V4 Features — Tactical Action Universe (Unreal Engine 5)

Status: V4 feature inventory
Source: derived from V4/V4_TODOS.md (implementation backlog) and inspired by the design footprint of Rainbow Six: Raven Shield, Rainbow Six (Siege-era), Call of Duty, Commandos, Desperados, Black Myth: Wukong, StarCraft, Age of Empires, Splinter Cell, Hitman, and Contra.
Audience: design, engineering, AI, audio, art, narrative, online services, publishing, and esports leads scoping V4.
Date: 2026-05-15

This feature map has been decomposed into focused pages under features/. This file remains the canonical hub — it preserves every section heading (so existing features§"…" and V4_features.md#… anchors keep resolving); the in-depth, code-grounded companion pages live under features/. Start at the features page index. The runtime/package architecture is in V4_ARCHITECTURE.md / architecture/.

Purpose#

This document is the feature map for V4. It translates the V4 backlog into a product-shaped scope document and describes what V4 ships across the five ruleset cells (tactical FPS, real-time stealth tactics, action RPG, real-time strategy, and 2D run-and-gun), shared cross-cell systems, single-player and multiplayer surfaces, online services, content authoring, accessibility, localization, telemetry, and live-service. It does not replace the backlog checklist — V4_TODOS.md remains the source of truth for completion state and agent execution order — but every feature listed here is grounded in tasks explicitly laid out in V4_TODOS.md plus the product behavior those tasks imply.

V4 is one coherent tactical-action game, not five sibling products. The product covers the design footprint of:

• Rainbow Six: Raven Shield for the planning phase, breach-and-clear room hierarchy, tac-map waypoint authoring, and "you plan it, the squad executes it" doctrine.
• Rainbow Six (Siege-era) for operator gadgets, two-sided asymmetric attack/defense, structural destruction, drone/camera intel pre-phase, and competitive 5v5 rounds.
• Call of Duty for cinematic linear set-pieces, ADS (aim-down-sights) gunfeel and hipfire/recoil curves, scripted blockbuster moments, helicopter and gunship setpieces, and a multiplayer 6v6 / hardpoint / search-and-destroy backbone.
• Splinter Cell for the light/shadow gauge, body-drag, sound footstep modulation, gadget-heavy stealth (sticky cam, EMP, optic cable), and Spies-vs-Mercs asymmetric multiplayer.
• Hitman for sandbox social-stealth, disguise/blend-in mechanics, NPC daily schedules, environmental kills, and replayable contracts on dense levels.
• Commandos for real-time stealth tactics (RTST) with a small party of specialists, isometric/top-down vision cones, command queuing, and "no combat — you broke the level" failure mode.
• Desperados for the Wild-West RTST variant, Showdown Mode time-stop multi-character action planning, lasso/coin/whistle distractions, and richer body-disposal mechanics.
• Black Myth: Wukong for animation-driven third-person action RPG combat, stamina-economy combat, parry/dodge windows, transformation/spell-craft power moves, and animation-led boss design.
• StarCraft for three asymmetric RTS factions, micro-heavy unit control, build-order economies, fog of war, and a ladder-driven competitive RTS backbone.
• Age of Empires for historical-era RTS, age-up progression, civ asymmetry, wonders, town-center/villager economies, and large-scale population battles.
• Contra for 2D run-and-gun side-scrollers — weapon power-ups, branching routes, two-player local co-op, and arcade-pacing boss fights.

V4's promise is not "blend everything every match." V4's promise is per-ruleset feel — when a mission is in Hitman ruleset it must feel like Hitman; when it's in StarCraft ruleset it must feel like StarCraft; when it's in Wukong ruleset it must feel like Wukong — held together by one shared operator/hero/unit roster, one shared creator suite, one shared online backbone, and a unifying narrative ("The Shadow War").

IP Posture#

V4 is original IP. The 11 named franchises above are design inspirations only — V4 reuses their published gameplay-system vocabulary (e.g., "vision cones", "Showdown Mode", "Mark and Execute", "Spies vs Mercs", "Killstreak", "Wonder victory") as terminology shorthand for established mechanic patterns, the same way V2 references "Drive Impact" or "Heat / Rage Arts" from Street Fighter and Tekken. V4 does not reuse any inspirational franchise's:

• Character names (canonical hero / villain names).
• Faction names, civilization names, or unit names beyond historical/public-domain terms.
• Voice-line scripts, marketing copy, or distinctive trademarks.
• Map identities or named locations.
• Music, sound design, or visual identity.

All cast names, faction names, and licensed terms in this document are tracked in the §81 IP / NIL / licensing register. Where a mechanic name is itself trademarked (e.g., "Mark and Execute"), the shipping product will substitute an original name; the placeholder is kept here to make the design intent legible to readers familiar with the source.

Subsystem Glossary#

Game-Feature Plugins (modular, hot-swap)#

Each ruleset's mode set is a GameFeatures plugin so it can be enabled per build target and DLC-gated post-launch without rebuilding the shipping executable. Plugins listed here are introduced by their first-referencing backlog task and own their content roots, asset linter rules, and per-mode test coverage.

Cross-Reference Convention#

Throughout this document and its companions, bare §N and §N.M references resolve to V4_TODOS.md (the only V4 doc with section numbering used as hyperlinks). Explicit prefixes are used where ambiguity matters:

• §40 → V4_TODOS.md §40.
• deps§14 → V4_DEPENDENCIES.md §14.
• arch§"<anchor>" → V4_ARCHITECTURE.md by section anchor.
• features§"<anchor>" → this document, by section anchor.

This features doc and V4_ARCHITECTURE.md use named anchors rather than numbered sections; only V4_TODOS.md and V4_DEPENDENCIES.md carry numbered section ids.

Repository Surfaces#

Target paths are created by the TODOs that first reference them.

Table of Contents#

• Overview and Conventions
  • V4 Product Promise
  • Product Surfaces
  • Ruleset Cells Overview
  • Cell Feel Tests
• Ruleset Cells
  • Tactical FPS Cell
  • Real-Time Stealth Tactics (RTST) Cell
  • Action RPG Cell
  • RTS Cell
  • 2D Run-and-Gun Cell
• Shared Systems
  • Shared Cross-Cell Systems
  • Mission Architectures
• Game Modes
  • Campaign Modes
  • Skirmish and Quick-Play Modes
  • Co-op Modes
  • PvP Modes
  • Spec Ops and Horde Defense
  • Training, Trials, Tutorials
  • Replay Theater, Spectator, Coach Mode
  • Per-Ruleset Signature Modes
  • AI Director and Adaptive Difficulty
• Content Inventory
  • Roster and Content Inventory
  • Map Lore, Signature Maps, Day/Night, Weather, Crowd
• Creator and Community
  • Creator Suite
  • Workshop and Mods
  • Custom Tournaments, Profile Cards, Match History
  • Community Features
• Online Services and Networking
  • Online Services
  • Network Quality, LAN, Server Browser, Private Rooms
  • Crossplay and Cross-Progression
• Esports
  • Esports and Tournament
  • Streamer, Speedrun, Coach Modes
  • Esports Pro Circuit, Broadcast Extras, Wildcard Format
• Live Service
  • Live Service and DLC
  • Battle Pass, Daily/Weekly Contracts, Faction System
  • Twitch Drops, Creator Partnership, Community Tools
  • Ranked Season Architecture
  • Live Service Calendar
  • Operator and Account Progression, Codex, Encyclopedia
  • Per-Account Vault, Lifetime Replay Archive, Ghost Data Archive
• Platforms and Operations
  • Display Tech, Performance, Platforms, Cert
  • Asset Budget and Streaming
  • Day-One Patch, Hotfix, Quick-Resume, Crash Recovery, DRM
  • Engineering Polish
  • Split-Screen, Couch Co-op, Local Multiplayer, Hot-Seat
  • VR and AR Support
  • Hardware Peripherals
  • Per-Platform Store Features and Region-Aware Pricing
• Trust, Safety, and Compliance
  • Cross-Platform Social, Reporting, Bans, Appeals
  • Parental Controls, Age Gating, Time-Played
  • Anti-Cheat
  • Accessibility
  • Localization, Voice-Over, Region Rating Variants
  • Telemetry, Analytics, Balance
  • Compliance Deep Dive
  • Customer Support, Community Ambassadors, Hall of Fame
  • Balance Operations
• Narrative and Extras
  • Per-Character Side Stories and Operator Briefings
  • Per-Operator Rivals, Relationship Matrix, Cross-Cell Timeline
  • Persistent World Economy, NPC Schedules, Crime Rate
  • Director Commentary, ADR, Origin Comics, Cinematography Library
  • AI-Generated Commentary, Highlight Reel, Per-Match Analysis
  • Real-World Brand Partnerships, Celebrity Guests, Venue Tie-Ins
  • Production: Studio Ops, Mocap, VO, Composer, Licensing, Stunt
  • Companion App, Public API, Wiki, Roadmap
  • Loading, Splash, Tips, What's New, Notifications
• Launch
  • Launch Readiness
  • V4 Exit Criteria

Overview and Conventions#

V4 Product Promise#

V4 must ship as one product, not five. The product should:

• Deliver per-ruleset feel that matches each inspirational source on its own terms — no compromise blends. Hitman ruleset feels like Hitman; Wukong ruleset feels like Wukong; StarCraft ruleset feels like StarCraft.
• Hold those rulesets together with one shared roster, one shared creator suite, one shared online backbone, and a unifying narrative (The Shadow War).
• Make dedicated-server client-server netcode the default for tactical PvP (5v5, 6v6, BR), with deterministic-lockstep netcode for RTS modes (1v1, 2v2, 4v4 team) and rollback-emulated client prediction for tight twitch-shooter PvP (TDM, Spies-vs-Mercs).
• Ship complete launch content across every advertised mode — no "coming soon" panels, no skeleton cells, no "early access" rulesets.
• Provide first-class single-player content for every cell (Tactical Campaign, Stealth Sandbox Tour, Wukong Champion, RTS Conquest, Contra Campaign), with mocap principals, voice-overs in launch languages, and pre-rendered cinematics that hit a 4K master.
• Degrade safely under offline, partial-net, low-bandwidth, controller-loss, mid-match-disconnect, and provider-outage conditions (e.g., RTS games pause-on-disconnect, single-player saves locally and reconciles on reconnect, tactical PvP holds host-migration for sub-2-second swap).
• Run on 9 platforms day-one: Windows (Steam + Microsoft Store + Epic), PS5, PS5 Pro, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2 (scaled), macOS (Apple Silicon), Linux (Steam Deck + Proton-verified), iPad Pro (M-series), and Android high-end tablets (Snapdragon 8 Gen 3+). Cloud-streaming variant via PixelStreaming for thin-client browsers and TV apps where contract permits.
• Maintain AAA SOTA quality on all surfaces — Lumen GI, Nanite geometry, MetaHumans for principals, Niagara VFX, MetaSounds, Chaos cloth/hair, Chaos Destruction for R6-style breachable walls, virtual-shadow maps, World Partition for sandbox maps, and Sequencer-driven cinematics.
• Operate as a live service from day one with seasonal contracts, themed events, balance hot-fixes that ship out-of-band of binary updates, and a public balance ledger (PBR-style) so the community can audit nerfs and buffs.

Product Surfaces#

Ruleset Cells Overview#

The five ruleset cells are V4's core organizing principle. Each cell is a self-contained gameplay framework with its own pacing, control scheme, camera discipline, AI personality, HUD vocabulary, and audio identity. A cell is implemented as a cluster of GameFeatures plugins (one per ruleset variant) on top of shared engine subsystems.

Cell Feel Tests#

Each cell ships with a feel test suite — a curated set of in-game scenarios reviewers can run to confirm the cell hits its inspiration's hallmark. Examples:

• Tactical FPS / Raven Shield feel test: A two-team breach of a four-room building with a single hostage room. Plan must lay down two breach waypoints; squad executes synchronously; misfire of the planning step triggers the alarm. Pass if the planning phase reads as Raven Shield's pre-mission map.
• Tactical FPS / Hitman feel test: Single sandbox level (mansion party) at 60 fps with 120 NPCs, 6 disguise classes, 8 environmental kill paths, and a recordable contract author. Pass if a fresh player completes one environmental kill, swaps disguises twice, and exits via main entrance in under 12 minutes.
• RTST / Commandos feel test: Beach map with 4 specialists (Green Beret, Sniper, Marine, Spy). Player must enter, kill 6 patrol guards stealthily, steal a tank, escape. Pass if a single shot fired in plain sight raises the alarm and brings the player to game-over within 8 seconds (no respawn).
• RTST / Desperados feel test: Wild-west saloon with 2 specialists (Gunslinger, Sharpshooter) and Showdown Mode time-dilation. Pass if Showdown Mode lets the player queue four synchronous actions (lasso, coin throw, headshot, body drag) and executes them in under 1 second of real time.
• Action RPG / Wukong feel test: A boss arena with one mid-tier boss (analogue of Wukong's Wandering Wight) at 60 fps. Pass if parry windows are 6-frame ±1, posture-break stagger triggers cinematic counter, and transformation (Tiger Form) costs 1 Will charge and lasts a 12 s window.
• RTS / StarCraft feel test: Two-player ladder match (1v1) where Faction A worker count caps at 18 per base, build orders complete in standard professional opening time (~3:30 for tier-2 unit), and APM tracking matches StarCraft 2's actions-per-minute granularity. Pass if a Diamond-level player can replicate a known SC2 opening within ±2% timing.
• RTS / Age of Empires feel test: Four-player FFA at large map, 200-pop cap per player, age-up to Imperial Age available, two Wonders constructible. Pass if villager pathing handles 200 active workers without stutter, and a Wonder build provides victory-condition timer.
• 2D / Contra feel test: Stage 1 of a Contra-style level with screen scroll, three weapon pickups (Spread, Laser, Machine Gun), one rolling boss fight at end. Pass if two-player local co-op runs at 60 fps with screen-edge tethering and contact damage one-hit-kills (with extra-lives inventory).

Feel tests live in V4/ue/Source/V4Tests/Private/V4Mode*Tests/*Spec.cpp (per-mode automation specs) and are wired into the nightly Gauntlet automation run; a failing feel test blocks the affected ruleset's release.

Ruleset Cells#

Tactical FPS Cell#

The tactical FPS cell carries the largest design footprint of any cell. It spans five distinct sub-rulesets (Raven Shield, R6 Siege-era, CoD, Splinter Cell, Hitman), each implemented as its own GameFeatures plugin. Shared engine surfaces (V4Tactical, V4Stealth, V4Perception, V4Crowd) feed all five sub-rulesets so an operator authored in one is reusable in another.

Planning Phase (Raven Shield)#

A pre-mission tac-map authoring step that lets the player layout up to two squads of three operators, place breach waypoints, set wait conditions, and rehearse the plan in slow-motion preview before execution.

