WorldCreator

🤖 A Fable 5 experiment. One of a handful of silly side projects I had Fable 5 build before the model was banned. I wanted to see how good Fable really was at game design — so I handed it a concept (a multi-world 3D engine) and let it run. It's a fun prototype, not a finished product; if Fable ever comes back, or I find the free time, I may pick it up and finish it.

A browser-based collection of small, fully procedural 3D worlds built on one shared Three.js + TypeScript engine. No external assets — every mesh, texture, and poster is generated in code.

Run it

pnpm install
pnpm dev        # http://localhost:5173

Other commands: pnpm test (vitest, 78 tests), pnpm typecheck, pnpm build.

The worlds

World	What it is
Hollowmere	Whimsical fairytale action-RPG village. Six villagers form opinions only from what they personally see — and what they hear: witnessed deeds spread NPC-to-NPC as gossip with decaying weight. One quest with a real moral fork (keep your promise to the herbalist, or sell her glowmoss behind her back — she'll hear about it). Melee/bow/magic combat with a style-weaving flow bonus, two enemy species in the north woods, kickable chickens (witnessed, remembered), day/night cycle, save/load.
Neon Night Market	Rainy cyberpunk street canyon. Neon canvas-texture signage, noodle-stall steam, credit chips, three hackable terminals watched by a patrol drone (hack in its vision cone and it fines you), and a backroom that unlocks when all three fall.
Windward Isle	Sunny exploration island with trimesh-collider terrain, an animated ocean, leaning palms, ruins, two treasure chests, three lost relics, and a hilltop shrine that wakes when you return them.

Controls

WASD move · mouse look (click canvas for pointer lock) · Space jump · E interact/talk · left-click melee · right-click bow · Q magic bolt · F mischief (Hollowmere) · K save (Hollowmere)

Architecture

src/
  engine/      # world-agnostic: never imports from worlds/
    core/      # fixed-step loop, game clock, seeded RNG, world interface
    render/    # ACES renderer, golden-hour day/night rig, particle bursts
    input/     # action mapping (pure) + DOM adapter
    physics/   # Rapier wrapper: colliders, character primitives, LOS rays
    character/ # kinematic controller + third-person camera (pure pose math)
    npc/       # the reputation spine: events, minds, perception, gossip
    combat/    # health/i-frames, weaving state machine, enemy FSM, projectiles
    procgen/   # canvas textures, cottages, trees, chickens, humanoids
    quest/ save/ ui/
  hub/         # world-select SPA: procedural poster cards, lazy import()
  worlds/      # content only — each world consumes the engine API
    hollowmere/ nightmarket/ windward/

The reputation system (engine/npc/) is the architectural centerpiece: pure TypeScript with zero Three.js imports. Gameplay emits WorldEvents; a perception pass computes witnesses (range + facing + physics line-of-sight); each NPC's NpcMind updates only from what it witnessed or heard; gossip exchanges memories at 0.6× weight per retelling until stories dilute away. Dialogue, greetings, and quest reactions are read-only consumers.

Worlds are lazy-loaded modules returning a WorldHandle for disposal — the hub swaps them in and out of one page.

Engineering notes

• Deterministic generation: every world builds from a seed (Rng, mulberry32); no ambient randomness in generation code.
• Headless-tested systems: clock, loop accumulator, input map, physics, character controller (walks, jumps, wall-blocked — real Rapier in vitest), camera math, opinions, perception, gossip decay, schedules, combat state machines, drone FSM, island heightfield, save round-trips.
• Files stay under 300 lines; engine never imports world code.
• E2E verified via dev hooks (?dev=1 exposes __wc* test handles): full quest playthrough, witnessed-vs-unseen mischief, gossip spread with exact decay values, save/reload, market hack loop, island relic-shrine loop.