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Navigation model

This page documents how you move through and view a grid in IAPM.

Two systems

System Moves the avatar Purpose
Travel Yes Click-to-teleport to any highlighted object in line of sight, plus walking for fine local movement
Camera / view No Switch what you are looking at (first-person, the grid, the service graph, the Tessa chat console)

Travel

Every portable object carries a rhombus marker.

Marker state Appearance Meaning
At rest Solid dark octahedron/rhombus Object is not currently targeted
Highlighted Glowing wireframe outline rhombus Object is selectable; click to teleport there

Click a highlighted object (or the rhombus on it) to teleport to it, from anywhere it is in line of sight. Fine, local movement after teleporting is done by walking, and Space jumps. In the main space (the grid, the service graph, the Core) you do not free-fly and you cannot rise continuously: Space is a jump for a momentary higher vantage, not sustained lift. You move by teleporting to highlighted objects, including clicking nodes in the Services & Dependencies Camera View to port to them. Free flight through the open space is Mosey's alone, in his autopilot mode.

Inside a cube, you can swim. The cubes are the exception. Inside a cube, jumping (Space) starts you swimming, and you can then move freely in all three dimensions up to the cube's ceiling. In the Diagnostics cube this has a clear use: you swim a large span waterfall, moving up and around the bars to read a complex trace from any angle. You can also swim in the other cubes (Research, Security, Zen), but they have no functional content yet, so there is nothing to do with it there for now.

Camera / view

Persistent toolbar, bottom-right. None of these move the avatar.

The toolbar has four camera views plus a Home button. Each view is labeled on screen.

Icon On-screen label Shortcut View
Location pin Avatar Camera View Escape First-person, wherever you currently are
Layers Traces & Logs Camera View M The grid (Traces & Logs)
Globe Services & Dependencies Camera View N The service graph
Chat Console F12 Tessa chat overlay on top of your current location

The Traces & Logs (M) and Services & Dependencies (N) views are top-down overviews for scanning. The view itself does not move you, but clicking an object in it ports you down onto that place (a trace cube on the grid, or a node in the service graph), at which point you are inhabiting it. So the pattern is: open the view to scan from above, click the thing you want, and you land there.

Home button

Icon On-screen label Effect Moves the avatar
Home Teleport to the Core Teleports you to the Core Yes

Home is the one toolbar control that moves the avatar. It teleports you back to the Core, the hub you land on when you enter a grid.

Consistency law

If it highlights, you can go to it. The same rule applies everywhere: graph nodes, board rows (Recent Errors, Services, Dependencies), portals, platforms below you, and grid aggregate blocks. Highlight, then click, teleports you there in every case.

Information law

Most objects, platforms, and cubes carry a hover tooltip. Hover an object to see its tooltip, then press F6 to copy the tooltip contents to the clipboard. Tooltips work both when you are next to an object and from the top-down camera views (Traces & Logs, Services & Dependencies), so you can read a block or node's details while scanning from above, before you port down to it.

Portals

Property Detail
Activation Proximity-activated
Closed state Spinning tesseract, animated, at a distance
Open state Luminous swirling ring, when you are close
Directionality Two-ended; travel through either end
Visibility You can see the destination through an open portal

Portal kinds

Kind Links Behavior
Fixed structural Core to graph root; the Portal Room to the cubes (Research, Security, Zen) Permanent
Transient recent-location Graph-root floor to recently visited services Forms a ring on the graph-root floor; ephemeral shortcuts; despawn once stale
Return-to-origin Diagnostics cube back to the specific grid Trace Aggregate Block you zoomed in from Only the Diagnostics cube behaves this way; the Research, Security, and Zen cubes return to the Portal Room instead

Play / pause transport

Control Effect Movement while active
Play World runs live Normal
Pause World freezes: sweep, arriving blocks, aging, and traffic all stop You can still walk through the frozen snapshot

Play/pause is available everywhere.

Time travel

Feature Status
Time travel Temporarily disabled

Controls quick reference

Key / control Action
W Move
Space Jump (starts swimming inside a cube)
Left-click Select / teleport to a highlighted object
M Traces & Logs Camera View (the grid)
N Services & Dependencies Camera View (the service graph)
F12 Console (open the Tessa chat)
Escape Avatar Camera View (first-person)
Home Teleport to the Core