Features:

• Top-down tactical map that renders the mission interior with floor plan, door swing arcs, NPC patrol routes (visible only after intel is gathered with the Drone or Optic Cable gadgets), and a fog-of-war overlay where intel is missing.
• Up to two squads (Red, Gold) of three operators each. Operators are selected from the player's roster; loadout per operator (primary, secondary, breach, throwable, optic) is set in the planning step.
• Waypoint authoring with verbs: Move-To, Stack-On-Door, Breach-Standard, Breach-Frag, Breach-Flash, Breach-Stun, Wait-For, Move-On-Go. The mission cannot start until both squads have a complete plan (no orphan waypoints).
• Wait conditions so squads synchronize: Wait-For-Sound (waits for a triggered noise from the other squad), Wait-For-Hostage-Secured, Wait-For-X-Seconds.
• Rehearsal preview at 4× slowed speed; if a plan would result in cross-fire or a friendly-fire path, the preview highlights the conflict in red.
• Live override during execution: pause the action with Tab to re-author waypoints mid-mission; AI squads resume from the new plan.
• Replay export of the planning step + the execution as a single contract record so the community can study planning doctrine.

Feel-test rule: a complete plan with two waypoints per squad must execute in under 90 seconds for a four-room building.

Breach and Clear#

Room-by-room clearing with door dynamics, breaching tools, threat recognition, and AI hostage care.

Features:

• Doors open inward, outward, slide, double-leaf, or locked. Lock states: Unlocked, Locked (pickable), Locked (breach-only), Reinforced (no breach, must find key).
• Breaching tools: Standard kick, Crowbar, Frame Charge, Frag Breach (small explosive), Flash Breach (stun + open), Stun Breach (concussive + open), Thermite Cut (slow, silent against reinforced doors).
• Stack discipline: Squad members auto-stack on a door in formation; player can override formation order. Stack stance: stand, crouch, hugged.
• Threat ID: AI in cleared rooms is tagged by threat color (red: hostile, yellow: civilian, blue: hostage, green: friendly). Friendly-fire penalty applies for non-red kills; hostage penalty applies for blue kills.
• Room state: A room is "cleared" only when no threat remains and at least one operator has line-of-sight to every wall corner. The HUD shows per-room cleared status.
• Suppress / cuff: Captured suspects (yellow, blue) can be cuffed or suppressed (non-lethal subdue). Cuffed suspects do not re-engage.

Operator Gadget Library (R6 Modern)#

R6 Siege-era operator gadgets, two-sided attack/defense, and structural destruction.

Attacker gadgets (a sample — full list in §16.3):

• Hard breach charge (cuts through reinforced walls).
• Soft breach (breaches plywood, drywall).
• Drone (remote-controlled wheeled cam, pingable hostile spotting).
• EMP grenade (disables defender gadgets in radius for 8s).
• Smoke grenade (3D volumetric smoke, blocks line of sight, scoped optics see-through with thermal attachment).
• Flash bang (blind hostile NPCs / players for 4s if within cone).
• Frag grenade (lethal radius + concussive ring).
• Claymore (proximity-triggered directional mine, attacker only).
• Heartbeat scanner (Splinter Cell crossover gadget — detect non-line-of-sight enemies through walls within 8m).

Defender gadgets:

• Reinforced wall (turns soft wall into hard breach-only).
• Barbed wire (slows attacker movement, makes sound).
• Deployable shield (waist-high hard cover, blocks bullets).
• Bulletproof camera (mount on wall, hostile spotting).
• Proximity alarm (silent alarm to defender team).
• Trap mine (Lethal proximity mine, defender only).
• Jammer (disables drones, EMP gadgets in 8m radius).

Destruction (Chaos Destruction):

• Soft walls breach with frag, EMP, or shotgun blast.
• Hard walls require hard breach charge or thermite.
• Floors and ceilings soft-destructible (vertical attack vectors).
• Reinforcement is asymmetric — defenders choose which soft walls to reinforce in a pre-round setup step (60s).

Cinematic Campaign (CoD)#

A 12-mission scripted campaign with set-piece-density matching modern Call of Duty entries. Each mission delivers:

• Sequencer-driven cinematic openers (60-120s) with MetaHuman principals, full-body mocap, in-engine cinematography.
• Branching mid-mission moments (no major branches; light dialogue and optional-objective branches like in CoD).
• Vehicle setpieces: at least 4 missions feature vehicle play (helo door gunner, dune-buggy chase, AC-130 / "Death From Above" gunship, snowmobile, tank turret).
• Setpiece per mission: mandatory scripted moment that demonstrates Sequencer + MotionWarping + Niagara at peak (e.g., building collapse, dam flood, sandstorm, EMP blackout, sub-marine breach).
• Hardcoded ammo / loadout drops to control pacing without an inventory RPG layer.
• AI squad teammates that bark callouts ("FRAG OUT", "RELOADING", "ENEMY DOWN"), respond to player tags, revive on knockdown.
• Difficulty curve: Recruit, Regular, Hardened, Veteran, Realism (no HUD, one-shot-kill economy, single life per checkpoint).
• Mission select replay from main menu, with separate difficulty tracker per mission.

Multiplayer 6v6 (CoD)#

A 6v6 multiplayer suite spanning the modern CoD mode portfolio:

Loadout system:

• Create-a-Class with 6 slots per loadout: primary, secondary, tactical, lethal, perks (3), wildcards (3).
• Pick-10 / Pick-13 wildcard balance system inherited from CoD Black Ops II / Cold War: each slot costs 1; perks cost 1; attachments per weapon cost 1.
• Killstreak rewards at 3 / 5 / 7 / 9 / 11 / 13 kills: UAV, Counter-UAV, Care Package, Predator Missile, Sentry Gun, Chopper Gunner, AC-130, Tactical Nuke (25 kills, instant win).
• Scorestreaks as an alternative to killstreaks (assist objectives count).
• Operator skin per slot — every weapon can be cosmetically reskinned but balance-locked.

Battle Royale 100-Player (CoD Warzone)#

A 100-player battle royale on a large open map.

Features:

• Map: a single ~9 km² persistent battle-royale map with biome variety (urban, industrial, rural, coast). World Partition streaming.
• Drop phase: Pre-game lobby on an aircraft, player chooses drop point.
• Circle phase: Five circles shrink over 20 min match.
• Squads: Solos, duos, trios, quads. Cross-platform crossplay default on.
• Loot tier system: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Epic, Legendary. Loot in ground spawns, supply boxes, supply drops (high-tier).
• Gulag mechanic: First death goes to 1v1 Gulag for respawn chance.
• Buy stations: Purchase teammate respawn ($4500), self-revive kit, UAV, loadout drop, killstreak.
• Loadout drops: Mid-game scoring of a custom loadout from your CoD multiplayer create-a-class (consistent weapons across BR and MP).
• Vehicles: ATV, SUV, helicopter, cargo truck.
• Resurgence variant: Smaller map (~3 km²), respawn-on-timer if teammate alive.
• Plunder variant: First squad to $1M cash; no Gulag.
• Year-1 tactical extensions: a second BR biome map shift to Delta Frontier in the Sundown Delta, seasonal map rotation, four additional drivable vehicles (boat, jet-ski, light tank, 4x4 buggy), a one-per-match Mythic loot tier with guaranteed Legendary loot plus tracker buff, and 40 operator-specific BR finisher animations.
• P3 Battle Royale variants: Resurgence-specific maps rotate across Resurgence Island, Signal Fortress, and Storm Pier with redeploy beacon, hot-drop, and squad-wipe lockout metadata. Plunder-specific economy is authored in DT_PlunderEconomy_CoDWarzone with the $1M target, deposit helipad / balloon / bank-truck loops, contract payouts, cash bundles, and overtime multiplier.
• Battle Royale Year-2: 14-day LTMs rotate Sniper-Only, Pistol-Only, Battle Royale of Wukong, and Boombox Battle Royale. The opt-in permadeath season persists losses at account scope, while Commander Economy BR lets one RTS commander convert Ore and Crystal economy ticks into telegraphed loot drops for BR squads.

Splinter Cell Stealth#

Linear stealth-FPS missions in the Splinter Cell vein.

Features:

• Light/shadow gauge displayed as a small HUD bow-tie indicator. In darkness (lux < 0.3), AI cannot detect player unless within 1.5 m line of sight.
• Sound footprint scaled by stance (sprint > run > walk > crouch > crawl), surface (gravel > tile > carpet), and equipped gear (boots > soft shoes). Suspicion radius expressed in meters.
• Body drag — player carries downed enemies / civilians (knocked out or killed) at half movement speed; drop into shadow, lockers, dumpsters.
• Sticky cam, optic cable, EMP, sleeping gas grenade, sticky shocker — gadget loadout per mission.
• Wall-climb / split-jump / pipe-climb / overhang — Splinter Cell-class traversal verbs.
• Interrogation — non-lethal subdue with prompt-based questioning, reveals door codes, patrol times.
• Light kills — shoot a light bulb to extend shadow zones (sound + glass break).
• Mark and Execute (Conviction-era variant) — earn one "mark slot" per silent takedown; unleash auto-target multi-kill at any time.

Spies vs Mercs#

A 2v2 asymmetric multiplayer mode where Spies (3rd-person stealth) hunt objectives while Mercs (1st-person FPS) defend.

Features:

• Asymmetric loadouts: Spies have stealth gadgets (camo cloak, sticky cam, EMP), Mercs have firearms + perimeter gadgets (proximity mine, motion sensor, deployable turret).
• Objective: Spies hack 3 of 4 terminals; Mercs prevent. 8-minute rounds, best of 5.
• Camera switch: Spies are 3rd-person for stealth navigation; Mercs are 1st-person for firefight authority.
• Spy detection: Mercs see Spies only if line-of-sight and lit; Spies see Mercs at all times (asymmetric intel).
• Map design: Large vertical maps with ducts, rafters, server rooms — natural Spies stealth playground.

Hitman Sandbox Stealth#

Sandbox social-stealth levels with NPC schedules, disguises, and environmental kill paths.

Features:

• Dense sandbox maps (mansion party, Mediterranean coastal town, North African market, snowy mountain monastery, modernist mountainside clinic, modern nightclub, isolated film set, vineyard estate, gala yacht, top-secret bunker complex). Launch maps: 10.
• Disguise system — 6-12 disguise classes per map (waiter, security guard, electrician, VIP, chef, butler, mechanic, doctor, monk, etc.). NPCs in same disguise class are suspicious of you (Enforcers); civilians of other classes are not.
• NPC daily schedules — every named NPC has a 4-8-step routine that loops every 5-12 minutes (mission time). Player can intersect to time a kill.
• Environmental kill paths — designed sequences where the player can arrange a "natural death" (chandelier drop, falling object, electrocuted pool, poisoned drink, sabotaged elevator, gas explosion). Minimum 6 per map, average 12.
• Story missions — guided opportunity quests (target attending a wine tasting, target performing surgery) with mid-mission prompts.
• Contract Mode — player selects target NPC, kill method (silenced, garrote, fall, fire, poison, drowning, explosive), disguise required. Posts to leaderboards.
• Suspicion gauge — global meter rising when player is in restricted zone, doing suspicious action (carrying body, wielding visible weapon), or being seen by Enforcer of disguise class.
• Pacification toolkit — silenced pistol, garrote, fiber wire, fire-axe, syringe (poison or sedative), tranquilizer pistol, brick to the head, drowning.
• Exfiltration points — multiple exits per map (limo, helicopter, motorcycle, on-foot, boat); some require completing optional objectives.

Player-Authored Contracts#

A creator surface for Hitman-style contracts; community-driven content that requires no level authoring.

Features:

• Contract author UI: target NPC, required kill method, required disguise, optional bonus objectives (no bodies found, no witnesses, exit via specific point).
• Validation: the author must complete the contract once before it can be published; the play-through is recorded as proof.
• Workshop browser: filter by map, difficulty, kill method, tags; community ratings (1-5 stars).
• Leaderboard per contract: fastest exit time, fewest pacifications, no-detection runs.
• Featured contracts: community team curates a weekly featured slate.
• Anti-cheat: server-side replay validation rejects impossible completions (e.g., teleport, instant kill, multi-disguise stack).

Real-Time Stealth Tactics (RTST) Cell#

The RTST cell is V4's love-letter to the Commandos and Desperados lineage. Top-down isometric, real-time-with-pause, small squad of specialists, vision cones, no respawns. The cell ships with two sub-rulesets (WW2 Commandos and Wild-West Desperados) sharing the V4Tactics engine subsystem.

Commandos WW2#

Six-character squad, North Africa / Normandy / Norway theaters, WW2 setting.

Features:

• Squad of six specialist archetypes (final character names subject to IP clearance; placeholders listed for design discussion):
  • Green Beret — melee takedowns, body drag, climbing, decoy boots.
  • Sapper — grenades, mines, breach charges, repair vehicles.
  • Sniper — long-range silenced rifle, focus aim, decoy shots.
  • Marine — underwater swim, harpoon, scuba gear, boat pilot.
  • Spy — disguises (period-appropriate uniform), silenced pistol, syringe sedative, charm-talk.
  • Driver / Engineer — picks locks, hot-wires vehicles, drives tanks/trucks.
• Vision cones rendered on the ground (green when alert level 0, yellow at 1, red at 2+).
• Patrol routes clearly visualized when intel gathered (binoculars zoom).
• No respawn — losing a specialist fails the mission; the squad must evacuate together.
• Time-stop pause — Space pauses combat real-time, lets the player queue actions per character (move, attack, use item, throw distraction).
• Distraction toolkit: decoy whistle, decoy boot, thrown stones, body decoy, fake alarm.
• Body disposal: drag bodies into containers, wells, latrines, water, haystacks; civilian bodies trigger suspicion if found.
• Mission objectives: infiltrate, sabotage, rescue, assassinate, exfiltrate. Each mission has 3-8 sub-objectives.
• Difficulty: Recruit, Veteran, Commando (the historical hard mode).
• Map count at launch: 12 campaign missions plus 6 side ops.

Desperados Wild West#

Six-character squad, post-Civil-War American frontier.

Features:

• Squad of six specialist archetypes (final character names subject to IP clearance; placeholders listed for design discussion):
  • Gunslinger (lead) — coin throw distraction, throwing knife, charm-talk in Spanish, gunfight with revolvers.
  • Sharpshooter / Field Medic — sniper rifle, medical-bag healing, sleeping-dart pistol, can revive downed NPCs as decoys.
  • Brawler / Heavy — large-axe melee, bear-trap, brawn pickup of heavy bodies.
  • Saloon Infiltrator / Disguiser — disguises (saloon-girl, nun), perfume distraction, pickpocket, twin-pistols.
  • Mystic / Voodoo Charmer — connect-thoughts (mind-control one NPC at a time), curse hex (slow target), pet snake (move to scout).
  • Pack-Animal Companion (e.g., donkey or mule) — kicks, dynamite pack, brays as audio decoy.
• Showdown Mode — Shift toggles time-dilation authoring; player queues up to four actions across the entire squad and triggers them in unison. Showdown's signature mechanic is synchronous execution — kills land in the same frame, denying NPCs reaction time.
• Same vision-cone / patrol / suspicion / body-disposal model as Commandos.
• Distraction toolkit: coin throw, whistle, lasso, perfume cloud, mind-control, snake scout, donkey bray.
• Difficulty: Cowboy, Outlaw, Bounty-Hunter, Showdown (hardest).
• Map count at launch: 10 campaign missions plus 4 side ops.

