An original, standalone Luanti survival prototype: gather flint and sticks, make tools, build a supported shelter, fuel a hearth, cook forage, and boil water. This is an environment simulation prototype, not a full physics simulator. It does not depend on Minetest Game (MTG), nor claim feature parity with another survival game. Original game code and original procedural assets are MIT-licensed; the separately distributed Luanti engine retains its own licenses.

Season VI planning: launch feature checklist and implementation roadmap. The prototype is the baseline, not a release candidate.

Local Windows launcher

Requires Node.js 22+ (built-in modules only) and the official Luanti 5.18.0 Windows 64-bit distribution already installed under %LOCALAPPDATA%/last-hearth-runtime/luanti-5.18.0-win64/. Its executable is bin/luanti.exe within that runtime. The previously verified distribution archive SHA-256 is bebce52b58555d8208bf16767d0717788479fef23c35ec8d7bf287774d641835. This is an archive digest, not an executable digest. The launcher does not download software or pretend to reverify the archive from its extracted files. Keep the runtime directory writable only by trusted local users.

From this game directory:

node scripts/run.mjs check
node scripts/run.mjs smoke
node scripts/run.mjs test
node scripts/run.mjs play

check: start a disposable headless engine world and compile all game and test Lua files using the engine's Lua implementation. Loading the game also catches startup errors. Standalone mocked tests are compiled, not executed.
smoke: additionally verify the real hearth global, standalone content and MTG absence, registered recipes and actual engine craft results, biome aliases, and asynchronous map emergence with real registered terrain, required starting resources, and functional enclosure checks. Model and content unit suites run in isolated Lua environments: the mocked core and os.time never replace globals in the running game.
test: run both engine checks, including 19 content regressions and 11 solar/climate/needs tests. No separate Lua interpreter is required. If HEARTH_LUA is provided, also execute the standalone harnesses with that local interpreter. It must be an absolute executable path.
play: launch the graphical engine directly into a persistent singleplayer world. This is the only command that opens gameplay; checks never launch it. The normal engine camera, mouse and keyboard controls apply. Consult the engine's Controls menu for bindings.

The main game files must exist before these commands can run; incomplete parallel development produces an explicit missing-file error, not a passing result.

Location, privacy and survival

First play

Press I for the crafting grid and field notes; /guide reopens the guide.
Gather flint, sticks, berries and thatching rushes. Make an axe to harvest logs.
Build supported walls/roof and fuel a stone hearth with sticks or logs.
Fill a carved cup at water, then use it on a fueled hearth before drinking.
Hold Aux1 (normally E) while moving forward to sprint.
Use /practice in local play to place the opt-in sparring target. Strike to start, step away to evade, or hold right-click with a spear to brace.
/claim protects one homestead; /claim remove releases it.

There is deliberately no automatically granted equipment, fast travel, PvP, quest system, or downloaded mod collection.

Known prototype limits

Movement uses engine prediction and modest sprint overrides; this is not a custom animated combat controller. The practice opponent is a stationary, non-lethal sparring device, not wildlife AI. Tool silhouettes, material tiles and the simple player mesh are original generated assets, not final character art. Cooking consumes fuel immediately; needs and heat are game approximations. Structural support is checked on wall/roof placement only; blocks do not collapse when supports are removed, and generic terrain/planks are not structural physics. No food spoilage, crops, insulation clothing, positional audio or animal hunting is implemented. Atmospheric daylight approximates solar elevation through the engine's fixed orbit; calendar labels are meteorological seasons. Real-world civil timezones/DST display is not implemented: UTC and local solar time are explicit.

The launcher generates PNG textures and an OBJ mesh from original deterministic code into its managed runtime copy. If installing elsewhere, first stage with this launcher or call the exported asset generator for that destination.

Location selection

Optionally supply both HEARTH_LATITUDE and HEARTH_LONGITUDE as decimal degrees before launch. The launcher validates latitude −90…90 and longitude −180…180, then writes the game's hearth_latitude and hearth_longitude settings. Coordinates are user-selected, not automatically detected. Neither the launcher nor this setup uses IP geolocation or a remote location service. Coordinates are stored in the local generated configuration; avoid publishing it.

Without coordinates, use the singleplayer game's location prompt or /location command. A server deployment must explicitly select its location rather than silently assuming a player's location. This launcher is not a public server deployment tool. Location controls the environment model's local solar time, daylight, seasons and temperature; these are approximations, not live weather. Disposable checks explicitly select a synthetic 45°N, 0°E test location when the environment variables are absent; that fixture is never used for play.

Damage and survival are enabled; creative mode and PvP are disabled. Needs do not decay while the player is offline. Hearth fuel can still expire by real elapsed time; that is distinct from offline player-needs decay. This prototype does not provide accounts, credentials, federation, or public matchmaking.

Runtime storage and safety

The launcher recursively copies the game into the runtime engine's games/last_hearth/ search directory, omitting scripts, tests, and .git. It uses regular-file copying rather than fs.cp to support the repository's Windows SMB location. Symlinks and junctions are rejected. Only copies marked as launcher-managed can be replaced; an existing unmanaged installation is left untouched. A runtime lock prevents simultaneous launchers from replacing a game while it is running. After a crash, remove the lock only after confirming the old launcher and engine have stopped.

Persistent play data lives under %LOCALAPPDATA%/last-hearth-runtime/worlds/last_hearth/. Back up this directory before changing game versions. Launch configuration is regenerated on every play run; environment settings are not silently inherited from an old configuration. The launcher never deletes the persistent world.

Checks stage their test mod under a disposable world's worldmods/hearth_smoke/init.lua, then delete that world's files on completion or failure. Test success requires both a zero engine exit status and a unique per-run success marker. Lua assertions, startup errors, missing markers, process failures, or deadlines cause a nonzero launcher exit. Engine checks are bounded to 90 seconds each, their internal watchdog to 60 seconds, and standalone tests to 30 seconds each. Play has an eight-hour safety limit; exit normally before it to avoid a forced termination. Ctrl+C terminates the child process; normal in-game Quit is preferable for saving a play session. UTF-8 output is streamed with a bounded diagnostic tail; the persistent play log remains in the runtime root.

Generated settings include:

enable_damage = true
enable_pvp = false
creative_mode = false
bind_address = 127.0.0.1
server_announce = false
enable_ipv6 = false
time_speed = 0
movement_speed_walk = 4
movement_speed_fast = 6
movement_speed_jump = 6.5
secure.enable_security = true

Smoke/check use a randomly selected high UDP port, loopback binding, and zero allowed users. No public bind, remote inputs, shell commands, credentials, or trusted-mod security bypasses are configured. A port collision fails visibly; it is never treated as success. Local filesystem permissions remain those of the current Windows account; the launcher does not claim to provision Windows ACLs.

README.md Unescape Escape

The Last Hearth