V8 Features — Ariadne: The Self-Authoring Detective Universe (Unreal Engine 5)

Status: V8 feature inventory. Source: originating design document for V8. Like V6 (Egbe) and V7 (Mawu) — and unlike V1–V5, whose feature maps were derived from a pre-existing implementation backlog — V8 begins from this document. V8_TODOS.md is derived from the scope defined here, and thereafter the backlog checklist becomes the source of truth for completion state. V8 extends the V5 open-world detective game (V5/V5_features.md § "Cross-Cell Mind Palace (Sherlock)" and § "Vice Squad"), reuses the V1/Isis generation pipeline (libs/isis), the Yemaya multi-agent creative studio (libs/yemaya/agents), the Hathor LLM-NPC layer (libs/hathor/llm-npc), the V6 Ori portable agent identity (V6/V6_features.md § "The Ori"), and the V7 trust-and-safety regime (V7/V7_features.md § "Sekhmet"). Audience: product, design, narrative, gameplay, AI/agents, generative-AI, art, audio, netcode, security, trust-and-safety, live-service, research, and rights leads scoping V8. Inspired by the design footprint of L.A. Noire, the Frogwares Sherlock Holmes line (Crimes & Punishments / Chapter One), Return of the Obra Dinn, Her Story, Outer Wilds, Disco Elysium, The Case of the Golden Idol, Pentiment, the Inworld × NVIDIA "Covert Protocol" UE5 demo, and the research lines of Stanford "Generative Agents", procedural-mystery constraint solving (EXAG "Eliminating the Impossible"), and fair-play-in-detective-fiction modeling (arXiv 2507.13841). See V8_SOTA_RESEARCH.md for the full grounding. Date derived: 2026-06-04.

Naming note: V8's product and core subsystems are named for the Ariadne / labyrinth myth cycle, consistent with the Oshun monorepo convention of mythological subsystem names, and each name was checked against the existing libs/, apps/, and DOMAINS/ registries to avoid collision (Ariadne, Clew, Minos, Theseus, Daedalus, Oracle, Palimpsest are free; Ori is reused as an explicit bridge to an existing asset). (The continuity-graph subsystem was briefly codenamed "Mnemosyne Canon"; it was renamed Palimpsest to avoid colliding with the existing libs/mnemosyne/* learning-science domain, which is unrelated and which V9 reuses directly.) The labyrinth is the deliberate metaphor: a fair mystery is a solvable maze, Ariadne's thread (the clew — the etymological root of "clue") is the deduction chain, and Theseus is the player who walks it.

This feature map has been decomposed into focused pages under features/. This file remains the canonical hub — it preserves every section heading (so existing features§"…" and V8_features.md#… anchors keep resolving); the in-depth, code-grounded companion pages live under features/. Start at the features page index. The runtime/package architecture is in V8_ARCHITECTURE.md / architecture/.

Purpose#

This document is the feature map for V8. V8 is one coherent product — a self-authoring detective universe — not a tool. It turns V5's authored detective game into a living world where an integrated system of state-of-the-art AI agents generates an endless supply of fair, solvable, fully-voiced, fully-realized cases, and wires every existing Oshun generation system into the shipping V5/V6 game at runtime.

V8's entire thesis is integration + generation-completion. V1–V7 already ship the two halves — a real playable detective game and a real multi-modal AI content factory — but they are not connected, and neither half can generate a complete case. V8 builds the missing generative core, proves each case solvable before it ships, and compiles output into V5's existing authored case format so the playable game needs no rewrite. (See V8_GAP_ANALYSIS.md.)

V8_TODOS.md carries the numbered execution backlog and agent execution order; V8_ARCHITECTURE.md carries the technical design and exact data contracts; V8_DEPENDENCIES.md carries the dependency graph; V8_SOTA_RESEARCH.md carries the external state-of-the-art that grounds every design decision.