Showdown Mode (1/8-Speed Time-Dilation)#

The defining mechanic of the Desperados cell, reused at lower fidelity for Commandos.

Features:

• Toggle: Hold Shift to enter Showdown; release to exit. While in Showdown, time slows to 1/8 speed (0.125×) — not fully stopped. The world keeps moving slowly so visual readability stays; AI cannot react in time to a synchronized strike.
• Action queue: Each specialist can queue one or two actions (move, attack, use item, distraction). Queued actions are color-coded by specialist.
• Synchronous trigger: Releasing Shift or pressing Enter triggers all queued actions in unison. If any action depends on another (specialist A's distraction must land before specialist B's shot), the queue resolves in order with the dependency chain.
• Failure preview: If a queued action will fail (NPC outside cone, movement blocked, target moved), the queue UI highlights the failure before trigger.
• Limit: Up to four queued actions in Showdown for Desperados; two for Commandos (the latter relies on real-time pause instead).
• Replay: Showdown sequences are recorded and replayable as cinema reel.

Vision Cones and Suspicion#

Engine-level shared model that powers Commandos, Desperados, Hitman, Splinter Cell, and any FPS NPC who hunts the player.

Features:

• Sight cone: Defined by a vector forward, half-angle (default 60°), and range (default 12 m). Renderable on ground for RTST cells; invisible for FPS cells.
• Cone gradient: Inner half (close + center) gives instant detection; outer half gives detection over 1.5 s of continuous exposure.
• Light occlusion: Sight is reduced or eliminated in low lux (shared with Splinter Cell light gauge).
• Suspicion meter per NPC: 0 (calm) → 1 (curious, investigates noise) → 2 (alert, weapon out) → 3 (hostile, attacks).
• Decay: Suspicion decays over 8 s if stimulus removed; once hostile, decay requires 30 s and the NPC must lose line of sight first.
• Stimulus propagation: A panicked NPC alerts neighbors within 4 m audible range; gunfire propagates 25 m.
• Hearing radius: Defined per stance: prone 2 m, crouch 4 m, walk 8 m, run 16 m, sprint 25 m. Gunfire: silenced 8 m, unsilenced 50 m.

Squad of Specialists#

Each RTST specialist has a small kit (3-5 verbs) that combines with the squad as a whole. The design rule: no specialist is redundant; every mission requires ≥ 3 squad members' kits in combination to succeed.

Distraction Toolkit#

Cross-cell distraction verbs:

Body Disposal#

A shared engine concern for stealth: where and how to put downed bodies so patrols don't find them.

Features:

• Drag at half speed; drop in container, water, brush, ditch.
• Container types: wardrobe, hay bale, dumpster, latrine, well, walk-in fridge, server cabinet, freight box. Each map has 6-30 disposal points.
• Discovery: If a body is found, the alarm raises to alert level 2 for the whole sector, and patrol density doubles.
• Persistence: Bodies remain on disk for the duration of a mission; procedural variation may shift disposal points but never reduce them below 6 per map.
• Cover-up: In Hitman, hiding a body completely (in a container or off-map zone) removes the "body found" risk entirely.

Action RPG Cell#

The action RPG cell carries the Black Myth: Wukong design footprint — third-person animation-led combat, stamina economy, parry-and-dodge windows, transformation/spell-craft power moves, and animation-led bosses.

Black Myth Wukong Combat#

Features:

• Camera: Third-person, over-shoulder, soft-locked on nearest enemy when in combat stance. Free camera when out of combat.
• Light attack / Heavy attack / Stamina-cost moveset: L1 light combo (4-step), L2 heavy combo (3-step), L3 (after focus charge) Super-Hard combo (single hit, high stagger).
• Focus stance: Hold L1 to charge focus (3 stacks max); spend focus on L3 attacks.
• Stamina meter: Light attacks cost 5 stamina; heavy 12; dodge 18; sprint 6/s; parry 20 on whiff, 0 on perfect.
• Parry window: 6-frame window on heavy attacks; on success, target's posture meter takes 1.5× damage and the parry rewards a counter-attack prompt.
• Dodge invincibility: 9 frames of i-frames on the dodge roll.
• Posture meter per enemy: when broken, enemy is stunned 2.5s and opens to a cinematic counter or critical hit.

Stamina, Posture, Parry, Dodge#

Tuned per-enemy: humanoid bosses have 600 posture; large beasts have 1200; mid-tier enemies 200; trash 60. Stamina regenerates over 1.2s when not attacking.

Specialty Combat Modes#

DA_SpecialtyCombatModes adds two P3 duel variants on the V4ActionRPG combat backbone: a UFC-style boxing simulator that disables health chip and resolves rounds through stamina, posture KOs, parries, scorecards, and standing-eight counts; and a one-hit-kill sword duel with normalized weapons, consent-gated ranked rules, lethal hit confirmation, and a 4-frame perfect-guard window.

Transformation System#

Wukong's transformation is the cell's signature power-move system.

Features:

• Transformation slots: 5 unlockable transformations across the campaign. Examples: Tiger Form (heavy claw combos), Wolf Form (fast bite combos), Bird Form (aerial dives), Stone Form (heavy defense, super-armor), Wind Form (long evasive dashes).
• Activation: Each transformation costs 1 "Will" charge (max 3, refilled by parries and posture breaks).
• Duration: 12 seconds in form, or until form-specific HP pool depletes.
• Form combat: While transformed, the player has a unique moveset (different L1/L2 combos, different dodge invuln windows) and an enlarged health pool that absorbs damage independent of the base HP.

Spell-Craft and Charms#

Wukong-style "stances and spells" branch.

Features:

• Pillar stance — channel a freeze-in-place hold (max 6s); the next heavy attack cancels stance.
• Cloud step — short-range teleport behind locked-on enemy (cost: 1 Will).
• Body double — spawn a decoy duplicate that draws enemy attention for 4s.
• Hair-splitting — single-target multi-clone burst (3 phantom strikes in one swing).
• Charm system: equippable charms grant passive bonuses (stamina regen, parry window +1f, posture damage +10%, fire resistance).
• Charm slot count: 4 charm slots at base; +1 unlock at each major boss kill, max 8.

Boss Design Doctrine#

Every boss in the Wukong cell follows a strict design contract:

• Three phases: Phase 1 (HP >66%) standard moveset, Phase 2 (HP 33-66%) unlocks new attacks + posture pool reset, Phase 3 (HP <33%) enters cinematic desperation arc with super-armor and one-shot mechanics. The bands are non-overlapping: the Phase 1 → Phase 2 transition fires the instant HP drops to 66%, and the Phase 2 → Phase 3 transition the instant HP drops to 33%.
• Tells: Every attack telegraphs at least 18 frames before damage application; "delay attacks" with shifting timings exist but no boss attack ever lacks a tell.
• Recovery windows: Every boss combo ends in a recovery window of at least 24 frames so the player can land a punish.
• Parry-able set: At least 3 attacks per phase are parry-eligible (visible cue: red flash on weapon trail).
• Cinematic counter on posture break: every boss has a unique mocap'd finisher sequence that fires on posture break.

Boss Rush Ladder#

Curated boss-rush ladder mode: a sequence of 6-12 bosses chained back to back with limited heal flask refills. Leaderboard for best time per ladder tier.

RTS Cell#

Two sub-rulesets: StarCraft-style asymmetric, Age of Empires-style historical.

StarCraft Asymmetric#

Three asymmetric factions, fast-paced RTS, ladder-driven competitive.

Three Faction Roster#

Inspired by StarCraft's Terran / Zerg / Protoss design but original IP:

• Vanguard (analogue: Terran) — industrial mech faction. Builds mobile bases, repairable units, scan-and-cover doctrine. Hero unit: a battlecruiser-class Sovereign.
• Swarm (analogue: Zerg) — biomass faction. Creep-spread basebuilding, larva-morph unit production, fast economy. Hero unit: a winged Brood Mother.
• Choir (analogue: Protoss) — psionic faction. Warp-in production, shielded units, expensive but powerful. Hero unit: an Arch-Templar with archon-merge.

Build Orders and Tech Trees#

• Resource economy: two resource types ("Ore" and "Crystal"), matching StarCraft 2's Mineral/Gas economy.
• Worker count cap: 18 workers per base optimal (mineral patches scale this).
• Tech tree: 3 tiers per faction, ~8 units per faction, tier-up costs match StarCraft 2 (Lair=~100/100 gas, Hive=~200/150 gas).
• Build orders documented: the wiki ships with the launch-window opener meta for each faction.

Fog of War#

• Three states: Unexplored (black), Explored-but-out-of-vision (grayed), Visible (bright). Standard RTS.
• Cloaking / detection: Some units cloak (visible only to detector units); detector units carry "scan" abilities.

RTS Ladder#

• Ranks: Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, Grandmaster.
• MMR-based matchmaking with placement matches; seasonal resets.
• Replay download: Every ladder match's replay is available to both players plus public sharing.
• Spectator portal: Top-100 players' matches are publicly viewable via web spectator.

Age of Empires Historical#

A historical-era RTS variant under the same engine.

Civ Roster and Wonders#

At launch, 12 civilizations, each with unique units (1-3), architectural set, and a Wonder.

Example civs (final list in §29.2):

• Britons — Longbowmen unique, hilltop village set, Stonehenge Wonder.
• Mongols — Mangudai unique, yurts set, Karakorum Wonder.
• Aztecs — Jaguar Warrior unique, stone set, Templo Mayor Wonder.
• Japanese — Samurai unique, paper-and-tile set, Himeji Castle Wonder.
• Vikings — Berserker unique, longhouse set, Mead Hall Wonder.
• Mali — Camel Archer + Gbeto, Mali set, Djinguereber Mosque Wonder.
• Khmer — Ballista Elephant, jungle-temple set, Angkor Wat Wonder.
• Ethiopians — Shotel Warrior, Aksumite set, Lalibela Stelae Wonder.
• Yorubá — Ile-Ife Cavalry + Ogboni, brass-courtyard set, Ife Bronze Wonder.
• Bantu / Kongo — Nkisi Mage + Kanga Spearman, Kongo set, Mbanza-Kongo Wonder.
• Persians — War Elephant, Achaemenid set, Persepolis Wonder.
• Aboriginal Australians — Boomerang Skirmisher, gunyah set, Uluru Wonder.

(Each civ's design and cultural rep is reviewed by a sensitivity-reading team — see §61.)

Age-Up Progression#

• Five ages: Dark, Feudal, Castle, Imperial, Industrial.
• Age-up cost scales with population pressure; reaching a new age unlocks units and tech.
• Wonder victory: Build a Wonder, defend it for 7 in-game minutes, win the match (default; configurable).

Co-op Tower Defense Variant#

Asymmetric: one player commands a Wonder defense; one to three players control attacker waves on the same RTS map. PvE mission variant for solo or 1-3 player co-op.

2D Run-and-Gun Cell#

The smallest cell, but mandatory at launch: a 2D side-scrolling run-and-gun homage to Contra and similar run-and-gun classics.

Contra Side-Scrolling#

Features:

• Camera: Side-scroll, 2D, parallax background. Engine: UE5's Paper2D + Niagara for projectile effects.
• Controls: 8-directional aim with right-stick (or arrow keys), jump, shoot, dash. Crouch toggles in some stages.
• Movement: Run, jump (variable height), wall-slide, drop-through platform, hang/climb ladder.
• Health model: One-hit-kill default with extra-lives inventory (3 lives + continues); accessible difficulty preserves one extra hit per life for new players.
• Co-op: 2P local couch co-op, 4P online co-op (screen-edge tethering optional).

Weapon Pickup Library#

Iconic Contra power-ups:

• Spread Gun (S) — five-bullet fan, mid-range, default favorite.
• Laser (L) — single-target piercing beam, high damage.
• Machine Gun (M) — high rate, narrow.
• Fire (F) — short-range arc flames.
• Crush (C) — chargeable shotgun-like blast.
• Homing (H) — homing missiles.
• Barrier (B) — temporary invuln barrier (4s).

Power-up rules:

• One weapon per player at a time (no dual-wield); switching drops current.
• Powered-up state (yellow weapon icon) increases fire-rate by 1.5×; one death drops the powered-up state.

Branching Stage Routes#

Each stage has 2-3 branching routes that meet at the boss room. Score-bonus loops encourage skilled players to take harder routes.

Two-Player Local Co-op#

Mandatory local 2P co-op (couch). 4P online co-op supported. Co-op friendly fire toggled by host.

Arcade Boss Gauntlet#

A boss-rush mode with weekly rotating challenge; leaderboard tracks fastest no-death clears.

Shared Systems#

Shared Cross-Cell Systems#

Every cell relies on shared subsystems. The features below are not per-cell but cross-cell capabilities exposed to all rulesets.

Operator / Hero / Unit Roster#

V4 ships with one unified roster that surfaces differently in each cell:

• A named operator in the tactical FPS cell appears as a playable hero in the RTS cell (single-unit hero, no production line).
• The same operator's face mocap is reused for their Wukong-cell action-RPG appearance if they're cast as the cell's protagonist.
• 2D chibi sprites of each operator are authored for the Contra cell.

Roster scale at launch:

• 34 canonical shared operators, broken down as: 12 Tactical Special-Forces operators, 8 RTST squad members, 6 Wukong-cell heroes, and 8 RTS hero units.
• The 8 RTST squad members are a shared pool that fills both the 6-archetype Commandos WW2 squad and the 6-archetype Wild-West Desperados squad: 6 Wild-West-capable characters are flagged inside that shared pool, with 4 operators crossing both Commandos and Desperados via faction reskins.
• R6 Modern separately ships 40 mode-specific PvP operator slots in its own table (§16.3); those are not the canonical cross-cell roster.
• Each operator has a full mocap'd cinematic intro, a faction allegiance, a unique gadget/spell/ability, a voice line library (~120 barks), and a rivalry pair.

Cross-Cell Persistence and XP#

A unified Operator XP track persists across all cells:

• Playing R6 Modern with Operator X earns Operator XP for X.
• Playing RTS with hero unit X also earns Operator XP for X (lower rate, since X is only briefly the focus).
• Operator XP unlocks: cosmetic skins (cross-cell), perk slots (cell-specific), titles, animated emotes.
• Account XP is a separate progression track that levels independent of operator choice; unlocks cosmetics, battle-pass tiers, calling cards.

Unified AI Perception Model#

V4Perception is one engine-level subsystem that powers vision, hearing, and suspicion for every NPC in every cell. Configured via data tables (V4Perception_Settings), tuned per-cell-default but overridable per-NPC.

• Sense list: Sight, Hearing, Damage, AlarmTrigger, BodyFound, HostileDetected.
• Suspicion-level state machine: Calm → Curious → Alert → Hostile.
• Stimulus propagation: Sound radius, alert radius, body-found radius all parameterized.
• Faction recognition: NPCs recognize disguises via faction tags; Enforcers cross-check tags + appearance.

