World at Ruin

A source-available, cloud-native MMORPG built almost entirely by AI agents — authored as code, built headlessly, and grown in public over years. This is the newest product of devantler-tech, a first-class member of the portfolio, and every visible change lands in the in-game dev log so progress can be watched by playing.

The fiction: a far-future world laid waste by a mystical disaster, now at rebirth. You wake in a cave with nothing but ragged clothes and bare hands, fight your way to the surface, and step into a barren world coming back to life — wasteland beside lush zones, new lifeforms and monsters, humanoids and aliens, iron swords beside laser blades. Medieval-futuristic, and the medieval feel wins.

Status: pre-alpha — "Ashfall Reach". You wake in the starter cave, shape your character (body, face, equipment, skin — all persisted forward-only per the product law), and step out into a procedurally generated ruin field: the Wardens' shrine, a seeded settlement, and drifters in the open land. No combat, no networking yet — those arrive issue by issue via the roadmap; the in-game dev log (L) is the precise changelog.

Want to see it without installing anything? Phase 0 — the taste gate has frames of the character and the cave, rendered from the running game.

Play it

macOS only for now — one universal build covers Apple Silicon and Intel, and needs macOS 11 or newer. Windows and Linux builds aren't exported yet.

Homebrew is the easiest way in, and the only one that keeps you on the newest build:

brew tap devantler-tech/tap
brew trust --cask devantler-tech/tap/world-at-ruin
brew install --cask world-at-ruin

From then on brew upgrade --cask world-at-ruin pulls each new release. (brew trust matters only if your Homebrew is set to require trusting third-party taps — running it either way is harmless. It's scoped to this one cask on purpose: trusting the whole tap would also cover everything else it ships, now and in future.)

Manual GitHub Release downloads are not currently supported. The build is ad-hoc signed rather than notarized, so macOS will quarantine it; do not clear that quarantine yourself on an unverified download. Use the Homebrew cask above: it verifies the pinned release checksum, then removes quarantine for those verified bytes. Or run the game from source below.

Or run it from source — requires Godot 4.7+ (macOS: brew install --cask godot):

git clone https://github.com/devantler-tech/world-at-ruin.git
cd world-at-ruin
godot client   # or: /Applications/Godot.app/Contents/MacOS/Godot client

To build your own .app instead, export with the macOS preset in client/export_presets.cfg (needs the 4.7.1 export templates installed in the Godot editor).

Controls: WASD move · Shift sprint · Space jump · E interact · mouse look · C reshape character · L/F1 dev log · Esc release mouse.

Watch the world grow: press L in-game. Every player-visible change is a dev-log entry, newest first — replaying after each build shows exactly what the agents grew.

Ragged-cloth material preview: launch from source with WAR_RAGGED_CLOTH_DETAIL=1 godot --path client, or prefix the installed app's executable with the same environment setting. In the creator, leave the wardrobe bare to inspect the immutable base cloth. This opt-in previews woven fibres, worn sewing, broad gathered folds and rounded folded-edge lighting. The angular cut, thick waist silhouette, fraying and cloth motion remain unfinished. Before/after frames and fold-only controls show the current gap. Ordinary launches keep the shipped material and all saved characters retain their existing equipment and shapes.

Ragged-wrap geometry preview: independently opt into WAR_RAGGED_CLOTH_DRAPE=1 for static outward folds and a softer hanging outline. The hanging panels join the fixed waist gradually. Combine it with the material setting above to inspect both. Ordinary launches keep the shipped mesh. Front, rear, profile and gameplay comparisons show the remaining rigid-panel and waist-band gaps. The rear coverage repair closes the preview's small body opening below the belt. This is an unfinished preview, with a separate accept-or-retire decision due 2026-11-01.

Private server trial: the owner can observe the developing server through the verified localhost tunnel. It shows scripted replicas with a separate temporary character; shared controls and online progression remain in development.

Allocator safety work: the inactive fence reference has a runnable TLS allocation proof for requests that outlive their deadline. Production handoff still retains uncertain allocations until the real allocator can prove that they cannot commit later. The disabled recovery-owner experiment reserves a complete acknowledged drain for one fresh process. Lost replies and dead owners remain quarantined; this reservation does not yet recover barriers or release uncertain allocations.

What this is (and isn't)

• Everything is text-authored — scenes, world generation, materials, and characters are code, built headlessly in CI. If an agent can't author it in a diff, it doesn't get built.
• No resets, no silent loss — the design forbids wipes, seasons, and stat squishes. An early character keeps playing as the world evolves: the game can be migrated, but only without breaking your character, or through a deprecation that tells you first what is changing or going away. Unfinished features are opt-in. The CI guards for this exist before the first player does.
• Source-available, not open source — see LICENSE.md. Reading is welcome; copying and redistribution are not permitted. Playing a distributed build is governed by the EULA, and contributing requires signing the CLA (copyright assignment) — the CLA check on your first pull request explains how to sign.

The full settled design — engine choice, art pipeline, server architecture, economy laws, and combat design — lives in AGENTS.md.