Godot could draw The Long Wake’s command interface, but I was unhappy with how much effort it took to make the dense panels readable. A web UI seemed to offer faster layout work. The assistant helped move the presentation toward Svelte and Vite, and a stage with nine drill-down terminals was visually checked. There were real interactions to learn from.
The problems did not end with that working slice. Vite failed to start at one point, more patch work followed, and the layouts still did not feel right. I eventually said to abandon the web interface, revert before that experiment, and return to a more traditional Godot desktop workstation. The web detour belongs in the history because it clarified what I needed from the screen; it was not the project’s final implementation direction.
The proposed split used Svelte and TypeScript for the interface, HTML/CSS for panels, SVG for the ship schematic, and a separate effects layer. The important architecture question was where the simulation belonged. The answer kept authoritative state and yearly resolution outside the components:
GameState → view models → interface → command draft
→ validation → yearly resolution → new state, trace, and reportA button could edit a draft allocation; it should not directly subtract reactor strain or change the simulation’s resources.
The web experiment had real progress and real friction. One startup failed with vite: not found. Another machine had an unsupported old Node version. Later, I visually checked all nine drill-down terminals and reported that they functioned, while noting general layout problems.
Those layout problems did not settle down. Several refinements were rejected or reverted. I asked for explicit checks that containers did not overlap, and a geometry-validator patch became part of the work. Passing a build or geometry check still did not mean the screen matched the visual result I wanted.
Eventually I changed direction again: abandon the web UI and return to a traditional desktop-window setup. I asked to branch from before the web experiment rather than continue repairing its layout.
The new target was a Godot Control-based workstation: menu and status bars, navigation on the left, a central workspace, a persistent inspector, and an event log. Forecast Desk, Ship Schematic, Continuity Lattice, Cohort Ledger, Guild Monitor, and Year-End Report became navigation destinations. The Deck Inspector stayed in the right-hand pane.
The final selected messages describe a workspace-navigation patch, followed by my report that it was committed and passed. That patch switched placeholders; it did not yet add real subsystem panels, command drafting, or yearly resolution controls.
The web version helped me test several drill-down interactions, but I eventually chose to leave it. The next recorded direction was a Godot Control workstation with clearer navigation, while the simulation kept its own authority over yearly state.