DSPACE

democratized.space
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    • Latest update: April 1, 2026

      It’s been a while! Time for a DSPACE update.

      What’s DSPACE, you ask? You must be new around here, and if so, welcome!!! I’m glad you’re here. DSPACE is a space exploration game that I’ve been working on for a while now. It’s still in its early stages, but I’m excited to share it with you. You can learn more about the game on the About page.

      a person sitting inside a cave overlooking a large rocky moon.
      Nano Banana Pro prompt: democratized.space

      DSPACE v3 is a major content and platform release focused on three goals:

      1. Much more to do (quests, processes, and items)
      2. Better creator workflows (build and submit custom content in-game)
      3. Safer, local-first player data (migration, backups, and cloud sync)

      If you are new to DSPACE, start with About.

      v3 at a glance (vs v2.1)

      The current v3 release snapshot includes:

      • 248 quests across 19 quest trees
      • 311 processes
      • 507 items

      Compared with v2.1 (current main):

      Categoryv2.1v3New in v3
      Quests22248+226
      Processes36311+275
      Items90507+417

      That means v3 delivers roughly 11.3x more quests than v2.1, exceeding the original 10x target.

      Custom content (headline v3 feature)

      v3 ships end-to-end creator tooling for player-generated content:

      Like custom quests, your creations are stored locally by default. When you’re ready to contribute, package everything into a bundle following the Custom Content Bundles format and submit it through the in-game interface. This keeps related content synchronized and makes reviews more efficient.

      Reference docs:

      v3 also promotes many previous placeholders into working destinations:

      • /stats, /titles, /toolbox, /leaderboard, and /settings now ship as active pages.
      • /docs/changelog now has a dedicated release-notes landing experience.
      • Docs navigation was improved with section manifests and search filtering.
      • Mobile usability was improved across custom-content forms and menu navigation.
      • Theme preference (dark mode) now persists across reloads.

      Notable docs updated for v3 workflows and gameplay:

      Local-first saves, migration, and backups

      v3 moves canonical save storage to IndexedDB and keeps migration from legacy v2 saves built in.

      • On first launch, v3 detects legacy localStorage save keys and migrates data to IndexedDB.
      • Save and content backup workflows are available in-game.
      • Cloud backup and restore is available through GitHub Gist integration.

      AI chat in v3

      v3 launches with OpenAI-only chat in production.

      • NPC personas (such as Sydney, Nova, and Hydro) are available in chat.
      • token.place integration is coming in v3.1, bringing free LLM usage instead of the metered usage that currently requires an OpenAI API key.

      See:

      dChat knowledge upgrade

      dChat now ships with an in-game knowledge base that summarizes canonical quests, items, processes, and the player’s local inventory snapshot. This gives the assistant immediate context to answer gameplay questions without waiting for future updates or external documentation lookups.

      Self-hosted

      DSPACE 2.1 was migrated from Netlify to a local Mac Mini M4. DSPACE v3 now runs on-premises on a k3s cluster across 9 Raspberry Pis.

      Switching to MIT License

      While 0BSD sounds like a nice license, it is in some cases not on the list of accepted OSS licenses on the Internet. Therefore, I’m switching from 0BSD to MIT, which is still very permissive but much better supported.

      Looking Forward

      These changes reflect a commitment to keeping DSPACE focused on its core mission: democratizing space exploration through education, simulation, and real-world impact. By removing unnecessary complexity, the game is more accessible while strengthening the connection between virtual achievements and actual space development.

      v3 is the biggest DSPACE update yet, and it lays the groundwork for faster content releases moving forward.

      May 21, 2026 — DSPACE v3.0.1 (patch addendum)

      v3.0.1 is a patch update to the April 1 v3 release, focused on launch-readiness hardening across the audited delta 3ec45a5517a35c96767f6b946c01104e6ec88f93..e5c4aadccbf40482ee791c8993c11268682f99d9.

      Patch notes

      • /quests performance + correctness: improved list-path time-to-interactive, tightened built-in/custom coexistence behavior, moved completed custom quests into the Completed Quests section, fixed locked-quest status visibility regressions, stabilized QuestChat readiness/status behavior, and removed dead-end gating in preflight-check quest flow.
        • Cold run: list visible 30.3 ms → 0.3 ms (~101x faster); full reconciliation 72.6 ms → 0.7 ms (~104x faster).
        • 4x CPU-throttled run: list visible 115.5 ms → 1.9 ms (~61x faster); full reconciliation 262.6 ms → 6.2 ms (~42x faster).
      • Gameplay/data integrity hardening: normalized stored item counts, rejected unknown item containers, aligned geothermal reward docs with quest data, and sanitized compact item/process preview image handling.
      • /quests security: sanitized custom quest tile routes to fall back to internal /quests/{id} links when values are unsafe, including protocol-relative prefixes like // and slash-backslash variants like /\.
      • /processes reliability: switched list rows to summary-first rendering while retaining runtime controls on /processes/:processId, and hardened buy-required metadata-loading behavior plus regression coverage.
      • /docs and chat retrieval: deferred /docs full-text corpus fetch until first keyword search (with immediate browse/has: access), plus hardened docs-index/chat smoke assertions.
      • Settings, migration, and remote-smoke hardening: added responsive /settings layout coverage, fixed remote legacy migration real-v2 coverage, and strengthened remote smoke flow reliability for custom-item mutations and live-chat checks.
      • Release governance/runbook updates: tightened v3.0.1 QA checklists/evidence gates, added canonical release-history tracking, and clarified rollback/promotion runbook links and compare-based PR references.

      Reader guide and verification routes

      For readers auditing the user-visible v3.0.1 patch scope, the addendum above maps to these route and workflow checks:

      • Gameplay / UI: validate /quests list visibility, locked-quest status, built-in/custom quest coexistence, completed custom quest placement, QuestChat readiness/status behavior, the preflight-check flow, responsive /settings layout, /processes summary rows, and runtime controls on /processes/:processId.
      • Security / safety: confirm unsafe custom quest tile routes fall back to internal /quests/{id} links, including protocol-relative prefixes and slash-backslash variants, and confirm unknown item containers are rejected instead of accepted into save state.
      • Saves / migration / data integrity: confirm stored item counts are normalized, real-v2 legacy migration coverage still exercises the migration path, and custom-item mutation flows remain covered by the remote-smoke harness.
      • Docs / chat: confirm /docs supports immediate browse and has: query behavior before keyword search, then fetches the full-text corpus only on first keyword search; also confirm docs-index and chat smoke assertions cover the retrieval behavior.
      • Dev / release / QA: confirm v3.0.1 checklist evidence, release-history tracking, rollback/promotion runbook links, and compare-based PR references remain scoped to the audited rc.4 range.

      The player-visible route checks for v3.0.1 are /quests, QuestChat inside quest detail flows, /settings, /processes, /processes/:processId, and /docs; release operators should cross-check the same audited range in docs/releases.md and docs/qa/v3.0.1.md.

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