Product spec

Vision

A browser tab that feels like walking into a nice mall with friends. It opens in under three seconds, you can find any shop in two clicks, and it runs smoothly on a €200 phone.

Users

Who	Wants
Visitor	To look around, find a shop, see products, hang out with friends. No install and no account
Mall owner (the person deploying Shopping Mall)	To add shops and products by editing config. To see what visitors do. To host events
Shop owner / tenant	A good-looking storefront, products that stay in sync, clicks through to their store
Contributor	A codebase they can understand in an afternoon

Features

Priority: P0 = MVP, P1 = v1.0, P2 = later.

Entry

• P0 Landing screen: mall name, tagline, name input, body type, outfit, live 3D preview, online count, "Enter".
• P0 Remember name and look locally. Returning visitors skip straight to "Enter".
• P1 Accessories (hat, glasses) as attachable meshes on the shared skeleton.
• P1 Deep links: ?s=<shopId> opens the mall with you standing at that shop and its panel open. ?at=x,z,yaw,floor spawns you at that position. (Query parameters, so they work on any static host.)
• P2 Colour tints for outfits (a single material parameter, no extra downloads).

Movement & camera

• P0 Third-person camera with collision (it never clips into walls), smooth follow, scroll/pinch zoom.
• P0 WASD/arrows, Shift to run, Space to jump. Mouse drag or pointer lock to look.
• P0 Mobile: virtual joystick (left), drag to look (right), Run/Jump/Sit buttons.
• P0 Tap/click-to-walk: tap the floor to walk there along a path. Tap a shop to walk to its door.
• P0 Two floors and escalators. Standing on an escalator carries you along it.
• P1 Overview camera (M): top-down view of the whole mall. Tap anywhere to travel there.
• P1 Sit: snap to the nearest seat, otherwise sit on the floor.

Finding things

• P0 "You are in Zone" label.
• P0 Directory dialog with search (fuzzy, multi-language) and categories. Picking a shop walks you there (or teleports you if the path is longer than 40 m, with a quick fade).
• P0 Minimap: shops as coloured blocks, you as an arrow, friends as dots. Click to travel.
• P1 Wayfinding ribbon: a soft glowing line on the floor that guides you to the selected shop.

Shops

• P0 Storefront: signage generated from config (name, colours, logo image), window display, door trigger zone.
• P0 Shop panel: title, tagline, description, features, product grid, CTAs. Opens with E, a tap, or by walking inside.
• P0 Products come from an adapter (static-json built in). Each has image, name, price (formatted per locale), compare-at price and a link.
• P1 In-store product boards generated from the same product data.
• P1 Adapters: Shopify Storefront, WooCommerce Store API, generic JSON URL.
• P1 "For rent" template shop with a contact CTA.
• P2 3D product pedestals: a product may include a .glb that you can rotate in the panel.
• P2 Shop-owned interior themes (a pack of 4 interior kits).

Social (multiplayer)

• P0 See other visitors move smoothly, with name tags that fade with distance.
• P0 Global chat (rate-limited, length-capped). Join/leave collapsed into a single "3 people joined" line.
• P0 Emoji reactions (6) shown above the avatar.
• P1 Speech bubbles above the speaker for 5 s. Per-user mute. Report button.
• P1 Social verbs: wave, dance, apple throw, hug (both people play an animation).
• P1 Host role: a gold name tag, a "Host is here" notice on the landing page, host announcements.
• P2 Private rooms: /?room=abc creates a separate instance for a group of friends.
• P2 Proximity voice (WebRTC, opt-in).

Settings & accessibility

• P0 Quality: Auto / Low / Medium / High. Auto picks a tier from a GPU probe and frame-time sampling.
• P0 Respect prefers-reduced-motion: no camera bob, no fly-in, instant travel.
• P0 The directory, shop panels and chat are all reachable by keyboard and screen reader, without using the 3D view.
• P1 Languages: English + one right-to-left or complex-script language in CI (Burmese as the reference test, since it exercises complex text shaping in canvas signage).
• P1 Volume sliders (ambience, SFX). Ambient music loads lazily.

Operator features

• P0 mall.config.ts: mall name, brand, shops, layout slots, outfits, languages, adapters.
• P1 Anonymous analytics events (see architecture § Analytics) posted to a pluggable sink.
• P2 Scheduled events: a banner, a countdown and a special spawn point.

Non-goals (for now)

• Checkout inside the mall. We link out to the shop's own checkout.
• User accounts. Visitors are anonymous; the host gets a token.
• A level editor inside the app. Blender is the editor.
• VR. The architecture shouldn't rule it out, but we won't build it now.

Controls reference

Action	Desktop	Mobile
Move	WASD / arrows	Joystick
Walk to point	Click floor	Tap floor
Look	Drag, or click to lock the mouse	Drag right half
Run	Shift	Run button
Jump	Space	Jump button
Sit / stand	C	Sit button
Visit shop	E	Tap shop / prompt
Chat	Enter	Chat button
Emoji	1–6	Emoji bar
Overview	M	Dock
Directory	/ or K	Dock
Close panel	Esc	✕ / swipe down

Success metrics

• p75 time from landing to first playable frame: < 3 s on desktop broadband, < 6 s on a Fast 4G profile.
• p75 frame time on the reference mid-range phone: ≤ 16.7 ms.
• ≥ 40 % of sessions open at least one shop panel.
• Crash-free sessions ≥ 99.5 %. WebSocket reconnect success ≥ 99 %.