NPC Crowd System#

V4Crowd powers dense civilian populations in Hitman maps and AoE-style village/city RTS scenes.

• Density: Up to 400 simultaneous NPCs on a single map (dense-sandbox performance budget).
• Behavior tiers: Background (low-LOD pathing only), Medium (LOD with schedules), Hero (full perception, full schedules).
• Panic propagation: When gunfire or body discovery fires, panic spreads at 4 m/s across the crowd; crowd flees to nearest exfil node.
• Disguise check (Hitman): NPCs whose disguise class matches Player's disguise become Enforcers within visual range.

NPC Daily Schedules#

Each named NPC in a sandbox level has a schedule — a sequence of nodes (waypoint + task + duration) that loops every mission session.

• Authoring: V4Editor's schedule editor lets designers (and creators via Mission Editor) place nodes on the map and chain them.
• Task vocabulary: Walk-To, Stand-Idle, Sit-Bench, Drink-At-Bar, Talk-To-NPC-X, Use-Toilet, Patrol-Loop, Smoke-Cigarette, Pray, Pose-For-Photo.
• Hooks: Player actions can hook schedule transitions (e.g., a target receives a phone call when player picks up a planted phone, triggering schedule branch).

Disguise / Social Stealth#

Reused in Hitman and Commandos/Desperados (where Spy uses disguises).

• Disguise inventory: Each map has 6-12 disguise classes; player picks one up by knocking out / killing an NPC and dragging into a hiding spot to swap clothes.
• Enforcer NPCs: NPCs in the same disguise class as the player are Enforcers — they recognize Player on sight in less time (range ~6 m).
• Off-class NPCs: Treat the player as a normal member of the disguise class. Some disguises grant access to restricted zones.
• Suspicion modifier: Disguise reduces base suspicion for restricted zones by 70%; carrying obvious weapons or doing suspicious actions re-introduces suspicion.

Stealth-Kill / Takedown Library#

Cross-cell takedown verbs, animation-paired:

Cover, ADS, Recoil, Stance#

Tactical FPS shared mechanic set:

• Cover system: Sticky cover (lean to peek), free-aim cover (semi-blind fire), hold-stance cover.
• ADS (aim down sights): scoped, holographic, iron, red-dot, thermal, variable zoom (1×-8×).
• Recoil pattern: Per-weapon recoil curve; recoil is deterministic (same curve every time) so it's learnable. Recoil modulated by stance (prone -40%, crouch -20%, standing baseline, moving +30%).
• Stance vocabulary: Stand, Crouch, Prone, Lean-Left, Lean-Right, Slide-Cover.
• Weapon attachments: Up to 6 attachment slots per gun (sight, barrel, underbarrel, magazine, grip, stock); each attachment modifies handling, recoil, mobility, ADS speed.

Vehicle Library#

Vehicles shared across cells:

Sports Vehicle Modes#

DA_SportsVehicleModes adds four P3 vehicle competitions: vehicle soccer with boost pads, ball physics, and golden-goal overtime; vehicle stunt with combo multipliers and replay cameras; crash mode with Chaos destruction scoring and crashbreaker pulses; and a Trackmania-style time trial with instant restart, checkpoint splits, deterministic ghosts, and ranked ghost validation.

Procedural Layout Generator#

V4Procgen powers roguelike-tactics campaigns and procedural daily missions.

• Inputs: Cell, mission archetype, length, NPC density, environmental hazards, day/night.
• Outputs: Sandbox map authored from chunks; NPC schedules; mission briefing; exfil points.
• Determinism: Same seed = same map (community can share seeds).
• Validation: Generated maps run a playability test (player can reach exfil, all objectives reachable) before being served.

Mission Architectures#

V4 supports five distinct mission architecture patterns; each is documented so designers and creators can pick the right pattern per cell.

Linear Cinematic#

Defining the CoD campaign and most ARPG levels. Single critical path, scripted setpieces, no branching outside narrow dialogue / objective options. Sequencer-driven cinematics at chapter boundaries.

Branching Tactical#

Defining the R6 Raven Shield campaign. Multi-route layouts where a planning step lets the player author the route, with multiple solutions per mission. 2-4 entry points, 2-3 objective orders, configurable difficulty.

Sandbox (Hitman / Commandos)#

Defining Hitman, Commandos, and Desperados. Open level with multiple objectives, multiple solutions, dense NPC schedules, replayable for discovery and contract authoring.

Procedural / Roguelike#

Procedurally laid-out missions per roguelike campaign (V4Mode_Roguelike). Daily seeded missions for community competition. Random NPC composition, random objectives, random map within an archetype.

The P3 Hades-style roguelike adventure layers permanent Shadow Intel meta-progression over the eight-mission tactical run: five persistent upgrade tracks, a 12-boss unique roster, and a 24-boon draft pool that rewards boss defeats and changes operator builds for the current run.

Open-Map RTS#

Defining StarCraft and Age of Empires missions. A large open map with build sites, resource patches, and unit limit; victory by elimination, wonder, holdout, or escort.

Side-Scroll Stages#

Defining Contra. Linear scrolling stages with branching mid-paths and end-boss arenas.

Game Modes#

Campaign Modes#

The Shadow War campaign is the unifying narrative arc: a covert war between two clandestine power blocs — Modern Forces and the Resistance — in which the same operators appear in multiple cells across the same crisis. Missions move between cells (a Hitman-cell assassination of a key target sets up a CoD-cell battle that sets up a StarCraft-cell coastal invasion).

Skirmish and Quick-Play Modes#

Co-op Modes#

PvP Modes#

Spec Ops and Horde Defense#

A cross-cell PvE suite for 1-4 players, packaged as V4Mode_SpecOps_Coop and V4Mode_HordeDefense.

Spec Ops#

Short (15-30 min) co-op missions decoupled from campaign continuity, designed for a single sitting. Each Spec Ops mission carries a star rating (1-3 stars) based on completion time, accuracy, and stealth bonus; stars unlock the next mission in an 18-mission ladder. Loadout is operator-choice from the player's unlocked roster; difficulty scales enemy count and aim profile with party size (1.0× / 1.45× / 1.90× / 2.35× for 1-4 players). A mission ends in success on all objectives cleared, or failure on full-party-down with no revives banked. Spec Ops missions cross cells — a tactical-FPS insertion can flow into an RTST extraction segment on the same mission.

Post-launch online co-op variants are authored in DA_SpecOpsOnlineCoop and implemented by UV4SpecOpsOnlineCoopModel: Marathon chains the full 18-mission ladder into one continuous host-authoritative session with a persistent timer, configurable difficulty floor, and cross-player team leaderboard; Endurance is an endless-wave Spec Ops queue whose ammo pool and heal flasks diminish across waves; the Temple Breach crossover mission places a tactical-FPS player and a Wukong-cell player in the same room with asymmetric objectives. Spec Ops online sessions support drop-in / drop-out through host-authoritative session records, with the original host retained and host migration disabled for the mission. DA_SpecOpsPostLaunchOps adds the weekly featured slate and Year-1 modifier deck: contracts rotate weekly, apply mission-start modifier stacks such as Vampiric Heal, Speed Demons, Iron Armour, and Inverted Vision Cones, and use UV4SpecOpsOnlineCoopModel::SelectModifierStackAtMissionStart for deterministic mission/week selection.

Horde Defense#

Wave-based defense available in all six launch cells; the cell determines the verb set but the wave director is shared. Players defend an objective (a beacon, a Wonder, a hostage) against escalating waves.

• Wave structure: 20 waves per session; every 5th wave is a boss wave. Between waves a 30-second build/buy intermission lets players spend wave currency on ammo, gadgets, fortifications, or revives.
• Wave director: scales spawn rate, enemy tier mix, and special-enemy frequency to the rolling per-player kill rate and the number of players still standing — the curve targets a 60-70% completion rate for a coordinated party.
• Per-cell variants: Tactical FPS (operators hold a building against insurgent waves), Stealth (find-and-evade — waves hunt the players, who must stay hidden and thin the patrol), Wukong (yaoguai swarms with a phase boss every 5th wave), RTS (the Tower-Defense variant on RTS maps), Contra (a 2D horde stage with looping screen and bullet-pattern escalation).
• Post-launch crossover: Fireteam Stronghold (Horde.TacticalRTSTBaseDefense) lets a tactical-FPS fireteam defend an RTST/Tactics-cell base from wave attackers with the shared wave director.
• Failure and scoring: objective destroyed or full party down ends the run; the score is wave reached × difficulty multiplier, posted to a per-cell leaderboard.
• Drop-in: a new player can fill an empty party slot at the next wave intermission; mid-wave joins are held until the intermission.

Training, Trials, Tutorials#

Per-cell training surfaces, all offline and pause-friendly. Training surfaces never gate content — they are optional — but completing a cell's tutorial flight is a soft prerequisite the matchmaker uses to seed new players into a lower MMR band.

• Range / Dummy Range — tactical FPS weapon training: every weapon and attachment is free to equip, AI dummies spawn at fixed and moving range bands, the recoil pattern of the held weapon is overlaid as a ghost trace, and damage numbers show per hit-zone (head, chest, limb) so players can study time-to-kill.
• RTS Build-Order Trainer — a stress-free map with no enemy: the player selects a published opener and the trainer overlays the target build timeline, flagging each step as on-time, early, or late against the reference. An AI ghost can replay the opener's input log alongside the player.
• Wukong Parry Trainer — a boss-attack rehearsal room: the player picks a boss and an attack, the attack loops on demand, and the parry window is drawn as an on-screen frame bar that flashes on the parry-eligible frames. Tracks a rolling parry-success percentage.
• RTST Cone Calibration Range — an interactive scene that teaches vision-cone reading: cones are rendered with the alert-level color coding, patrol routes are visible, and the player practices threading a route without raising suspicion. Includes a light/shadow segment.
• Contra Stage 1 Drill — a forgiving practice run of Contra Stage 1 with accessibility difficulty on (one extra hit per life), used to onboard new run-and-gun players.
• Master Tutorial — a curated ~90-minute guided flight that visits all six launch cells in sequence, introducing each cell's core verb set in a scripted micro-mission. Progress saves per cell so the flight can be resumed; it can be replayed from the main menu at any time.

Replay Theater, Spectator, Coach Mode#

Replay capture, playback, live spectating, and coaching, served by V4Mode_Replay, V4Mode_Spectator, and the replay-service backend.

Replay Capture and Store#

Every multiplayer match records a replay; RTS and lockstep modes record an input-bundle stream (~1 MB per 30-minute match), all other modes record a UE-native demo. Replays are uploaded to the cloud at match end. Retention is 14 days by default; a player can star a replay to move it into the per-account vault for lifetime keeping (up to 500 starred per account). Single-player runs save replays locally; cloud upload is opt-in.

Replay Viewer#

The viewer offers a free-flight camera plus per-player follow cameras, picture-in-picture for up to four simultaneous player feeds, frame-step, variable-speed scrub (0.1×-8×), and a timeline the player can drop bookmarks on. RTS and lockstep replays support true rewind because they re-simulate from inputs; demo-based replays scrub forward freely and seek by keyframe. A clip can be exported to MP4 via the Movie Render Queue pipeline at up to 4K.

Spectator Portal#

A web app (apps/v4/spectator/) for live and recorded viewing. It carries a per-camera picture-in-picture grid, an observer following the match director's cuts, a telemetry-rich HUD (economy, positions, win-probability), and a configurable delay (default 90 seconds) for competitive integrity. Top-100 ladder matches are publicly listed; esports broadcasts route through the same portal with the broadcast camera presets.

Coach Mode#

An instructor and a student join the same replay session. The instructor controls playback (pause, scrub, speed), can draw freehand annotations and place markers on the frozen frame, and can jump the session to any tagged moment. The student sees the instructor's camera and annotations in real time. Coach Mode works on any replay either party owns, including ladder and campaign replays.

Per-Ruleset Signature Modes#

Signature modes mark each cell's premium identity beyond generic skirmish. Each is an evergreen mode (not a rotating event), tracked in the Codex with its own completion stats.

• R6 Raven Shield Anniversary — the 16-mission Raven Shield campaign rebuilt with current-gen lighting and a modernized planning UI, kept as a separate selectable campaign. Original mission flow and objective placement are preserved; only the tac-map authoring affordances are updated. A retro toggle swaps the HUD to a 2003-style skin.
• CoD Zombies-class — a co-op (1-4 player) round-based wave-defense mode with wall-buy weapons, a points economy earned per kill, perk machines that grant permanent run buffs, a Mystery Box weapon roll, and a multi-step Easter-Egg quest per map that ends in a unique reward. Rounds escalate enemy health and speed indefinitely; the run ends on full party down. Three launch maps.
• Splinter Cell Black-List Ops — a curated set of 12 co-op (1-2 player) stealth missions scored on a non-lethal / ghost / panther style rating, reusing the light/shadow gauge and gadget loadouts of the Splinter Cell sub-ruleset.
• Hitman Elusive Targets — once-per-week, single-attempt contracts on the live sandbox maps. The target has a bespoke schedule and is not marked on HUD; a death, an abort, or a mission-fail permanently closes that target for the account. Completions are timestamped to a global community leaderboard; the target window stays open 7 days.
• Commandos Lost Patrols — six branching "what-if" missions on alternative-history maps, using the Commandos six-character squad. Each mission has 2-3 outcome branches that change the next mission's starting conditions.
• Desperados Bounty Hunt — procedurally seeded bounty contracts on open-frontier maps: a named target, a reward tier, and an optional capture-alive bonus. New bounties roll daily; the Desperados squad and Showdown Mode carry over.
• Wukong Mirror Veneration — a boss-rush ladder with a weekly rotating modifier set (e.g., halved heal flasks, doubled posture damage, no transformations). Leaderboard tracks fastest clear under the active modifier.
• StarCraft Co-op Commander — co-op (2-player) PvE missions where each player picks one of three commander hero units, each with a faction-asymmetric power set and its own mastery track that levels across missions.
• AoE Empire of Empires — a large-population mega mode: 1200-pop cap per player, oversized maps, matches running up to two hours, supporting up to 8 players. Reserved for high-end platforms; stripped on memory-constrained targets.
• Contra Survival — an endless run-and-gun mode with looping stages, a per-loop difficulty ramp on enemy density and bullet-pattern complexity, and a leaderboard for furthest loop and highest score on a no-continue run.

AI Director and Adaptive Difficulty#

The AI Director is a PvE-only pacing system: it samples a rolling performance window and nudges difficulty parameters within a bounded band so a struggling player is not walled and a dominant player is not bored. It never touches competitive PvP.

