Relates to: SSG-289

🌌 Epic 1: New Telescope Projects → Variable Stars & Disk Detective

Goal tie-in: Goal 1 (content breadth/attracting users), Goal 2 (data flow).

Story 1: Variable Stars Deployment & Classification

- Add telescope deployment option for “Variable Stars.”
- Write tutorial text/dialogue explaining brightness variation + lightcurves.
- Create anomaly type: “Variable Star Candidate” (with annotation window).
- Add progression: completing 2 variable star classifications unlocks bonus missions (e.g. period-finding).

From this - there’s some additional things that need to be mentioned/worked out:

Users will be able to focus on stars or planetary bodies. This will split the linked_anomalies they get between PLanetHunters & DailyMinorPlanet , and Variable & Disk-Detective . Users (for now) will not be able to do “a little of everything” (this will be an upgrade made available for users at a later date). This is because they will need to “calibrate” their telescope for target size and distance
I’ll use lightcurve graphs from the Gaia project for the variable stars. I think I may need to also get some additional anomalies from the DD project. Hopefully 15 of each will be enough - that’s enough for 4 users with a little bit of overlap.

The overall Gaia project is quite complex - not in the mood for figuring it now. Putting it off won’t hurt anyone - surely?

Story 2: Disk Detective Deployment & Classification

- ~~Add telescope deployment option for “Disk Detective.”~~
- ~~Tutorial explaining circumstellar disks + planetary formation.~~
- ~~Create anomaly type: “Disk Candidate” (images with highlight/annotation).~~
- Optional: Unlock sub-mission (“Protoplanetary Disk Inspection”) after 1–2 base discoveries.

Some additional pointers:

The DD classification process should be heavily improved. One idea I’ve had is to implement an automatic video/slideshow feature of all the different images.
I’m also going to cut down on the number of slides/images inside each DD anomaly because most of the early ones are just repetitive or not needed.

I just realised I’ve completely forgotten how classification even works for DD. So I probably need to go through a refresher course myself.

On the DD project, I think it would be optimal to have a standard Q&A format rather than an annotation model. This can then give users a clear message of what they’ve found/identified in the next scene.

Update object of interest anomaly component to look more like a star/dust pool for new projects TELESCOPE-2 ✅ 2025-09-29
Create filter/toggle for telescope deployment DEPLOY-5 ✅ 2025-09-29
New classification component & route for Disk-Detective - DISKDETECTIVE-1 ✅ 2025-09-29
Update Disk-Detective component to have dynamic slide numbers - DISKDETECTIVE-2 ✅ 2025-09-29
Next-scene should show DD output based on classificationConfiguration - CLASSIFICATION-2 ✅ 2025-09-29

Additional storylines

^bbcbca

Another idea

Should we add a little icon in the corner that asks the user what they’d like to do, if they don’t have any entries in linked_anomalies for that week?

🛰 Epic 2: Research Area Integration into Narrative

Goal tie-in: Goal 2 (data to/from researchers), Goal 4 (community-driven world).

Important We need to make sure that there is a clear indication of tasks/research in progress, upcoming milestones, in different pages/components the user sees

Story 1: Narrativised Research Cards

Tasks:
- Add descriptive text to research upgrades so they feel purposeful (e.g. “Extending your telescope’s receptors allows you to see deeper dips in lightcurves, increasing anomaly count”).
- Integrate light narrative snippets (“Your observatory has approved a new module upgrade”).

In short, this is basically just a simple set of tasks to restructure the cards and text on the cards in the research menu. It’s purely a narrative/UI change, not a functionality improvement or addition.

Story 2: Practical Unlocks for Existing Projects

~~- Ensure Active Asteroids remains gated behind basic asteroid classifications.~~
- Telescope tech → “Increase Receptors” improves anomaly spawn count.
- Satellite tech → unlock extra satellite per deployment.
- Automaton tech → extend rover waypoint count. -- [[#^cc5369|^cc5369]]
- All should display as **usable progression now**, not just “Coming soon.”

First up (30/09/25), I’m going to quickly see if active asteroids anomalies can be linked for relevant users. Yep, that’s working. Now, I need to link the active asteroid classification component to the TelescopeSection:

Link ActiveAsteroids Classify component to Telescope Viewport - ACTIVE-1 ✅ 2025-09-30 Turns out the anomalySet value in the existing classification component was…incorrect. So I’m fixing that, as well. . So that’s a bit better, now I need to get around to improving the layout of the component:
Fix layout of ActiveAsteroids classification component - ACTIVE-2 ✅ 2025-10-02 Hopefully this is a bit better.

Building on from ACTIVE-2, let’s fix the descriptions for the annotation label s -

Fix annotation label height - CLASSIFICATION-3 ✅ 2025-10-02

Upgrading tools

The first thing we can make available to upgrade is improving tools. So, we will need to have a function on each deployment function that adds an extra number of anomalies to the fetch function.

That’s the first upgrade/research topic - increasing the number of anomalies you can find from a single deployment. We’ll set the cost of this upgrade at 10 stardust for now. See Upgrade Costs for some more info.

For now, I’m going to work on adding these indicators/status messages to the ActivityHeader , so here’s a few starter tasks:

Add rover deployment status to the header - DEPLOY-6 ✅ 2025-10-03
Show stardust balance in header - RESEARCH-1 ✅ 2025-10-03
Show one available upgrade in header - RESEARCH-2 ✅ 2025-10-04

Story 3: Research → Data Expansion (Foundation)

Tasks:
- Add placeholder missions for expanded data (Spectroscopy, Metallicity).
- Even if data isn’t “real” yet, create hooks in UI:
  - E.g. “You have unlocked Spectroscopy. Missions coming soon.”

So we already sort of have this. Users can choose a specialisation, or multiple specialisations. The info and links can show up in the deployment & location routes.

Bee minigame goals

Bee minigame Can grow plants? Can see images? Can log in?

Post-sprint

Fixing the push notifications is probably a priority from a usability perspective.

I think we might want to take a look at changing how the satellite viewport looks and works, especially considering the upgrades/changes coming in Upgrade Costs.

Upgrades to the ActivityHeader with more locations/images when transitioning between locations?

Rover waypoint increasing will be added next sprint.

Extra data types will come next sprint.

Variable star project to be implemented

📝 Transcribed Notes

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OCR transcribed on 2025-11-08 10:59