From prototype to maintainable foundations
Early prototypes are meant to change. They help answer immediate questions about movement, attacks and spells, but the connections between them can become difficult to reason about once more systems depend on the same state. Auralis is now moving the stable parts of that prototype into a clearer foundation, with explicit rules for when the Wizard can act, what happens when an action resolves and how the rest of the game is notified.
This is not a claim that the complete combat system or a vertical slice is finished. It is the less visible work that makes continued iteration safer: separating responsibilities, reducing duplicated logic and making failures easier to reproduce before more encounters and content are built on top.
A deliberate split between code and content
Stable, shared gameplay rules now live in C++. Health and Mana changes, action locks, cooldown timing, progression awards and other rules that need one consistent answer can be tested without depending on a particular animation or effect. That gives the project a dependable centre without turning every creative decision into a code change.
Blueprints and Data Assets still own the parts that benefit from fast visual iteration: animation, effects, audio, content setup and tuning. The goal is not to replace Blueprints. It is to give them well-defined systems to present and configure, so a cast animation, sound cue or balance value can change without rewriting the rule that decides whether the spell may be cast.
What the Wizard foundation covers
The shared Wizard foundation now handles movement, sprinting, jumping and camera input. It also provides Health and Mana, including damage, healing, death and game-over handling. Melee attacks use combo state and action locks so their steps can advance deliberately without allowing incompatible actions to overlap.
Spellcasting applies Mana costs, cast locks and independent cooldowns for each spell. Projectile impacts use a single-resolution path, preventing one collision from applying the same result more than once. Together, those rules provide predictable boundaries for tuning timing and feedback while combat remains in development.
The same foundation now tracks XP, numbered Levels and Skill Points. Animation state connects locomotion, casting, healing and death to the shared gameplay state, giving animation Blueprints a consistent picture of what the Wizard is doing instead of asking each animation path to infer it separately.
Progression that remains open to tuning
Level-ups award Skill Points and add 20 to maximum Health. Memory Shards provide bonus Skill Points, while Skill Points are used to unlock spells and related abilities. Those rules give the current prototype a complete path from earning XP to expanding what the Wizard can do.
The numbers and progression content remain data-driven. Costs, awards and related tuning can change as playtesting reveals what feels too fast, too slow or too restrictive. The numbered Level foundation is a working progression structure, not a promise that the current curve or every unlock will remain unchanged.
Validated as one connected system
At this milestone, 24 automated gameplay tests passed across the shared foundation. The existing character, HUD, game-over, spell, XP-pickup and animation Blueprints have also been connected to these systems, checking that the foundation works with the playable project rather than only in isolation.
Automated coverage cannot answer whether an attack has the right weight or a cast has the right rhythm. It can confirm that Mana is charged consistently, cooldowns stay independent, progression awards the expected values and a projectile impact resolves once. That dependable baseline leaves hands-on testing focused on feel and presentation instead of repeatedly rediscovering rule-level failures.
What comes next
The next work is about refining combat feel and presentation, then expanding the encounters, environments and content that players will actually see. The shared foundation will keep evolving where playtesting exposes gaps, but it now gives those additions a more stable place to connect.
Beyond that, development continues toward Auralis’s broader pillars. The Cael’Thorin restoration loop, regions, puzzles, Auralis Attunement, Auralis Charge, inventory and saving are not being presented as finished here. This milestone is one part of the longer process of bringing the game’s connected ideas into a cohesive playable experience.