The Subjective Interface is not a menu system; it is the soul of the Incarnation made manifest. It is a core Design Pillar of ATET and the primary lens through which the player experiences the game’s world and its underlying philosophy. It rejects the idea of an objective, database-like UI in favor of a dynamic, biased, and deeply personal framework that reflects the internal state of the character.

The UI is not a window onto the world; the UI is the character’s perception. Interacting with the game is an act of interpretation in itself.

Core Philosophy: The Empathy Engine

As outlined in The Philosophical Playground, the goal of ATET is not just to present philosophical ideas, but to make the player live them. The Subjective Interface is the most direct and powerful tool for achieving this. It serves as an empathy engine, translating the complex, abstract internal states of an Incarnation—its needs, fears, beliefs, and memories—into a tangible, interactive experience.

As described in Advice from a Constructed God, this interface is our Rosetta Stone. It is how we bridge the gap between a player’s understanding and their character’s lived reality. By mechanizing the internal dialogue and visualizing the glitches in a fractured self, we allow the player to feel what it’s like to be their Incarnation, rather than simply directing a pawn.

The fundamental principle is this: the player should never have access to objective truth. All information, from the health bar to the description of an item, is filtered through the consciousness of the character they inhabit.

The Three Layers of Subjective Rendering

The Subjective Interface operates on three interconnected layers that work in concert to create a holistic, dynamic experience.

Layer 1: The Perceptual Filter (The Senses)

This is the most fundamental layer, governing the raw sensory input the player receives. It is directly influenced by the Incarnation’s physical and psychological state, primarily its Needs, Beliefs, and Perception Attribute.

• Need-Based Highlighting: An agent’s critical Needs actively bias their awareness.

  • An Incarnation with a critical SustenanceNeed will perceive the world as a landscape of potential food. Edible plants might glow with a soft, alluring light. The sound of running water might be subtly amplified. Other, non-essential details fade in importance.
  • An agent with a high SafetyNeed will experience a world of threats. Shadows will seem deeper and more menacing. The UI might display a faint, pulsing red vignette at the edges of the screen, and benign sounds like a snapping twig might be rendered as sharp, startling audio cues.

• Belief-Based Distortion: An Incarnation’s strongly held Beliefs actively color and re-frame the world.

  • A character with a phobia of insects, possessing a Belief that “Spiders are monstrous,” won’t just see a spider; they may perceive it as physically larger, with its legs appearing sharper and more threatening.
  • An Incarnation from the “Faith of the Hearth” who believes technology is a corrupting influence might see a pristine chrome robot with a sickly, distorted visual effect, and its metallic movements might be accompanied by a dissonant, grating sound.

• Attribute-Gated Information: A character’s raw Perception Attribute score determines the level of detail they can passively extract from the world.

  • Low Perception: An agent sees a “Stone Wall.” The UI presents it as a simple, impassable object.
  • High Perception: The agent sees the same wall, but their interface highlights a “Loose Brick” and a textual pop-up appears: “The mortar here is newer than the rest…” The world for a high-Perception character is richer, more detailed, and filled with more interactive possibilities.

Layer 2: The Cognitive Overlay (The Mind)

This layer governs how information is processed, categorized, and presented to the player after it has passed through the perceptual filter. It is the voice of the Incarnation’s internal monologue and the visual language of its thoughts.

• Dynamic Text: The text displayed in the UI is not static. Its appearance reflects the Incarnation’s confidence and beliefs about the information.

  • When an NPC speaks, the text of their dialogue might appear solid and clear if the Incarnation has a Belief that they are trustworthy. If they are a known liar, the same words might appear faded, translucent, or followed by a [?] icon, representing internal doubt.
  • Item descriptions change. To a soldier, a rifle is a “Mark IV Pulse Rifle. Reliable. Standard Issue.” To a pacifist, the same item might be described as a “Heavy, cold tool of violence. Smells of ozone and regret.”

