Turrets in Motion: Kinematic Aiming and Zero-Allocation StarUI

• Kinematic Turrets: Split loading paths isolate static voxel hulls while enabling 125 moving turret parts to track targets.
• Deterministic Aiming: Weapon tracking runs entirely on the render side to preserve simulation determinism.
• Zero-Allocation UI: StarUI replaces dynamic layouts and multiple draw passes with a zero-allocation architecture optimized for Steam Deck.
• Command Routing: All UI interactions route through a decoupled command registry to allow headless, scriptable AI testing.
• WebGL Ship Builder: A new homepage-embedded builder lets the community design and export ready-to-load ships.

Kinematic Aiming

• Kinematic Mesh Splitting: Separates rotating parts from static geometry at load time to preserve compatibility with vertex-baked damage models.
• Hierarchical Transforms: Resolves parent-child transforms recursively on the fly to align moving weapons.
• Render-Side Slew: Projects enemy target vectors and slews weapon meshes without altering simulation state.
• Static Tolerance: Skips fixed weapons and non-rotating launchers during tracking to prevent errors.

StarUI

• Single-Pass Coalescing: Combines all UI elements into a single draw batch to minimize CPU and GPU overhead.
• Zero Garbage Collection: Uses persistent text builders and pre-allocated buffers to prevent runtime memory allocations.
• Path-Addressable Commands: Enables programmatic UI state transitions via path-based script commands.

Responsive HUD layout and panels rendered by StarUI.

StarUI routing programmatic commands to trigger a battle reset.

Kinematic weapon chain rendering in default rest pose.

Moving turret parts aligning perfectly with the static baked hull.

Turret dynamically swiveling to track target.

Turret mount initiating rotation toward targets at tick 20.

Turret maintaining target lock at tick 180.

• Render-Side Decoupling: Keeping visual feedback out of simulation logic preserves determinism while enabling smooth animations.
• Workflow Decoupling: Building ship assets externally prevents content pipeline changes from stalling engine development.
• Memory Management: Zero-allocation architecture must be designed from day one to maintain performance on target hardware.