This is the current invited technical-alpha build. It combines the Wave 1 and Wave 2 work: broader planetary presets, more faithful climate sampling, high-resolution regional maps, richer geological resources, reusable cartographic annotations, campaign discovery snapshots, and safe migration of older project configurations.
More kinds of worlds
- Seven new planetary archetypes join the existing presets, bringing the Create workspace to 14 starting points. The expanded set covers more unusual rotation, atmosphere, ocean, and temperature regimes while remaining compatible with the same world-analysis pipeline.
- Rotation period and atmospheric pressure now propagate consistently through climate configuration instead of being partially lost between preset selection and simulation.
- Presets remain starting points rather than locked templates: seeds and advanced settings can still be changed before generation.
Climate resolution and seasonal sampling
- Climate can now be evaluated at 4, 8, or 12 samples per orbital year. Four remains the compatibility-oriented default; higher sample counts reveal shorter wet, dry, hot, and cold transitions for users who want a more detailed seasonal model.
- Annual and seasonal climate summaries use orbital-residence weighting, so eccentric worlds no longer over-count rapidly traversed portions of their orbit.
- Climate sample counts and related settings are preserved in project configuration and scientific exports.
Sharper regional and vector maps
- Regional Lens now performs an on-demand high-resolution re-render of the selected area instead of enlarging the base raster. Results are cached by region and settings, and the displayed ground-resolution estimate reflects the rendered output.
- The vector map is now produced from marching-square contours rather than tracing coarse cell rectangles. Coastlines and filled land shapes are smoother, and stale vector outputs are rebuilt when required.
- Large-format map generation keeps the original simulation authoritative while providing cleaner cartography for export and close inspection.
Geological history and resources
- Large igneous provinces and flood-basalt events can now emerge from tectonic and mantle activity, with their surface expression available to later analysis.
- Banded iron formations are modeled as a distinct resource family tied to eligible ancient crust and oxygenation-era windows rather than being placed as generic ore noise.
- Reef-derived limestone now follows warm, shallow marine environments, adding another climate-and-geography-dependent material.
- Scientific exports expose the new geological fields so their provenance can be inspected outside the dashboard.
Campaign discovery and reusable annotations
- Campaigns can save discovery snapshots of the world at a point in play, browse them in the dashboard, and compare two snapshots to see what became known or changed.
- Campaign maps, regional projects, Chronicle maps, and lore maps now share one annotation model for markers, labels, lines, areas, visibility, and author metadata. This removes several feature-specific formats and makes future editing tools easier to extend.
- Existing authoring data remains readable; conversion is handled at the boundary rather than requiring manual project edits.
Compatibility and recovery
- Project configuration now has an explicit schema version and migration pipeline. Older worlds are upgraded in memory through known migrations, and the generated migration report explains what changed.
- Unknown future schema versions fail clearly instead of being silently interpreted by an older build.
- Missing campaigns, regions, maps, and related records now return consistent not-found responses throughout the local API rather than surfacing unhandled lookup errors.
- Existing worlds, revisions, Campaigns, Chronicles, regional projects, beta keys, and author data remain compatible. New scientific layers require generation or a deliberate re-simulation; Atlas does not invent them when an old world is opened.
Verification and invited alpha access
- This release passes 427 automated tests plus Python compilation, JavaScript syntax checks, release-version validation, and end-to-end world-generation checks before tagging.
CartoVox remains limited to invited testers with an offline beta key. Verification uses no account, telemetry, hardware fingerprint, activation server, or network connection. Generated worlds and author data stay on the tester's machine.
Full generation is intentionally demanding and may take roughly 20–25 minutes on a current high-end Mac and 50–55 minutes on a current high-end Windows machine, depending on settings and selected atlas plates. Use Preview, Quick, Draft atlas finish, or selective plates while exploring. Higher seasonal sample counts and high-resolution regional renders require additional time and memory.