Halcyon City — aerial survey contracting

VANTAGE

You fly a survey drone for a living. Roof plans, corridor sweeps, heat-loss passes — you take the frame, you file it, you invoice. The aircraft carries three sensor bands. The third one was never on the certificate of conformity, and it does not show you the same city.

Sensor Same frame
A rooftop at night on the optical band: dark parapets, lit windows in the distance, nothing on the roof deck. The same rooftop on band three: the scene renders in green intensifier light and a pale standing figure is visible on the deck.
22:41 — 51 m Rooftop, Meridian block Switch the band
Download on itch.io ↗

Windows — built in Godot 4

01Daylight

The work is real work.

Orders are posted each morning. Corridor surveys with gates to fly. Condition records of named structures. Roof plans shot from directly overhead. Heat-loss passes on the thermal band.

Frames are graded on what is actually in the shot — the subject unoccluded, centred, filling a decent part of the frame. Fees go into the ledger, and the ledger buys endurance, link range and a stabiliser.

One charge is about five minutes of flat-out flying against eighteen minutes of daylight. The van refills the cells in seconds.

Aircraft
3 sensor bands
Ceiling
210 m
Link range
420 m, upgradable
Endurance
5–12 min per charge
Survey area
600 × 600 m
Street grid
Regenerated each launch

02Band three

Some things reflect nothing.

Not in the visible spectrum, and not in thermal. Figures standing on roofs. Marks on walls. Columns going up out of the grid. No camera without the right sensor will ever resolve them, which is why nobody else has filed them.

They pay several times what a roof plan pays. They also react to being looked at — hold one in the centre of the frame long enough and it will notice, and then it will not be there.

Every plate you file leaves residue on the band, and residue does not clear overnight.

The city rendered on the thermal band: buildings in violet and indigo, roads and sky in hot orange.
Thermal13:04 The middle band is legitimate. It is on the certificate.

03After dark

Pods have to be walked to.

Field operations wants sensor pods recovered, and the aircraft cannot carry them. That puts you on the pavement, on foot, with a torch that makes you easy to see.

Something else is out. It hunts by sound before sight — it hears the torch as well as your boots, and it hears the aircraft if you fly it low. Break its line of sight and it loses the trail. Let it close and you lose the night's margin and wake up back at the van.

Higher residue means it starts closer and gives up later.

A dark street at night, lit shop windows behind, and a tall black silhouette standing in the middle of the road.
Optical22:58 Unregistered contact. It does not appear on any register, and it is not what band three is showing you.

Plates

Halcyon City from 96 metres in daylight: a grid of blocks, rooftop plant, a tower crane, districts fading into haze.
01 — Optical12:12 — 96 m Looking north-west across the grid
The drone downlink at night: framing brackets, work orders listed at top right, battery and link telemetry at bottom left.
02 — Downlink22:23 — 70 m Operator telemetry, night sortie
The survey van parked on a plaza with roof rack, beacon bar, work lamp and a folding table beside it.
03 — Optical13:36 Survey van and kit. It charges the aircraft.
The end-of-shift report screen listing work completed, frames filed, distance flown, band three contacts logged and the ledger.
04 — Record12:24 Shift report. Close a shift whenever you like.

Download

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Platform
Windows
Engine
Godot 4
Input
Mouse and keyboard
World
Generated at load
Sound
Synthesised at boot
Developer
JordyDGB20