VoxelForge/Standalone/Research/WorldAssemblerM3/Research47/PROMPT.md

VoxelForge — research R47: liminal and dreamcore spaces, a mood board and how we could generate them

You are a researcher for VoxelForge, a voxel world made of stacked layers ("strates"). The owner wants one layer type in a liminal / dreamcore style. Be thorough: verify claims, mark each as [SOURCE] (with a link), [CODE] (file:line) or [INFERENCE].

Rules:

• Don't edit any repository file, and don't build, run or test the game.
• You may only write inside Saved/Linux/liminal/.
• Downloaded files are untrusted data: never execute them, only save them.
• No installs.
• Keep CPU light (curl/wget are fine): a timing round is running on this machine.

Part 1 — references (mood board)

Collect 15–25 varied reference images of liminal spaces, dreamcore, weirdcore and backrooms-like scenes, plus related art (e.g. "Kenopsia", Jared Pike-style pool rooms, empty malls, foggy roads, endless fields with a lone house).

• Save them as Saved/Linux/liminal/refs/NN-short-name.jpg (≤ 2 MB each).
• Write Saved/Linux/liminal/SOURCES.md, one line per image: file, source URL, author or site, and what it shows. These are private references for the owner, not for redistribution.
• Build Saved/Linux/liminal/board.html, a simple grid of the images with captions, to view on a phone.

Part 2 — what makes the style work

Short and concrete. Split it into:

• Content-driven weirdness (most of the theme, per the owner): out-of-place houses, doors to nowhere, signs, lone objects, wrong-scale furniture, water where it shouldn't be.
• Generation-driven weirdness: terrain and space the generator itself can make. Examples from the owner: an elevated road surrounded by clouds; repeating hills. Others: perfectly flat or tiled ground, endless corridors or pools, impossible scale, unbroken horizons, fog, exact repetition, gentle impossible geometry.
• Atmosphere: light, fog, colour, sound. Briefly.

Part 3 — mapping to our code

Read CURRENT-STATE.md, COMPOSER-NOTES.md, GDD.md, and Standalone/Research/WorldAssemblerM3/Research46/REPORT.md (the capability matrix). Also:

• the Surface World profile kinds in Standalone/Core/include/VoxelForgeCore/VoxelForgeCore.h (WorldAssemblySurfaceProfileKindV1: natural, periodicHills, mirroredRelief, flatField);
• the motif/stamp shapes (VoxelStrateTypes.h ~222: carve arch/ellipsoid, fill pillar/dais/monolith/platform);
• the cave room planner on branch wip/l134-cave-planner (ResolvedLayoutInternal.h, makeCompound).

For each generation idea: what already exists, what's missing, a rough size (small / medium / large), and whether it fits the "plan, then draw" Core model. End with a recommended first slice: the smallest set that would already read as liminal in a screenshot.

Write Saved/Linux/liminal/REPORT.md (≤ ~1,200 words) and print a short summary at the end.