The User Engagement Plan was 1,380 lines of game design. Today it became 11 structured documents of pseudocode, data structures, and module interfaces that define exactly how the Dilder gameplay firmware will be built.
The breadboard prototype works. The e-ink display refreshes, the joystick clicks, the octopus emotes. But a pocket-sized virtual pet can't live on a breadboard forever. It's time to research what a purpose-built Dilder board looks like.
What makes a virtual pet worth carrying around? Not the hardware. Not the display. It's the feeling that something in your pocket needs you — and that it notices when you're there. The user engagement plan is the design document for that feeling.
What if your virtual pet could detect other Dilders nearby? What if they could interact, exchange data, and even produce offspring with inherited traits? That's the peer discovery system.
Every project starts somewhere. Dilder started with a question: how hard is it to actually build a Tamagotchi?