• Memory Fragments: As detailed in Memory, memories are not a log file. They manifest as interactive fragments. A traumatic memory might be a distorted, glitching image that flashes on screen when a trigger is encountered. A cherished memory might be a warm, audio-only echo of a line of dialogue that plays when returning to a special location.

• Intrusive Thoughts: Powerful Faiths or unresolved psychological conflicts can manifest as intrusive thoughts in the UI—a line of text that briefly appears and fades, representing the character’s internal struggle. An Incarnation with a powerful Faith in their duty might see the text “The mission comes first…” flash on screen when they are tempted to rest.

Layer 3: The Interactive Framework (The Will)

This layer governs how the player expresses the Incarnation’s will. The choices presented to the player are not a generic list of options; they are a direct output of the character’s internal state.

• Conversation as an Internal Dialogue: The conversation UI is a direct representation of the Incarnation’s mind at work.

  • The Topic List (“Inner Mind”): This panel is a list of clickable keywords derived directly from the agent’s AgentMemoryStore and AgentBeliefStore. You can ask about “The Odyssey Crash” because you have a memory of it. You can bring up “The Light of the First Star” because it is a central tenet of your Faith. The list is unique to every Incarnation and evolves with their life.
  • Rhetorical Framing: Your response options are not just what to say, but how to say it. You choose a rhetorical frame ([Assert Logically], [Assert with Fear], [Assert with Faith]), which directly impacts how the NPC’s own Belief system will process your words.

• Interpretation as an Act of Authorship: When faced with an ambiguous situation, the options presented to the player are generated from their character’s skills, memories, and beliefs. The player’s choice solidifies one of these internal possibilities into a new, hard Belief, which in turn reshapes the Perceptual and Cognitive layers of the interface.

Illustrative Examples in Practice

• The Botanist’s Dilemma:

  • Kaelen’s UI: When looking at the alien Sun-Kelp, his high Botany Skill and initial Fact render it with a calm, green aura. The UI label reads: “Sun-Kelp (Cyathifer splendens). Neurotoxin present in raw tissue. Nullified by heat.” It is a known quantity.
  • Rhys’s UI: The engineer, lacking that knowledge and operating on a Fiction that “glowing things are dangerous,” sees the same plant with a pulsing, hazardous red aura. His UI label reads: “WARNING: High-energy bioluminescence detected. Potential radioactive contaminant.” The same objective entity is presented as two entirely different realities.

• The Burden of Whispering Steel:

  • As Kael, the inheritor of the haunted greatsword from The House of Whispering Steel, the UI becomes a warzone. When presented with a diplomatic choice, the option “[Offer Peace Treaty]” (aligned with his mother Elara’s Eidos) might appear in a soft, steady blue. The option “[Launch Preemptive Strike]” (aligned with his grandfather Corvus’s Eidos) would glow with an aggressive, commanding golden light, its text seeming to pulse with impatience. The UI is actively trying to persuade the player, reflecting the internal struggle.

• The Glitch in the Weave:

  • For an Incarnation like “Echo,” the interface is fundamentally unstable. A health bar might momentarily flicker to show the health bar of a past life. An NPC’s name might corrupt for a split-second, replaced by the name of someone they were in a previous Tapestry. This allows the player to experience a playable, non-pathologized version of dissociation and narrative fracture.

Design Challenges & Intent

The primary challenge of the Subjective Interface is balancing its expressive, philosophical goals with practical usability. A UI that is too obscure or difficult to read will frustrate the player, while one that is too subtle will fail to communicate its purpose. This will require significant iteration, prototyping, and play-testing to find the right balance.

The intent, however, is clear. The Subjective Interface is the ultimate expression of the game’s “show, don’t tell” philosophy. It is the mechanism that ensures the player’s journey is not just a series of choices, but a profound and personal exploration of what it means to be a self, to hold a belief, and to see a world through eyes that are not your own.