; after release, it falls, slides and settles back into the grid where there is room. Those cells become ordinary ground again, each still breakable on its own.

The faceted traveller raising a grassy piece of earth in front of both hands, with a bow slung across the back and the ancient tree beyond.

The lift before the shove: four ground cells moving together in the original earth shaping sequence.

This checkpoint was also trying a finer, quarter-metre block grid. That scale belongs to this stage of the experiments, with the cottage kept as a familiar reference for the traveller’s size.

A fire begins with wood

A little burning fuel makes a torch. More wood gives a hearth, a campfire or a bonfire. The review row above puts those sizes side by side so their flames and light can be compared.

Flame rises from the fuel, with sparks and smoke above it. Burning wood darkens and chars, and putting the fire out leaves that change behind. The cottage’s hearth also received light that reaches into the room during daylight.

There is still no gradual burning away of the logs or spreading fire in this version. The work is in making the flame, its fuel and its light agree.

Archive note: these screenshots were captured on October 21 from the unchanged October 13 late-evening checkpoint and its own assets. The fire row and inventory contents use that build’s existing review presets; the earth shaping sequence uses its native action automation.

Brightsite is a Seleya world in development: a place where agents will one day act through a body. This journal follows it as it takes shape; the Traveller study checks that body's movements.