Fantactical is a desktop application built in Rust using the Bevy game engine. It imports GCS character sheets directly, manages the full GURPS turn-phase state machine, resolves injuries with the complete hit-location × damage-type matrix, and renders a hex-grid VTT with maneuver cards styled like a trading card game.

How It Works#

Import a GCS sheet — Drop a .gcs file into the app. All stats, skills, attacks (melee and ranged), armor, and portrait are parsed automatically.
Arrange the battlemap — Drag tokens to hexes. The grid uses Chebyshev (axial) distance for range penalties.
Play maneuvers as cards — On an actor's turn, a tray of maneuver cards appears. Each card shows the maneuver name and a rules summary. Drag a card onto your token (self-targeted) or an enemy token (offensive) to declare it.
Resolve attacks — A modal overlay guides you through attack selection, hit-location targeting, modifier breakdown, the 3d6 attack roll, defense resolution, and injury application — following B552 location rules, B556 critical hit tables, and full wounding multipliers.
GM tools — Rewind the turn history, toggle shock rules, set per-actor pain thresholds, manage global modifiers, and adjustable turn order.

Features — ✅ Complete#

Area	Details
Turn phase state machine	ManeuverSelection → AttackSetup → ManeuverConfirmed → AttackRoll → DefenseResolution → InjuryResolution → NonCombatResolution → Complete, with auto-advance and extra attacks
GCS sheet import	Direct `.gcs` JSON parsing — attributes, skills, equipment weapons (melee + ranged), armor DR by location, portrait, recursive container children
GUI panels	Character panel (sortable turn-order cards with HP/FP bars), event log, GM config tab, maneuver tray, attack setup modal, defense-resolution modal
Maneuver trading-card UI	All 28 maneuver types rendered as tall cards with colored borders, name header, rules description; drag-and-drop onto tokens
Hit locations	Full hit-location support for bipedal humanoids (28 locations across head, torso, limbs, extremities, joints, and vasculature), including optional locations from GURPS Martial Arts and later supplements
Injury resolution	Full hit-location × damage-type matrix, DR calculation (armor stacking + inherent), wounding multipliers, major wounds, knockdown/stun, consciousness/death checks, limb crippling, shock
Crit tables	B556 critical hit table (11 result variants including HalveDR, IgnoreDR, StunAutomatic, CrippleLimbAutomatic) and B557 critical miss table
Dice rolling	3d6 success checks with proper half-skill crit rules; seeded RNG via hashed system time for near-zero determinism
Maneuver legality	Posture/status/encumbrance/crippled-leg filters; combo whitelist for Extra Effort
Event sourcing	Immutable GameStateHistory with push/rewind; per-round auto-save
VTT battlemap	Hex grid (flat-top axial), token spawning with portrait circles, maneuver relation arrows colored by category, camera pan/zoom, token drag-to-move
GM config	Global/per-actor modifiers, lighting presets, shock toggle, pain threshold per actor, rewind
WebSocket networking	Authoritative server + client with session-token auth, exponential-backoff reconnect, StateSnapshot broadcast, GM/client role distinction
Mil-sim theme	Dark tactical aesthetic with Theme trait infrastructure for future themes

Features — 🧪 Needs QA/QC#

These systems are implemented end-to-end but need real-session battle-testing:

Certain combat maneuvers (Feint margin calculation, Wait trigger resolution, Evaluate/Aim accumulation across turns)
Longer combats with many actors — turn-order correctness, multi-turn state consistency
Full injury edge cases (neck vascular, limb vascular, joint crippling, eye destruction, Spine rear-arc only)
Networking under load, multi-client synchronization, reconnection mid-combat
Cross-platform compatibility (Linux primary, Windows/macOS untested)
Configurable panel heights via fantactical_settings.json
Crit miss table application (defined but not yet wired into the phase machine)

Planned — 🔨 In the Works#

Visual overhaul / polish — Consistent theme colors plumbed through all panels, runtime theme switching
3D battlemap — Bevy 3D rendering with camera rotation, elevation, and terrain
Fog of war — GM-controlled visibility per token
GM scratchpad — Free-text note-taking panel for session tracking
In-built chat — Text chat between connected clients
Multiple stock themes — Beyond mil-sim: high-contrast, fantasy-parchment, cyberpunk
Expanded crit tables — Full Critical Head Blow table, crit miss effects wired into phase machine
Edge/optional rules — Minute-of-Angle, point-blank shotshell, hit-location sub-tables (Abdomen → Vitals/DigestiveTract/Pelvis/Groin)
Better config menu — In-GUI settings for panel heights, theme selection, network configuration

Stretch Goals — 🌌 Someday#

Physically-based 3D dice — Rendered dice that tumble across the tabletop
VPS-to-WebUI hosting — Run the server headless, serve the UI to browsers via WebGPU
Sound effects — Combat audio, dice rolls, injury feedback
Modularity / plugin support — User-defined themes, house rule plugins, custom maneuver cards

Getting Started#

Prerequisites#

Rust toolchain (1.80+)
System libraries for Bevy (see Bevy's setup guide)

Build & Run#

cargo run --release

CLI Test Tool#

# Roll 3d6
cargo run --bin ftctl -- dice

# Check a roll against a skill
cargo run --bin ftctl -- check-roll --roll 12 --skill 15

# Test injury resolution
cargo run --bin ftctl -- test-injury --hp 12 --location torso --damage 5 --damage-type cut

# List available maneuvers for a given posture
cargo run --bin ftctl -- available-maneuvers --posture standing

Running Tests#

cargo test                # 115 unit tests + 3 integration tests

Network Mode#

Edit src/main.rs to set NetworkMode::Server or NetworkMode::Client with a host, port, and session token.

License#

MIT

Fantactical is pre-alpha software. If you find bugs, rough edges, or have feature ideas, please open an issue or submit a pull request. Feedback is hugely appreciated at this stage.

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