NIGHTCELL 7: FALSE DAWN

Two operatives. Two countries. One manufactured war. Play both sides before the truth disappears.

A premium episodic first-person shooter that launches from a browser, installs as a desktop PWA, ships as Electron packages for Windows/macOS/Linux, and includes a free server-authoritative multiplayer alpha.

• Free: launcher, benchmark, training, a 10–15 minute demo from each side, and the 6v6 Multiplayer Alpha.
• Paid: $9.99 per theater episode — both campaigns, the Complete Truth epilogue, every supported platform, no subscription and no microtransactions.

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Gameplay

The public demo at nightcell7.com/play: Team Deathmatch in Ardavan Yard against Directorate bots, with a Nightcell squad alongside you. Health packs, weapon drops off your kills, a status bar, and three difficulty tiers (Easy is the default).

Trailer: docs/trailer/nightcell7-trailer.mp4, 26 seconds, 1280x720, H.264 High / AAC in an MP4 with faststart, so it plays in every browser and on phones. Rendered by tools/art/trailer.mjs, which steps the game on a virtual clock so each frame is exactly 1/30 s of play whatever the render speed, then encodes with ffmpeg under the game's own ambience and a track from its soundtrack. docs/trailer/manifest.json carries the commit.

Every frame is reproducible: tools/art/capture-gameplay.mjs deploys into the built game, plays a scripted sequence, and writes docs/screenshots/manifest.json with the commit it was captured from. That script is the provenance CLAUDE.md requires for a public asset.

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One repository, one origin, one deployment target

This is a single mandatory monorepo (PRD §17.2). The marketing site, game, PWA, desktop wrapper, APIs, multiplayer services, workers, gateway and infrastructure all live here and change atomically. Separate repositories, git submodules and copied cross-repo build artifacts are prohibited.

Every deployable application service runs on Railway, behind one public origin:

https://nightcell7.com/                          -> site
https://nightcell7.com/play/                     -> game (Babylon + PWA)
https://nightcell7.com/api/v1/*                  -> api
wss://nightcell7.com/api/v1/multiplayer/sync/... -> multiplayer

Clients never see an internal Railway hostname.

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Layout

apps/
  site/         Next.js App Router — marketing, account, library, store
  game/         Babylon.js + Vite — browser game and PWA
  desktop/      Electron wrapper around the same web build
services/
  gateway/      Public path router + WebSocket upgrade proxy (owns the domain)
  api/          Auth, catalog, CoinPay, entitlements, multiplayer tickets
  multiplayer/  Colyseus matchmaker + authoritative rooms
  worker/       BullMQ: payment fulfilment, match results, email
  cron/         Short-lived reconciliation and cleanup commands
packages/
  game-core/            Weapons, damage, difficulty, campaign, match rules
  multiplayer-protocol/ Messages, Colyseus schemas, version handshake, tickets
  multiplayer-sim/      Server-safe movement, hitscan, simulation, bots
  entitlements/         Order state machine, catalog pricing, entitlement rules
  coinpay/              CoinPayPortal client and webhook verification
  database/             Drizzle schema + Postgres client
  auth/ save-data/ content-schema/ observability/ ui/
infra/
  railway/      Service matrix, env contract, deployment runbook
  gateway/      Caddyfile alternative to the TypeScript proxy
  docker/       Service Dockerfiles
  local/        Docker Compose for Redis
tools/
  multiplayer-loadtest/ Simulation load and soak gate
  release/              Local dev orchestrator
docs/           Architecture, multiplayer, CoinPay, PRD traceability

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Getting started

bun install
cp .env.example .env        # fill in secrets; services refuse to boot without them
bun run dev:deps            # Redis via Docker Compose
bun run dev                # every service, behind the gateway on :8080

Local URLs mirror production paths through the gateway, so WebSocket upgrades, cookies, CORS and route precedence are all exercised before you deploy:

http://localhost:8080/                   marketing site
http://localhost:8080/play               game
http://localhost:8080/api/v1/catalog     api
ws://localhost:8080/api/v1/multiplayer/sync/{region}/{shard}/{roomId}

Commands

Command	What it does
bun run check	format + lint + typecheck + test — run this before pushing
bun run test	one Vitest run across every workspace
bun run build	packages, then services, then apps
bun run typecheck	strict TypeScript across all workspaces
bun run loadtest	simulation load + soak gate (PRD §34.3)
bun run db:generate / db:migrate	Drizzle migrations

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The three rules worth knowing before you write code

1. The server decides multiplayer truth. The client sends input intent — movement axes, view angles, a button bitfield. It never sends a position, a hit, an ammo count or a score. packages/multiplayer-sim runs the same movement code on both sides, so client prediction agrees with the server; when it does not, the server wins. There is a test that asserts exactly this (apps/game/src/net/prediction.test.ts).

2. Only a verified webhook unlocks content. The browser return URL from CoinPay shows pending and nothing more. An order reaching paid still unlocks nothing — fulfilment is a separate, retryable state. The provider event id carries a unique constraint, so a replayed webhook is a no-op rather than a second grant.

3. Neither side is the villain. The American route is not "good mode" and the Iranian route is not "enemy mode". Both protagonists have a defensible mission, incomplete intelligence and reason to distrust the other. All facilities, units and operations are fictional, and Farsi content stays pending until native review.

Full rules for contributors and agents: CLAUDE.md.

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Status

Implemented and tested:

• Shared gameplay rules, weapons, damage/armour, difficulty, campaign structure
• Authoritative simulation: movement, collision, hitscan with bounded lag compensation, spawn scoring, TDM scoring, respawn, reconnect seats, bots
• Multiplayer protocol: versioned handshake, input sanitisation, Colyseus room state, one-time signed tickets, signed match results
• Client prediction, reconciliation and remote interpolation
• Gateway route precedence and header sanitisation
• API surface from PRD §29, including ticket minting and the CoinPay webhook
• Order state machine, catalog pricing authority, entitlement grant/revoke
• Colyseus room, worker fulfilment, cron reconciliation
• Railway topology, Dockerfiles, CI and release workflows

Not yet built (tracked against the PRD milestones):

• Mission content, art, audio and the asset/Blender pipeline
• R2 manifest signing and offline licence issuance
• Better Auth wiring for registration/verification/reset
• The remaining marketing routes and final art direction
• Network-level (real WebSocket client) load testing against a deployed shard

See docs/prd.md for section-by-section traceability.

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Legal and ethical gates

The following are mandatory before public launch and none of them are satisfied yet: title and domain clearance, trademark review, CoinPay production approval, digital tax review, cultural and Farsi review, asset-license provenance audit, multiplayer load certification, and Railway production readiness.

NIGHTCELL 7 is a fictional work set in an invented near-future crisis. Its organizations, facilities, operations, and characters are fictional. The game does not depict or endorse any real government, military operation, political movement, or current event.