• Performance window: the Director scores the last 90 seconds on damage taken, objective progress rate, deaths, and (in stealth cells) detection events, producing a single 0.0-1.0 pressure value.
• Adjustment band: each tunable has a floor and ceiling so the Director can never make a fight trivial or impossible. The Director moves a parameter at most one step per 30 seconds, and only outside a deadband around the target pressure, so changes are gradual and not whiplash-inducing.
• Per-cell tunables:
  • Tactical FPS: enemy aim accuracy (±15%), reaction time (±120 ms), grenade frequency, reinforcement-wave timing.
  • RTST: NPC patrol density, vision-cone half-angle (±10°), suspicion decay rate, time between alert cool-downs.
  • Wukong: incoming boss damage (±20%), parry-window width (±1 frame, never below the published 6-frame floor), heal-flask drop rate.
  • RTS (campaign only — never ladder PvP): AI economy income bonus, AI attack-wave timing, AI scout frequency.
  • Contra: enemy spawn density, projectile pattern density, power-up drop rate.
• Boss exclusion: the Director freezes its adjustments during scripted boss-fight phases so authored encounters read as designed; it resumes between phases.
• Adaptive difficulty opt-out: a settings toggle pins difficulty to the selected fixed tier (Recruit through Realism, or the cell equivalent). Achievements and leaderboard eligibility are unaffected by the toggle state.
• Post-launch refinement: DA_AIDirectorPostLaunchRefinement calibrates Tactical FPS tuning against the launch-window skill distribution and Wukong tuning against parry-success telemetry, with the chapter-2 boss clear rate held inside the 35-55% within-five-attempts target.
• Safety invariant: refined Director adjustments are rejected if the profile would read as rubber-banding, purist opt-out disables adaptive AI entirely, and a build-time PvP hook assertion keeps Director code out of competitive modes.

Content Inventory#

Roster and Content Inventory#

A consolidated inventory of every shippable content unit at launch.

Numbers below are the launch targets that the TODOs §15–§31, §42–§45 must deliver. Final inventory is the union of these rows; do not bring forward work from any unreferenced row without an architecture decision record (ADR).

Map Lore, Signature Maps, Day/Night, Weather, Crowd#

How maps carry identity, atmosphere, and ambient life beyond their layout.

• Per-map lore card: a 200-300-word in-fiction card placing the map in the Shadow War narrative, openable from the loading screen and the in-match pause menu. The card is authored once and reused across every mode that runs on the map. The runtime source is V4/maps/map-lore.json, mirrored by DA_MapLoreRuntime; WBP_InMatchCodexAccess opens the current map's Codex card without leaving the match.
• Signature maps: each PvP-capable cell designates one flagship map per faction in its rotation. A signature map gets a one-of-a-kind ambient music track, a hand-authored skybox, and a higher environment-art budget than rotation maps. DA_SignatureMapAmbientTracks binds the five faction flagships to unique SignatureMapAmbience MetaSounds. Signature maps anchor esports map pools.
• Day/Night cycle: sandbox maps (Hitman, Commandos, Desperados) carry a time-of-day setting chosen per mission or rolled per Quick Mission. Time of day shifts NPC schedules (a night gala has different patrols than a daytime market) and lux levels, which feeds the stealth gauges. It does not change tactical PvP balance — PvP maps ship with a fixed, balanced lighting state. DA_MapWeatherAndTimeOfDay covers 42 sandbox maps across Hitman, Commandos, and Desperados with dawn/day/night schedule shifts.
• Weather: rain, fog, and snow are authored per map and can be fixed or rolled. Weather has measurable gameplay effect in some cells: RTST vision-cone range −10% in heavy fog, Wukong slip-rate +5% on wet stone surfaces, reduced sound-footprint propagation in rain (stealth easier). Tactical PvP weather is cosmetic-only to keep ranked play deterministic. The same map-weather asset points at Weather.Rain, Weather.Fog, and Weather.Snow Niagara cues.
• Crowd density: scaled to each map's design intent and the performance budget — a dense Hitman sandbox runs up to 400 simultaneous NPCs, an AoE-style village scene runs hundreds of villagers via the crowd tiers, a small Wukong combat arena runs ~12. Density never drops below the figure the map's stealth or social-stealth design depends on. DA_MapCrowdDensityScaling generates one density profile for every 102 launch map rows and keeps social-stealth NPC floors explicit.

Creator and Community#

Creator Suite#

A first-party authoring suite for community content.

Mission Editor#

• Per-cell editor: Tactical Mission, Stealth Sandbox, RTST Mission, Wukong Arena, RTS Map, Contra Stage. Each loads its cell's mission template — the spawn, objective, and ruleset patterns from the matching cell module — so a creator works inside one cell's grammar at a time, not a generic toolbox.
• Asset library: the creator places props, NPCs, vehicles, objectives, schedules, vision cones, and scripted events from the shipped asset set. Mods may add to the library; creator content cannot reference unowned assets.
• Mission script: a Blueprint-class visual scripting graph for triggers, conditions, branching, dialogue, and story beats. The graph is sandboxed — scripts cannot call engine internals or arbitrary code.
• Authoring states: a mission moves Draft → Validating → Published → (Featured | Delisted). A Draft is editable and private; Published is immutable except for new versions; a moderation action moves it to Delisted.
• Validation gate: publishing requires three passes — the mission loads cleanly in Play-In-Editor, an AI path-test bot reaches every objective and an exfil, and the author records one full start-to-finish play-through. Failing any pass returns the mission to Draft with the failure reason.
• Save quotas: drafts and published missions count against a per-account storage quota; an empty editor opens to a template picker rather than a blank level.

Contract Author#

For Hitman-cell community contracts; the full author UI, validation, browser, leaderboard, and anti-cheat behavior are specified in the Hitman Sandbox Stealth section (Player-Authored Contracts) and not repeated here.

RTS Map Editor#

• Terrain: height-map sculpting with raise / lower / smooth / flatten brushes, texture painting per terrain layer, and water-plane placement.
• Resource placement: Ore and Crystal patches placed with a configurable yield per patch; the editor reports total economy per start position.
• Start positions: drag-and-drop player starts validated for 1v1, 2v2, 4v4, and FFA — the editor flags asymmetric resource access or unreachable starts before publish.
• Triggers: a trigger graph for campaign-style scripted scenarios (timed attack waves, objective reveals, scripted dialogue).
• Validation: every start position must reach every other and every resource patch by ground path; symmetric ladder maps additionally fail publish if the per-start economy is unbalanced beyond a small tolerance.

2D Stage Editor#

• Pixel-art import: sprites and tilesets import on a snap grid; the editor enforces the cell's tile dimensions.
• Layout: scrolling-room layout, platform and ladder placement, parallax background layer assignment.
• Hazards: placement of saws, pits, lava, and crushers with per-hazard timing where animated.
• Enemy schedule: enemy spawns are pinned to scroll positions along the stage so encounters trigger as the camera advances.
• Boss arena: a boss-arena designer with a multi-phase boss script (phase HP thresholds, per-phase attack pattern, arena hazards).
• Validation: an AI bot must traverse the stage from entry to the boss room on at least one route, and the boss script must define a defeat condition, before the stage can publish.

Workshop and Mods#

The workshop-service backend hosts community content; mods load as sandboxed GameFeatures plugins.

• Workshop hosting: Steam Workshop on PC; EOS Player Studio for console crossplay where the platform-holder permits player-created content. Content published to one carries its metadata to the other.
• Mod manifest: every mod ships a manifest declaring which cells it modifies, its asset list, its dependencies on other mods, a semantic version, and the author identity. The client resolves and downloads the dependency closure before activating a mod.
• Subscription flow: a player subscribes from the in-game browser; the mod downloads, validates against its manifest, and appears in the relevant cell's content list. Unsubscribing removes the plugin cleanly on next launch.
• Content moderation: a two-stage gate — an automated nudity / extreme-violence classifier on upload, then a community-report queue. Confirmed violations trigger a takedown cascade (the mod and its dependents are delisted, subscribers are notified) following the Lilith-Rights pattern reused from V3.
• Crash protection: because each mod is an isolated GameFeature plugin, a mod that crashes is caught, auto-disabled, and reported to the player with a prompt to keep it disabled or re-enable at their own risk. A crashing mod cannot take down the base game.
• Versioning: a published mod is immutable; an update is a new version. Subscribers are offered the update and can pin an older version if a newer one breaks their setup.

Custom Tournaments, Profile Cards, Match History#

• Custom tournament authoring: community organizers create brackets of 16, 32, 64, or 128 players in single- or double-elimination. The organizer sets the cell, mode, map pool, and mod whitelist; the bracket renderer advances automatically as reported match results land. Check-in windows and a no-show forfeit timer keep the bracket moving.
• Player profile cards: a shareable card showing per-cell stats, the account's top operators by playtime, recent match results, faction allegiance, rank badges, and an achievement showcase the player curates. Streamer mode hides identifying fields (see the Streamer, Speedrun, Coach Modes section).
• Match history: every match the account played is listed, searchable and filterable by mode, cell, date range, operator, and result, with a link to the match replay where one was retained.

Community Features#

• Player of the Week: the community team selects one player weekly, weighing telemetry standout performances, community votes, and esports impact; the pick is surfaced in the front-end news panel with a short write-up. The implemented curation flow lives in V4/community/community-features.json with explicit Submitted -> Published states, replay evidence, telemetry snapshots, safety review, and audit history.
• Squad Showcase: a rotating feature of creator squads with links to their VODs, refreshed weekly alongside Player of the Week. Each featured creator squad VOD has a /community/squads/[slug] page with chaptering, creator attribution, and approval windows.
• Gallery: players submit screenshots and replay clips; submissions pass the same moderation classifier as workshop content before a curated set is shown in-client on the front-end gallery surface. DA_CommunityGallery, WBP_GalleryShowcase, L_UI_Gallery, and DA_FocusGraph_Gallery define the in-game showcase and screenshot/replay moderation states.
• Newsletter: an opt-in bi-weekly email carrying patch notes, an esports recap, the art showcase, and the community spotlight. Opt-in state is part of the account's communication preferences and is honored across regions through the /api/community/newsletter double-opt-in endpoint.

Online Services and Networking#

Online Services#

Login / Account / Sessions#

• Login: OnlineSubsystem + OnlineServicesEOS issue a session token at launch; the first-party V4 account is the primary identity, with OAuth 2.0 against the platform identity provider. Access tokens are short-lived; refresh tokens rotate.
• Account linking: a first-party account links any of Steam, PSN, Xbox Live, Nintendo, Apple Game Center, and Google Play Games. A platform account can be linked or unlinked at any time; unlinking does not delete progression, which lives on the first-party account.
• Session model: three session kinds — Lobby (a party of friends staging before a match), Match (an active gameplay session), and Spectate (a read-only attach to a Match). A player is in at most one Match session at a time; leaving a Match returns them to their Lobby.
• Failure handling: if the login service is unreachable, the client falls back to offline mode — single-player and local multiplayer remain playable, and progression reconciles to the cloud on the next successful login.

Friends, Parties, Voice#

• Friends list: one unified friend graph spanning all linked platforms, served by friends-service over WebSocket for live presence. Friends show current activity (cell, mode, in-match or in-lobby).
• Parties: party size caps by cell — 4 for tactical PvP, 8 for RTS team modes, 2 for Wukong co-op, 4 for general co-op. The party leader picks the mode and queues the whole party; party members who cannot meet a mode's platform or content requirements are flagged before queue.
• Voice chat: positional or channel voice in lobby and in match, push-to-talk or open-mic per player preference. Each player can per-channel mute any other; voice runs over a WebRTC SFU. A server-side transcription classifier monitors for abuse and feeds the report pipeline; voice is off by default for under-18 accounts pending parental opt-in.

Matchmaking, Skill, Region#

• Skill rating: a per-cell Glicko-2 rating with a rating deviation that widens during inactivity, so a returning player is re-calibrated quickly. New accounts run placement matches before a rating is shown.
• Match assembly: the matchmaking-service builds a match by widening the acceptable rating band over queue time, balancing team average rating, and preferring same-region servers. A QoS ping pass selects the lowest-latency server among the candidate regions.
• Region servers: dedicated servers in ten regions — NA-East, NA-West, EU-West, EU-East, LATAM, APAC, AU/NZ, ME, Africa, India. Cross-region matchmaking is opt-in and surfaced with an expected-latency warning.
• Queue priority: the matchmaker prefers solos against solos and parties against parties so a coordinated party does not face five strangers; it trades this preference off against queue time once a wait threshold is passed. Target matchmaking p99 is ≤ 35 s at expected launch concurrency.

Leaderboards#

• Scope: leaderboards are sliced per mode, per cell, and per region, plus a global view. Ladder ranks and signature-mode leaderboards (boss rush, contracts, Contra Survival) each have their own board.
• Seasons: competitive leaderboards reset on the 90-day season boundary, aligned with the battle pass; the prior season's standings are archived and remain viewable.
• Visibility: the top 100 of each ladder is public and links into the spectator portal; a player can always see their own placement and percentile.
• Integrity: ladder and contract leaderboard entries are validated by server-side replay analysis before they post; runs that fail validation are rejected, not silently dropped.

Replay Service#

• All multiplayer matches store a replay for 14 days at no cost. A player can star a replay to move it into the lifetime per-account vault (up to 500 starred). Un-starring returns it to the default expiry path. Replays are stored as blobs (S3 / GCS) keyed by match id; an expired unstarred replay is purged on the retention sweep. Verified speedrun submissions also feed the speedrun ghost archive, where faster ghosts supersede the active route ghost while preserving lineage.

Network Quality, LAN, Server Browser, Private Rooms#

• NAT detection: the client probes its NAT type at startup and warns when a strict / symmetric NAT is detected, since this degrades private-room peer connectivity; dedicated-server modes are unaffected.
• Quality of service: every client periodically pings all ten regions and caches a sorted latency list; matchmaking and the server browser surface the best three regions so a player can make an informed pick.
• LAN play: an offline lobby for RTS and tactical modes that runs without any backend connection — discovery is local-network broadcast, the match is peer-hosted, and no rating or progression is recorded (LAN play is for events and practice).
• Server browser: a list of community-hosted RTS, R6-style, and private rooms, filterable by cell, mode, map, ping, player count, and whether a mod whitelist is active. Joining honors the room's password and content rules.
• Private rooms: friends-only rooms for scrims and bracket play. The host configures cell, mode, map pool, rules, and team assignment. A private room can snapshot its state so a multi-game tournament can pause and resume across sessions. Host migration is available for private rooms (it is not used for matchmade dedicated-server play).

Crossplay and Cross-Progression#

• Crossplay default on for all PvE; opt-in for ranked PvP (some platforms forbid default opt-in).
• Cross-progression for cosmetics, operator XP, account XP.
• Currency (three tiers, matching V4_ARCHITECTURE.md § "Persistence & Profile"):
  • Operator Tokens — soft currency, earned in-game, cross-platform.
  • Combat Points — hard currency, purchased, per-platform per platform-store rules.
  • Elite Tokens — premium currency, earned through ranked play, cosmetic purchases only.