The product, layered#

• Ariadne — the product: the system that hands the player an unbreakable thread out of any labyrinth it builds. Ariadne guarantees that every case it authors can be solved with the clues it provides — fairness is a property the system proves, not hopes for.
• The Labyrinth — a single generated case: a crime, a cast, a timeline, a web of evidence and red herrings, and exactly one culprit who is the only suspect consistent with the player-available clues.
• The Clew — Ariadne's thread: the canonical deduction chain from first clue to accusation. It is generated first (solve-first) and the case is built backward from it.
• Minos — the judge at the labyrinth's gate: the formal verifier that refuses to let any case ship unless its solution is uniquely entailed and fair.
• Theseus — the hero who walks the maze: an autonomous AI detective that plays every generated case before release to prove it is solvable end-to-end and to calibrate its difficulty.
• Daedalus — the architect: the compiler and runtime bridge that turns a verified case into V5 data (FV5* structs + cold_cases_manifest.json packs + an asset manifest) and streams it into the running game.
• The Oracle — the storyteller that decides which labyrinths appear in the open world, for whom, and when — the drama/experience manager.

Player-facing experience (what V8 ships)#

1. The Endless Case Board#

The Vice Squad case-desk and the cross-cell Mind Palace stop being a fixed set of 25 + 20 authored cases. The Bureau Case Board continuously offers fresh, themed, difficulty-tuned cases — daily drops, player-requested commissions ("a 1947 arson case in the warehouse district, hard, two suspects"), and ambient open-world mysteries seeded into the living city. Every one is generated, fair, voiced, and solvable.

2. Cases that fit the world (and remember)#

Generated cases are canon-consistent: they reuse the persistent city's districts, recurring NPCs, factions, and the outcomes of the player's prior cases. Accuse the wrong man in case #7 and he can resurface — freed and vengeful — in case #19. The world has a memory because Ariadne writes to and reads from a shared canon knowledge graph.

3. Living suspects you actually interrogate#

Suspects are not branching dialogue trees. Each carries an Ori (the V6 portable agent identity) — memory, personality, secrets, and a stake in the case — and is driven at runtime by Hathor LLM-NPC + NVIDIA ACE / Inworld for live, lip-synced, MotionScan-style interrogation. They hold consistent alibis, crack under correctly-presented evidence, and lie fairly (every lie is catchable with a clue the game actually gives you).

4. Fully-realized, not text-only#

Every generated case ships with generated crime-scene environment art and 3D props (Hunyuan3D/Meshy), suspect portraits and document/photo evidence (Stability/Flux), case music and stings (Suno), and full voice-over for every line (ElevenLabs) — all produced by the Isis fabric, keyed to the case, and provenance-stamped (C2PA, per V3).

5. Fairness you can feel#

Because Minos proves uniqueness and Theseus plays the case first, players never hit an unsolvable wall or a "gotcha" solution. Difficulty is honest: harder cases have more suspects and subtler clue chains, never hidden information. The "Brilliant / Good / Doubtful / Wrong" accusation rating (V5's EV5MindPalaceAccusationRating) is earned against a solution the system can defend.

6. Co-op and creator cases#

A Co-op Bureau lets a party work one generated case together (shared Mind Palace, divided legwork). A Commission Studio lets creators steer Ariadne (set era, tone, cast, constraints) and publish vetted cases to the community through the V7 Mawu distribution + Sekhmet safety regime.

Subsystem ownership#

Non-goals#

• V8 does not replace authored cases — V5's 25 hand-made cases remain the golden corpus and Theseus/judge calibration fixtures.
• V8 does not rebuild V5's deduction UI, interrogation rig, or world streaming — it emits data those systems already consume.
• V8 does not add new asset providers — it orchestrates Isis's existing ones.
• V8 does not let an LLM "freestyle" a whole mystery — the symbolic ground-truth + constraint solver is authoritative; the LLM realizes the skeleton (see V8_SOTA_RESEARCH.md §1, "the LLM proposes, the solver disposes").

Definition of done (GA)#

V8 is GA-complete when, with zero human authoring per case:

1. A player requests or is offered a case; within the cost/latency budget the system generates it.
2. Minos has proven the culprit is the unique solution consistent with player-available clues, and the case passes the Knox/Van-Dine fairness gate.
3. Theseus has solved the compiled case in V5's actual data and confirmed the intended deduction path reaches a "Brilliant"-eligible accusation.
4. The case ships with generated environment/props/portraits/documents/music and full VO, all provenance-stamped and safety-cleared.
5. Suspects interrogate live (ACE/Inworld) with consistent alibis and fairly-catchable lies.
6. The case is canon-consistent with the persistent world and prior player outcomes, and its own outcome writes back to canon.
7. Everything is reproducible from a seed and auditable; nothing unsafe, unsolvable, unfair, or canon-breaking can reach a player.