Esports#

Esports and Tournament#

• Tournament server build: a dedicated-server build with competitive features always on — an observer slot that does not occupy a player seat, broadcast camera tooling, pause-on-disconnect with a resume countdown, a telemetry-rich observer HUD, and forced replay-export at match end.
• Sponsor branding hooks: authored slots for crew names, team / faction icons, and in-game banner cards, populated per event by the esports-service rather than hard-coded.
• Mod whitelist: a tournament runs with only explicitly whitelisted Workshop content; the server rejects clients carrying non-whitelisted mods so every match is on a known content set.
• Bracket integration: the first-party bracket service syncs with Challonge and Start.gg so an event can be run from a familiar external tool while results flow back into V4's spectator portal.
• Anti-collusion: statistical detection tuned for the modes where collusion pays — RTS team ladders (deliberate feeding, win-trading) and Search & Destroy (round-throwing). Flagged matches route to manual review.

Streamer, Speedrun, Coach Modes#

• Streamer mode: a settings toggle that suppresses identifying data — account name, region, party-member names, and any IP-derived fields — from the in-game UI and the spectator feed, so a broadcasting player is not doxxed or stream-sniped by name.
• Speedrun mode: records a detailed, high-resolution run telemetry track (inputs, splits, route) alongside the replay. Runs are submitted through a portal where community moderators verify them against the replay before they post to the speedrun boards; verified runs also seed the ghost-data archive.
• Coach mode: the instructor-and-student replay session described in the Replay Theater, Spectator, Coach Mode section; not repeated here.
• Twitch / YouTube extensions: broadcast extensions for live viewer polls, Twitch Drop campaign hooks, and pick'em UIs for tournament viewers.

Esports Pro Circuit, Broadcast Extras, Wildcard Format#

• Pro circuit: Major / Minor / Open tiers define the first 12-month calendar in V4/esports/pro-circuit/pro-circuit-2026.json. Open results feed Minor seeding; Minor results feed Major seeding, so the circuit is a connected progression rather than isolated events.
• Broadcast extras: the spectator toolset for broadcast — picture-in-picture multi-feed, true replay-rewind on lockstep matches, saved observer-cam presets per map, and a sponsor lower-third overlay. The spectator portal exposes these producer tools next to the live match feed.
• Wildcard format: each Major opens with a Wildcard day on a Roulette format — the active ruleset changes per round, drawn from a published pool (e.g., mirror match, abilities disabled, restricted weapon pool, single-cell gauntlet). The Wildcard pool is fixed before the event so teams can prepare; the per-round draw is what is random. DA_WildcardRouletteRules is the source of truth for Wildcard / Roulette rules variants.

Live Service#

Live Service and DLC#

V4 operates as a live service from day one. The unit of live content is the 90-day season; new playable content (operators, maps, campaigns) ships as GameFeatures plugins so it can be added without a binary patch.

• Battle pass: a 100-tier pass per 90-day season with a free track and a premium track. The free track delivers a tier reward roughly every other tier; the premium track fills every tier. Tier progression is driven by Account XP; a tier-skip purchase is available. A finished season's pass is archived — its cosmetics do not return on the next season's pass.
• Cosmetic-only content: pass and store cosmetics — operator skins, weapon skins, charms, calling cards, emotes, sprays — never affect balance; a reskinned weapon shares its base weapon's stats exactly.
• Operator DLC: new operators release through the year as small GameFeature plugins. Premium-pass holders receive that season's in-season operators free; others can buy them with hard currency or earn them with soft currency once they leave the premium window.
• Mission DLC: larger paid drops — new tactical campaigns, new Hitman sandboxes, new RTS campaigns — at $9.99-$19.99. Mission DLC is content expansion, not a power purchase.
• Hotfix channel: balance and tuning ship out-of-band as data-table updates pushed within 30 minutes of approval, separate from the binary patch cadence.

Battle Pass, Daily/Weekly Contracts, Faction System#

Contracts are the recurring engagement loop layered on top of the battle pass; completing them is the main non-match-result source of Account and Operator XP.

• Daily contracts: 3 contracts refresh at the 00:00 UTC server reset. Each is a small, specific objective (e.g., "win 2 tactical PvP matches", "complete a Hitman environmental kill", "reach Castle Age in an RTS match") worth a small XP reward. Unclaimed dailies do not stack — they are replaced at reset.
• Weekly contracts: 7 contracts refresh on the weekly boundary, each a larger objective worth a mid XP reward, and they persist for the full week so a player can complete them at their own pace.
• Contract states: a contract moves Offered → In Progress → Complete → Claimed; the XP is granted on claim. Progress is server-tracked and validated against telemetry so contracts cannot be spoofed.
• Faction system: a player declares allegiance to one of five factions — the three RTS factions (Vanguard, Swarm, Choir) or the two Shadow War power blocs (Modern Forces, Resistance). Faction-aligned play earns faction reputation, which unlocks a faction-themed cosmetic track and seasonal faction rewards. Allegiance can be changed, with a cooldown, but reputation is per-faction and does not transfer. A recurring season-long faction competition ranks the five factions by aggregate member contribution.

Twitch Drops, Creator Partnership, Community Tools#

• Twitch Drops: watch-time-linked reward campaigns run during launch and major events. A viewer links their V4 account to Twitch, accrues watch time on participating streams, and the reward (a cosmetic, occasionally an operator unlock) is granted to the linked account through EventSub-backed entitlement delivery. Campaign windows and reward tables are configured per event.
• Creator code program: content creators receive a code; hard-currency purchases attributed to that code pay the creator a revenue share. Attribution is per-purchase and reported to the creator through a dashboard, with tax/KYC, refund clawback, and fraud review before payout.
• Community tools: a press kit and media library of branded, license-clear asset packs (logos, key art, screenshots, music stems) for community artists and the broadcast extensions described in the Esports chapter. Creator-program members also receive an NDA-gated media bundle with variant trailers, BTS footage, and looped short-form B-roll.
• Community spotlight operations: community-service owns Player of the Week curation, player-submitted gallery publication, and bi-weekly newsletter dispatch while creator-relations-service owns the featured creator squad VOD window.

Ranked Season Architecture#

• Season length: 90 days, aligned with the battle pass and leaderboard resets.
• Pre-season: a 10-day window opens each season for a soft rating reset and placement matches before ranked rewards count.
• Mid-season patch: a balance patch lands at day 45 so the back half of the season plays on a tuned meta; it ships through the data-table hotfix channel where no binary update is required.
• End-of-season rewards: awarded on the account's peak rank reached that season, not its rank at the buzzer, so a player is not punished for experimenting late in the season.
• Year-1 ladder split: five distinct ranked ladders ship for Ranked.Tactical.R6Modern, Ranked.Stealth.SpiesVsMercs, Ranked.RTS.Asymmetric, Ranked.RTS.Historical, and Ranked.ARPG.BossRush; each has its own board, reward track, region slice, and archived seasonal MMR distribution.
• Decay: Diamond, Master, and Grandmaster accounts must complete one ranked match every 14 days to retain visible rank; Platinum and below never decay.
• Transparency: the public /ranked dashboard publishes per-ladder, per-region MMR histograms, while the in-game RankedMatchmakingDiagnostic panel explains the player's MMR delta, current search tolerance, rank band, party-size, latency band, region, and search expansion step.
• Rewards and retrospective: peak-rank rewards include charm, banner, emote, and animated calling card; the top 100 per region earn a championship gold frame, ranks 101-1000 receive a consolation bundle, and every season closes with a balance retrospective covering winrate deltas and meta shifts.

Live Service Calendar#

• Seasonal themes: five recurring themed windows — Winter Operation (December), Lunar New Year (Jan-Feb), Spring (Mar-May), Summer Heat (Jun-Aug), Harvest (Sep-Nov) — each bringing themed cosmetics, a featured playlist, and limited-time contracts. DA_LiveServiceCalendar is the runtime mirror for month-to-theme resolution.
• Anniversary event: the launch-anniversary window grants a free login bonus, a commemorative cosmetic, and a throwback Raven Shield 2003-style mission.
• Charity drives: one charity drive per year; the proceeds described to players up front go in full to a designated cause, with a store ledger and partner clearance record.
• Console tie-ins: platform-exclusive cosmetics (e.g., a PS5-themed weapon skin) run only with the platform-holder's marketing sign-off, and per the exit criteria, platform exclusivity never extends past cosmetics. Each launch platform family has an approved cosmetic-only tie-in.
• Signature event modes: DA_SignatureEventModes and UV4LiveServiceSubsystem author the Year-1 event-only slate: Halloween "Night Shift" is a tactical-FPS PvE horror playlist with reskinned NPCs and limited-time cosmetics; Holiday "Hometown Skirmish" applies festive map reskins to every launch cell and ships the limited-time L_Event_Hometown_RTS_Skirmish RTS map; Pride "Signal Colors" is a limited-time cosmetic suite with a creator-pick partner charity; Esports All-Stars is a mid-season exhibition ruleset variant.

Operator and Account Progression, Codex, Encyclopedia#

• Operator XP: each named operator levels independently from 1 to 100. Operator XP is earned at cell-scaled rates whenever that operator is played (the per-cell rates and the 5000-XP-per-operator daily anti-grind cap are defined in V4_ARCHITECTURE.md § "Cross-Cell Persistence & Operator XP"). Operator levels unlock cross-cell cosmetic skins, cell-specific perk slots, titles, animated emotes, and operator-specific Codex entries. The runtime bounds and reward milestones are mirrored in DA_ProgressionModel.
• Account XP: a separate track from 1 to 1000 that levels regardless of operator choice and drives battle-pass tier progression, calling cards, and account-wide cosmetics. Account XP syncs through cross-progression and clamps at level 1000.
• Codex: an in-game encyclopedia with an unlockable entry for every weapon, gadget, operator, map, faction, civ, ruleset, and vehicle. Entries unlock through play (using the item, completing the map) and each carries lore text, an asset gallery, and design-process commentary. The Codex also hosts the cross-cell narrative timeline and the NPC schedule registry. DA_CodexEntryLibrary defines source coverage and authored sample entries, while WBP_CodexShell is the launch shell for locked/unlocked entry browsing.

Per-Account Vault, Lifetime Replay Archive, Ghost Data Archive#

• Per-account vault: lifetime storage for replays a player has starred, up to 500 per account. A starred replay survives the 14-day default retention sweep. Un-starring it returns it to normal expiry and the account-scoped vault listing keeps the remaining starred replays ordered by the time they were archived. The hard launch quota is up to 500 per account.
• Ghost data archive: the fastest verified speedrun runs are stored as ghosts that other players can load and race against in-game. Ghosts are sourced from verified speedrun submissions with server replay validation, replay SHA-256, input-stream hash, and checkpoint-state hashes. An out-paced ghost record is superseded but retained so the archive keeps the lineage.

Platforms and Operations#

Display Tech, Performance, Platforms, Cert#

• PC reference target: 1440p / 60 fps on RTX 4070 + i7-13700K. Ultra preset: 4K / 60 fps on RTX 4090 + i9-14900K.
• PS5 / Xbox Series X reference target: 4K (dynamic) / 60 fps in Performance mode; 4K / 30 fps in Quality mode with full Lumen.
• PS5 Pro reference target: 4K / 60 fps in Quality mode with full Lumen and PSSR upscaling.
• Xbox Series S reference target: 1080p (dynamic) / 60 fps; reduced Lumen settings.
• Switch 2 reference target: Scaled content (no Warzone, no 100-player BR; tactical PvP capped at 8v8 — Switch 2 builds strip V4Mode_Tactical_CoDWarzone and V4Mode_Tactical_R6Modern for memory); 1080p docked / 30 fps with FSR upscaling.
• macOS / iPad reference target: Apple Silicon M2+; 1440p / 60 fps; MetalFX upscaling.
• Steam Deck / Linux: Proton-verified, 800p / 60 fps Performance preset.
• Cert: PS5/PS5 Pro Sony TRC, Xbox Series Microsoft XR, Switch 2 Nintendo Lotcheck, Steam Deck Verified, PC GeForce / Radeon driver whitelist.

Asset Budget and Streaming#

• Install size budget: ≤ 110 GB on PC at Day-1, ≤ 95 GB on consoles. The cook validation fails the build if a platform exceeds its budget.
• Separable content: VO language packs are streamable post-install rather than bundled, and per-cell content packs are independently installable so a storage-constrained player can install, for example, only the cells they play. The base install always includes the front-end and at least one cell.
• Virtual Texture Streaming: enabled on all World Partition sandbox maps to keep texture memory bounded as cells stream in and out.
• Streaming target: the streaming pipeline targets ~1.5 GB/s of compressed read on PS5-class SSDs; World Partition streams a 3×3 cell ring around the player with HLOD for cells beyond.
• Nanite policy: hero props, hero environment assets, and statuary use Nanite; gameplay-critical destructible meshes (R6 breachable walls, cover) use traditional LODs so Chaos destruction and collision stay predictable.

Day-One Patch, Hotfix, Quick-Resume, Crash Recovery, DRM#

• Day-one patch: capped at ≤ 6 GB. It carries the launch anti-cheat update and the balance pass derived from closed-beta telemetry; content is in the base install, not the patch.
• Hotfix system: balance numbers and mission tuning live in data tables that the patch-service can push live, globally, within 30 minutes of approval, with no binary update or client redownload.
• Quick-Resume: Xbox Series Quick-Resume is tested across all six launch cells; on resume the client revalidates its session token, and RTS matches resume paused so a suspended-then-resumed strategy game does not lose state to a stale simulation.
• Crash recovery: PvE saves auto-snapshot every 60 seconds; after a crash the client detects the unclean shutdown on next launch and offers to reload the latest snapshot. Crash reports route to Sentry for dedup.
• DRM: Steam DRM, EOS DRM, and per-platform store DRM only. No third-party DRM such as Denuvo — an explicit decision driven by community trust and performance, recorded as a design commitment.

Engineering Polish#

• PSO pre-cache: pipeline-state-object pre-caching runs on first launch and after every patch install, so the shader set for a session is compiled ahead of gameplay and hitching from first-use compiles is avoided.
• PSO delta report: every patch maintains a PSO delta report backed by shader-stall capture; any missing required PSO entry fails the build.
• Shader pre-warm: remaining shader permutations pre-warm in the background while the player sits on an idle main menu, using otherwise-spare cycles. Shader-warm coverage telemetry reports idle-warm hits divided by shipping shader permutations and holds PS5 / XSX at 98% or better.
• Asset pre-load: selecting a mission begins pre-loading that mission's asset set during the briefing screen, cutting the subsequent load time by roughly 25%. Per-cell mission-select pre-load profiles feed adaptive pre-load prioritization from the AI Director mission-intent model.
• Cold-load budget: PS5 and XSX cold-load p95 must stay at or below 9 s, XSS at 14 s, Switch 2 at 22 s, and Steam Deck at 12 s through the performance budget-regression CI gate.

Split-Screen, Couch Co-op, Local Multiplayer, Hot-Seat#

• Split-screen: all consoles support 2-player split (Tactical Co-op, Wukong, Contra) and 4-player split (RTS team, Spec Ops). Split-screen HUDs are laid out per viewport count; the renderer drops to a lower dynamic-resolution band under split to hold the frame budget. UV4LocalMultiplayerPolicyLibrary and DA_LocalMultiplayerManifest own the launch policy matrix.
• Couch co-op: local 2-player Contra is a launch requirement, not optional, with screen-edge tethering between players and a launch validation gate in the Contra co-op model.
• Hot-seat: RTST modes support hot-seat play — one keyboard, players alternate at squad-command turns — for the slow-paced, pausable RTST loop. The shared turn-order builder assigns the active specialist to Keyboard.Primary exclusively for each turn.
• Local LAN: RTS Skirmish runs over LAN with no backend connection (see the Network Quality section); discovery is LAN broadcast, simulation remains the 25 Hz deterministic lockstep stream, and sessions stay playable offline.
• Profiles: each local player can sign in to their own account so split-screen progression and cosmetics apply per player, not per console.

VR and AR Support#

• Launch VR variants: three curated VR experiences — Splinter Cell VR (linear stealth missions), R6 VR (the training range only, for weapon handling), and a Wukong VR Boss Room (a single boss arena played in VR). Target headsets are PSVR2 and Quest 3; each VR variant has its own comfort options (vignetting, snap-turn).
• Extended VR variants: DA_XRExtendedVariants adds the Splinter Cell VR full campaign across all 10 stealth missions and the Wukong VR full boss roster across all 30 bosses with boss-scale comfort gates.
• AR variants: Vision Pro supports the Contra room overlay at launch and the post-launch Vision Pro Tactical Planning Table, a room-anchored Raven Shield planning surface for floor plans, breach stacks, waypoint queues, and Go-code review.
• Cross-buy: owning flat-screen V4 grants the VR and AR variants at no additional cost; progression is shared with the flat-screen account.

Hardware Peripherals#

• DualSense: per-weapon adaptive-trigger resistance (a heavy trigger pull for a high-caliber weapon, a two-stage pull for burst weapons) and haptic feedback cues on stance change, hit, and reload. §108 deep tuning is authored in V4/peripherals/hardware-peripherals-deep.json, mirrored by DA_HardwarePeripheralDeepProfiles, and expanded through DA_DualSenseWeaponTriggerCurves, which generates one trigger curve per weapon row and adds Stealth heartbeat, ARPG parry tick, and RTS distant-battle cell haptics.
• Xbox Series impulse triggers: cell-specific impulse-trigger patterns mirroring the DualSense feedback set; DA_XboxImpulseWeaponPatterns binds per-weapon impulse output to weapon-class data.
• PC gamepad presets: shipped button-mapping presets for Xbox, DualShock 4, DualSense, Switch Pro Controller, 8BitDo, Steam Controller, and Steam Deck, so any common pad works without manual remapping; remapping remains available.
• Flight stick / HOTAS: supported for the aerial vehicle setpieces (gunship, helicopter). IMC_HOTAS_HeloDoorGunner adds the tuned helo door-gunner profile.
• Racing wheel: wheel-and-pedal support for the ground-vehicle missions. DA_WheelCalibrationProfiles ships Logitech, Thrustmaster, Fanatec, and Moza calibration profiles, while WBP_ForceFeedbackCurveEditor exposes the force-feedback strength curve in settings.
• Adaptive controller and eye tracking: DA_AdaptiveControllerPresets supplies Xbox Adaptive Controller presets and the tactical single-stick variant. DA_EyeTrackingInputAssist wires Tobii / PS5 Pro camera-aim assist and gaze-based UI focus.

Per-Platform Store Features and Region-Aware Pricing#

• Achievements / trophies: integrated with each platform's achievement system — PSN trophies, Xbox achievements, Steam achievements, Nintendo achievements, Apple Game Center, Google Play Games — with a single shared achievement design mapped onto each platform's schema. The implementation is anchored by V4/store/platform-store-features.json and DA_PlatformStoreFeatures, including PSN Platinum, Xbox 1000 gamerscore, Steam, Nintendo, Apple Game Center, and Google Play Games mappings.
• Store integration: in-game purchases route through the store-service to the platform store of record, honoring per-platform currency and refund rules (hard currency is per-platform for this reason).
• Region-aware pricing: prices are set per region by purchasing-power parity rather than a flat currency conversion. The PPP-adjusted regional pricing table is published transparently at /store/pricing, including method, last-updated time, tax-display mode, and refund-policy link.

Trust, Safety, and Compliance#

Cross-Platform Social, Reporting, Bans, Appeals#

The moderation pipeline runs through moderation-service and is identical across platforms — a report and a sanction are not platform-specific.

• Report flow: a player reports another for cheating, abuse, AFK/leaving, or a slur. The report is queued with the last segment of gameplay recording automatically attached as evidence, so a moderator has context without the reporter assembling it.
• Report states: a report moves Submitted → Triaged → (Actioned | Dismissed); the reporter receives a notification that an outcome was reached, without the specific sanction (to limit retaliation and report-farming).
• Auto-mute / auto-warn: flagged speech — caught by on-device transcription plus a server-side classifier — can trigger an automatic mute or warning without waiting on a manual queue, for clear-cut cases.
• Ban tiers: escalating sanctions — Mute (24h / 7d / 30d), Match ban (1 / 7 / 30d), Cell ban (1 / 7 / 30d, restricting one ruleset), and Account ban (permanent). Repeat offenses escalate the tier; severity of the offense sets the entry point.
• Appeal portal: support.v4.game/appeal with case management. Every moderation action is logged with actor, target, reason, and evidence (a DSA statement-of-reasons requirement); an appeal is reviewed against that logged evidence by a different reviewer than the one who issued the action.

Parental Controls, Age Gating, Time-Played#

A parent-managed control surface attached to a minor's account, configured from the companion app or the web account portal.

• Age gating: account creation collects a birth date; an under-13 account cannot be created outside the COPPA-compliant family-link flow, and a verified under-13 account is routed to a separate restricted-experience build.
• Time-played caps: a parent sets a per-day play cap from a fixed set — 15 min, 30 min, 1h, 2h, 4h, or no cap. When the cap is reached the client gives a warning, then ends the session at a safe boundary (match end, not mid-match). A weekly play summary is available to the parent.
• Spend caps: a configurable monthly hard-currency spend ceiling for under-18 accounts; once reached, purchases are blocked until the next month.
• Communication defaults: voice chat and text chat are off by default for under-18 accounts and require explicit parental opt-in to enable.
• Purchase restrictions: under-18 accounts are limited to direct cosmetic purchases — V4 ships no random-roll or gambling-adjacent purchase mechanic in any region, for any account, so this is a tightening of an already loot-box-free store.

Anti-Cheat#

A layered system: a kernel-mode client, server-side validation, and behavioral analysis. No single layer is trusted alone.

• Kernel-mode client: Easy Anti-Cheat is the default kernel-mode client for ranked PvP and Warzone; BattlEye is used in regions where EAC is not certified. The kernel client gates matchmaking into competitive modes.
• Server-side validation: the dedicated server is authoritative for hit registration and rewinds opponents for lag compensation (clamped at 300 ms); it also sanity-checks that each shot's trace direction is plausible given the weapon pose, flagging impossible angles. Ladder and contract leaderboard entries are re-validated by replay analysis before posting.
• Behavioral detection: statistical models flag inhuman signatures — superhuman snap-aim, impossible recoil control, wallhack-shaped visibility patterns — and route the account for review rather than auto-banning.
• Trust score: each account carries a 0-100 trust score; low-trust accounts are matchmade together so suspected cheaters are pooled while a case is built.
• Ban evidence requirement: a permanent ban requires replay evidence plus telemetry evidence plus manual review — automated detection alone never issues a permanent ban. Ban tiers and the appeal portal are specified in the Cross-Platform Social, Reporting, Bans, Appeals section.

Accessibility#

• Subtitles with size, color, background opacity, speaker indicators.
• Colorblind modes (Protanopia, Deuteranopia, Tritanopia, monochrome) for all HUD, all minimaps, vision-cone overlays.
• Aim assist tunable (sticky aim, slowdown, lock-on; opt-out for competitive PvP).
• High-contrast mode for all HUDs.
• Audio cues for stealth — separate cue toggle for footsteps, alarm, body-found, NPC-investigating.
• One-handed control schemes — toggle for major actions.
• Cognitive-load options — auto-clear minimap clutter, simplified UI mode, slow-mo difficulty for ARPG.
• Difficulty toggles for ARPG that don't lock achievements (Wukong parry-window expansion, infinite stamina, infinite Will).

Localization, Voice-Over, Region Rating Variants#

• Full VO: 12 languages at launch — English, Latin American Spanish, European Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, French, Italian, German, Russian, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Traditional Chinese. All 12 delivered is a launch exit criterion. VO packs are streamable post-install so a player installs only their language.
• Subtitle-only: 14 further languages get UI and subtitle localization — Polish, Turkish, Arabic, Dutch, Czech, Hungarian, Vietnamese, Thai, Indonesian, Greek, Hebrew, Ukrainian, Romanian, Swedish.
• RTL and font coverage: Arabic and Hebrew get right-to-left UI mirroring; every supported script has font coverage validated by the asset linter, which fails the build on a missing localization key or glyph.
• Translation workflow: strings live in per-cell namespaces and string tables; translators work in a CAT tool (Crowdin or Smartling) against a per-language glossary and style guide so terminology is consistent within and across cells.
• Region rating variants: content variants built to satisfy regional ratings — Germany (gore reduction), Japan (mild gore reduction), Australia (certain weapon names changed where required), China (a PRC-compliant variant per the compliance plan). The variant is selected by storefront region; the rating-variant set passing is a launch exit criterion.

Telemetry, Analytics, Balance#

• Event schema: a typed event for every gameplay verb — match start/end, player move, fire, death, objective complete, ability use, plus per-mode events (RTS build, ARPG parry success) and monetization events. Every event carries a match id, an actor, and a timestamp so events join into a match reconstruction.
• Batched sender: the client buffers events in a 256 KB queue and flushes every 30 seconds or on buffer-full. If the network is down the queue persists to disk and retries on reconnect, so offline play is not lost from analytics.
• Ingest and store: telemetry-ingest writes batched events to ClickHouse; Grafana dashboards query it per cell, per region, and per mode — balance metrics, time-to-objective, kill/death ratios, ladder MMR distribution, build-order popularity. Balance dashboards drive automated outlier alerts.
• Public balance ledger: a weekly public publication of every unit, operator, and weapon change — what was buffed or nerfed and the telemetry that justified it — so the community can audit balance decisions rather than guess at them.

Compliance Deep Dive#

Privacy and platform-regulation obligations; all compliance gates green is a launch exit criterion.

• GDPR DSAR: a data-subject access request, filed at the DSAR portal (support.v4.game/dsar), is fulfilled within 30 days as an automated export of the account's data to a JSON archive.
• CCPA right-to-delete: a deletion request purges the account's personal data within 45 days; the request and its completion are logged.
• DSA (EU Digital Services Act): transparent moderation reporting, the appeal portal, and a statement-of-reasons logged for every moderation action so each sanction has a recorded, appealable justification.
• COPPA: verified under-13 accounts run a separate restricted-experience build with communication and social features disabled.
• Sub-processor registry: a public registry of data sub-processors at legal.v4.game/processors, kept current as contracts change, with per-region opt-in subscriber notices sent within 30 days of each material update.
• DPIA: a data protection impact assessment is maintained for each AI feature — auto-moderation, behavioral cheat detection, and AI-generated commentary — documenting what data the feature uses and why. DPIA summary cards are published at legal.v4.game/dpia and refreshed annually.
• Data residency: account data is hosted in-region — EU data in the EU, PRC data in the PRC, US data in the US — to satisfy per-region residency rules.
• Per-jurisdiction notes: legal.v4.game/privacy/regions publishes notes for EU, UK, US state notices, Brazil LGPD, Japan APPI, South Korea PIPA, India DPDP, and China PIPL.
• DPIA summary cards: the public summary-card registry links the AI commentary, behavior detection, and auto-mod DPIAs to their annual refresh dates and source documents.
• Per-region feature flags: compliance runtime resolves regional defaults; for example China defaults voice chat off, while CN, KR, and IN use cosmetic-only economy rules.
• Right-to-be-forgotten replay scrubber: replay deletion scrub removes a deleted account's pawn/account identifiers from cloud replays and keeps match playback visible with Skin.Anonymous.DeletedAccount.

Customer Support, Community Ambassadors, Hall of Fame#

• Customer support: 24/7 support in the 12 launch VO languages, reachable through a web ticket portal and an in-game help surface that can attach the player's recent session context to a ticket. Support staffing in 12 languages is a launch exit criterion. The support-service also hosts an FAQ search, Sophia-grounded in-game help answers with wiki / FAQ citations, Tier-2 escalation for technical, account, and billing issues, p50 / p95 SLA reporting by tier, the public refund policy at legal.v4.game/refunds, and regional support hours for NA, EU, JP, KR, CN, LATAM, ANZ.
• Community Ambassador program: a recognition and tooling program for top-tier volunteer moderators, educators, and content creators, giving them early information and elevated community tools in exchange for community stewardship.
• Hall of Fame: lifetime esports champions are enshrined permanently, each with a commemorative cosmetic banner displayed in the Battle Hub lobby world. The 2026.1 induction policy includes per-cell criteria such as TwoTournamentMajorWins, Grandmaster plus Major Top-4 RTS evidence, and post-launch ARPG world-first boss kills; a public community-veto process protects controversial inductions; LifetimeAchievement.CommunityOrganizer and LifetimeAchievement.Creator categories honor non-player contributors; and every inductee receives one-of-a-kind banner art commissioned for their permanent Battle Hub display.

Balance Operations#

How balance is governed and communicated, paired with the public balance ledger in the Telemetry, Analytics, Balance section. The canonical operations payload is V4/balance/balance-operations.json, surfaced publicly at /balance-ledger and mirrored to the internal balance operations workspace.

• Designer's Tier List: the design team maintains an internal tier list and publishes it openly as the "Designer's Tier List" — explicitly framed as one view, the designers', so it informs the community without dictating a consensus.
• Matchup chart: published winrate matrices — operator-vs-operator, faction-vs-faction, civ-vs-civ — derived from ladder telemetry, refreshed on the balance cadence.
• Public frame data: the ARPG cell's frame data — parry windows, dodge i-frames, attack startup / active / recovery — is published as public knowledge rather than left for the community to data-mine, consistent with the cell's learnable-by-design intent.
• Cadence: balance changes ship through the data-table hotfix channel, with a notable balance pass at the season mid-point (day 45); every change is recorded in the public balance ledger.

Narrative and Extras#

Per-Character Side Stories and Operator Briefings#

• Operator briefing dossier: every one of the 34 canonical shared operators has a 1500-word in-fiction backstory, sketch art, voice-actor and mocap-performer credits, a signature line, and theme-music attribution. The dossier unlocks alongside the operator and is the canonical prose source — the per-operator 12-page origin comic adapts and illustrates this same backstory rather than introducing separate canon.
• Side stories: a 6-mission narrative arc for each of the top 8 fan-favorite operators in the launch fan-favorite slate. A side story plays in its operator's home cell and is gated behind that operator reaching a modest level, so it reads as a reward for investment in the character.

Per-Operator Rivals, Relationship Matrix, Cross-Cell Timeline#

• Rivalry pairs: every operator is assigned 1-3 rivals across the roster. When two rivals are on opposing sides of a match they trigger a banter intro; the match end can play a short rivalry cinematic, and rivals carry exclusive voice lines aimed at each other.
• Rivalry runtime: DA_OperatorRivalries locks the 31 reciprocal matchup pairs derived from the 34-operator roster. DA_RivalryVoiceLineLibrary provides four exclusive VO ids per pair, while DA_RivalryPostMatchCinematics exposes the short post-match Sequencer cinematic ids used after rivalry wins.
• Relationship matrix: the full set of rivalries (and allegiances) is presented as a browsable relationship matrix in the Codex, so a player can see how the roster interconnects.
• Cross-cell timeline: one canonical timeline placing every campaign mission — across all cells — in chronological order relative to the others, viewable in the Codex. It makes the Shadow War's cross-cell structure legible: a Hitman assassination, a CoD battle, and an RTS invasion sit on one line.

Persistent World Economy, NPC Schedules, Crime Rate#

• Persistent world: Hitman sandbox maps carry limited persistent state between runs in Story mode — a killed story target stays dead, a disabled hazard stays disabled — so a player's mark on a map endures. Quick Mission resets the map to a clean state each run so it stays freely replayable.
• NPC schedule registry: the daily schedules of named sandbox NPCs are discoverable in the Codex once observed in-mission, turning schedule-learning into a collectible meta-layer for social-stealth players.
• Crime rate dashboard: a per-Hitman-map dashboard aggregates the whole community's kill counts over a season and renders them as a heat-map of the level, showing which rooms and methods the playerbase favors.
• Seasonal world economy: V4/stealth/hitman/persistent-world-economy.json extends the launch persistent-world manifest with cross-map seasonal kill-count rankings, a most-targeted NPC leaderboard, quarterly schedule rotation variants, and read-only wiki publication at /wiki/world-state and /api/public/wiki/world-state.
• Cross-cell leaks: authored world-state hooks such as WorldState.Hitman.MansionParty.TargetA.ToCoDBlackoutBranch let a Hitman assassination unlock a CoD campaign narrative branch before mission load, keeping the live seasonal state visible without making deterministic combat depend on live telemetry.
• Persistent world deep ripples: V4/world-state/persistent-world-economy-deep.json and V4/wiki/world-state-ripple.json add /wiki/world-state-ripple for Hitman-to-CoD objective changes, RTS-to-Wukong lore lifts, the 100k Hitman kills community news trigger, companion app event-state publication, and the Vanguard/Swarm faction-balance long arc.
• World Boss + Community Raid: world-boss-community-raid.json adds the seasonal Eclipse Leviathan world-boss raid through DA_WorldBossCommunityRaid, DT_WorldBossRaidEvent, and DT_CommunityRaidProgressEvent; async community damage and relic-recovery progress publish to /wiki/world-state-ripple, /api/public/wiki/world-state-ripple, and the companion world surface.

Director Commentary, ADR, Origin Comics, Cinematography Library#

• Director commentary: an optional commentary audio track over all major cinematics, unlocked when the relevant campaign is completed. With commentary on, the developers' track replaces or ducks the scene audio; it is purely additive bonus content.
• Post-launch commentary expansion: director-commentary-expansion.json adds MissionDesignerCommentaryTracks for every tactical-cell mission and Hitman sandbox, ComposerCommentaryInterviews for all eight composers, and MocapActorCommentaryReflections for the top-eight fan-favorite operators. Replay commentary is toggled in-game per mission replay; composer interviews unlock through Operator XP plus assigned-cell completion; mocap reflections appear inside the operator dossier.
• Experimental commentary formats: director-commentary-extended.json adds DeveloperStreamArchive quarterly Q&A streams in the Codex media archive, OperatorNilInterviews for all 34 launch operators in the dossier, and a one-off ComposerLivePerformanceBroadcast surfaced by BattleHubComposerLivePerformance in the Battle Hub concert stage.
• Karaoke Rhythm Mode: karaoke-rhythm-mode.json adds Yakuza-style karaoke through DA_KaraokeRhythmMode, three original stream-cleared rhythm charts in DT_KaraokeRhythmCharts, and KaraokeBeatMatchingStation for Battle Hub beat-matching in Lobby.BattleHub.Zone.Music.
• Arcade Mini-Game Suite: arcade-mini-game-suite.json adds two Battle Hub pinball machines plus air hockey, mini-golf, darts, pool, and cooking through DA_ArcadeMiniGameSuite, DT_ArcadeMiniGames, and BattleHubArcadeMiniGameSuite placements in Lobby.BattleHub.Zone.Arcade.
• ADR packs: alternate-dialogue-recording packs offered as DLC, swapping a cinematic's dialogue track for parody or community-remix purposes; the visuals are unchanged.
• Origin comics: a 12-page comic per operator, unlocked through Operator XP and read in an in-game viewer. The comic is an illustrated adaptation of that operator's 1500-word briefing dossier (see the Per-Character Side Stories section) — the same canon, not a separate one.
• Cinematography library: a set of replay-camera presets, each reproducing the camera language of one inspirational source (handheld combat-cam, RTS sweeping overhead, slow cinematic dolly), selectable in the replay viewer.

AI-Generated Commentary, Highlight Reel, Per-Match Analysis#

End-of-match generated content, built on the Calliope commentary stack from V1. These are AI features and are covered by a DPIA (see the Compliance Deep Dive).

• AI commentary: at match end the system synthesizes a short voiced highlight package with per-team analysis — naming the decisive plays and turning points — over an auto-cut clip reel.
• Highlight reel: the reel is auto-cut from the match replay by scoring moments (kills, objective captures, clutch saves) and stitching the top segments; the player can save or share it.
• Per-match analysis: a structured post-match breakdown that calls out specific mistakes and pairs them with a "what went well" segment, so the feedback is actionable rather than only a score screen.
• Live spectator commentary: live-ai-commentary-expansion.json adds a live in-match track to spectator broadcasts through DA_LiveAICommentaryBroadcast and UV4LiveAICommentaryBroadcastService. Each supported cell uses a two-host play-by-play plus color model with distinct Calliope personas: sober analytic tactical-FPS, RTS macro/micro economy and skirmish split, RTST theatre-of-mind narration, Wukong mythic narration, and Contra arcade-host hype.
• Multilingual and bias review: Calliope live output is configured for all 12 launch VO languages. BiasReview.AICommentary.Live reviews generated lines for player gender, region, and playstyle bias before broadcast and blocks unreviewed output.
• P3 commentary extensions: ai-generated-commentary-extended.json and DA_AIGeneratedCommentaryExtended add opt-in personal voice-clone commentary with player plus friend consent, revocation checks, watermarking, and provenance; 10-minute post-season AI podcast recaps per launch cell; and native-speaker localization nuance review for the 12 launch VO languages.
• Opt-out: AI-generated commentary and analysis can be disabled in settings for players who prefer a plain results screen.

Real-World Brand Partnerships, Celebrity Guests, Venue Tie-Ins#

• Brand partnerships: partnerships are curated and creatively motivated, never reactive paid placement — for example, a heritage firearms manufacturer collaborating on accurately rendered weapons for the tactical campaign. A partnership is treated as a content collaboration with a creative brief.
• Partnership-curation board: Year-1 paid collaborations pass through an internal board with creative-director veto, public policy at legal.v4.game/partnerships, Codex disclosure for material partnerships, and an off-limits brand list covering tobacco, gambling-adjacent, and politically aligned brands.
• Celebrity guests: limited-time playable celebrity operators, each with NIL (name/image/likeness) clearance, recorded voice-over, and a mocap performance. They are time-boxed guest content and do not become part of the permanent competitive roster.
• Venue tie-ins: licensed high-fidelity recreations of real-world venues in select maps, used only with full permission and a revenue-share agreement with the venue holder.
• Year-2 partnership stretch: brand-partnerships-extended.json adds an optional IP-cleared cross-IP guest operator, one annual real-world event tie-in with sponsor placement blocked, and a cause-led cosmetic that routes 100% of proceeds through the store ledger with public impact reporting.

Production: Studio Ops, Mocap, VO, Composer, Licensing, Stunt#

• Mocap: a booked mocap volume captures all principal performances — facial, full-body, and hand capture on stage — feeding the MetaHuman pipeline for principal characters.
• Voice-over: recorded in the 12 launch languages under full union contracts per region, with a per-language casting and direction pass.
• Composer roster: a per-cell theme composer so each cell has its own musical identity — orchestral for R6, bombastic action for CoD, orchestral-erhu fusion for Wukong, cinematic strings for RTST, modular cell music for RTS, synth-rock for Contra.
• Stunt coordinator: a stunt coordinator stages the mocap action sequences so combat and setpiece motion read as physically credible.
• Launch studio-ops baseline: V4/ops/studio/studio-ops-baseline.json binds the booked mocap window, 12-language VO waves, composer delivery cadence, and wellness policy into one launch-readiness artifact. No mandatory crunch is permitted; the baseline includes written overtime approval, comp-time, an anonymous reporting channel, a remote counselling stipend, confidential sessions, structured interview rubrics, pay-equity review, and quarterly sensitivity-scope refresh.
• Post-launch wellness operations: V4/ops/studio/post-launch-wellness-operations.json publishes the no-mandatory-crunch policy, schedules a quarterly crunch audit by an external reviewer, staffs an on-staff mental-health counsellor, keeps the remote counselling stipend active, refreshes sensitivity reading quarterly, publishes DEI hire/retention metrics with an annual external audit, and enforces an on-call rotation with mandatory comp time after on-call week.
• Sensitivity reading: a sensitivity-reading pass covers historical-civ representation (RTS Historical) and cultural representation (Wukong's mythic source, the Desperados Wild-West frontier, Commandos WW2 including German depictions, and Hitman's real-world-inspired locales).
• IP / NIL / Licensing: every reference to a real individual, brand, or location carries explicit clearance in the §81 register; placeholder names in this document remain non-shipping shorthand unless separately locked there.

Companion App, Public API, Wiki, Roadmap#

• Companion app: an iOS and Android app (apps/v4/companion/, React Native) carrying seven launch surfaces — loadout planner, contract briefing, replay viewer, news, friends, store, and push notifications. A player can plan a loadout or brief a Hitman contract away from the console; changes sync to the account. Push opt-in is per channel: patch notes, esports, friend online, sale, and contract refreshed. Year-2 scope adds an AR replay viewer that projects the Upper Final R3 tactical-FPS sequence onto a detected flat surface on iOS and Android.
• Public API: a rate-limited, OAuth-authenticated public API exposing match history, replay download, the balance ledger, and the esports calendar, so community sites and tools can build on V4 data. The public content network defines a free 60 req/min tier, a creator 600 req/min tier, an OAuth app registration portal at /developers/oauth-apps, and a GraphQL endpoint at /api/public/graphql; REST v1 routes remain as compatibility shims for one major version.
• Wiki: a community-editable wiki at wiki.v4.game with anti-vandalism controls (revision history, rollback, edit moderation), top-100 high-traffic page protection, and a community-moderator role with rollback authority. Sophia-grounded per-page summaries are cited, disabled by default, and only returned after x-v4-ai-summary-opt-in: true.
• Roadmap: a public roadmap, served by roadmap-service, showing content as delivered, in-flight, or planned, refreshed weekly as the target cadence (the cadence demonstrably lapsed for two cycles in 2026-05/06 — documented in V4/roadmap/public-roadmap.json cadenceLapses — so the weekly refresh is a commitment with a lapse-recording mechanism, not an unconditional guarantee); Season 1 and Season 2 content being visible on it is a launch exit criterion. Planned items without scheduled windows accept account-bound upvotes, and one verified quarterly community pick is promoted to in-flight. JIRA and Linear delivery state now feeds automatic in-flight to delivered projections once linked work is done and the release gate is green.
• Cross-surface SSO: the companion app, wiki, roadmap, spectator portal, and OAuth app portal share one v4-account login with per-surface idle and absolute timeout policies captured in V4/content-network/cross-surface-content-network.json.
• Final polish and sunset: V4/release/final-polish-readiness.json reviews every P3 stretch section, closes deferred polish with zero open items, and defines the year-5 service sunset plan from 2026-10-01 to 2031-10-01. The plan preserves offline mode, account/replay export windows, platform-compliant entitlements, privacy deletion SLAs, post-shutdown support, and public archive snapshots.

Loading, Splash, Tips, What's New, Notifications#

• Loading screens: per-cell loading art with a curated, rotating tip set scoped to the cell being loaded, so tips are relevant to what the player is about to do. DA_LoadingScreenLibrary ships six cell screens and localized, weighted tips with a no-repeat window.
• Splash: a renderer-budget-aware video splash whose Low / Mid / High Bink variants are selected from platform, GPU class, video memory, HDR, and thermal state so it does not stall a low-end boot.
• What's New: a first-launch-after-patch modal shown after a patch, summarizing the patch's content and balance changes; it persists the seen patch version and does not reappear that patch.
• Notifications: in-game toast notifications for events (friend online, contract complete, season ending) and push notifications on the companion app, both honoring the account's communication preferences. The companion push templates provide concise deeplinked examples for each opt-in channel.

Launch#

Launch Readiness#

• Closed Alpha at launch-day-minus-12-months: 5000 players, NDA.
• Closed Beta at launch-day-minus-6-months: 50k players, NDA.
• Open Beta at launch-day-minus-2-months: open enrollment, no NDA.
• Soak test at launch-day-minus-7-days: 200k players, EU+NA, full matchmaking, cell-rotation across all six launch cells.
• Day-1 patch ≤ 6 GB.
• Watchtower team for the first 30 days: 24/7 in-engine support, hot-fix turnaround ≤ 60 minutes for ranked-blocking bugs.

V4 Exit Criteria#

The conditions for V4 to be considered "launched":

• All six launch cells deliver their feel tests green on the merge commit.
• No 'coming soon' screens anywhere in the shipping client.
• All 12 VO languages delivered.
• Day-one cert passed on all 9 platforms (Win, PS5, PS5 Pro, Xbox Series X|S, Switch 2, macOS Apple Silicon, Linux Steam Deck Verified, iPad Pro, Android tablet).
• All advertised modes available on all advertised platforms with no platform-exclusive content beyond cosmetic.
• Crash dedup dashboard shows < 0.1% crash rate over Open Beta.
• Matchmaking p99 ≤ 35 s under 5× expected launch concurrency in staging.
• Anti-cheat live with a verified ban roster.
• Customer support staffed in 12 languages, 24/7.
• Public roadmap published with Season 1 + Season 2 content visible.
• All compliance gates green: GDPR, CCPA, COPPA, DSA, region-rating variants, sub-processor registry, DPIAs.
• Esports calendar published for first 12 months.
• Workshop / mod platform live with launch-day creator partnership.