Model Foundry

Status: this project was NOT finished. It is an unfinished prototype and is kept here for study and reference only.

Model Foundry is a management/tycoon simulation game about founding and scaling an AI company. You start in a garage in 2016 with a tiny team and grow all the way to a frontier AGI lab, deciding strategy, hiring, research, data sources, compute infrastructure, marketing and distribution along the way.

The active gameplay progression, economy, infrastructure and benchmark direction lives in docs/realistic_ai_company_progression_plan.md. Use IA-TYCOON-PLAN.md as historical concept and art-direction context.

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Important licence notice (please read)

This repository contains third-party paid assets that must not be shipped in any built project without a valid licence:

• Assets/PolygonOffice/ — Polygon Office Pack by Synty Studios. This is a paid asset store pack that requires the purchase of a commercial licence.
• Assets/Synty/ — additional Synty icon/art assets, also paid/licensed.

Do not use PolygonOffice / Synty art in a built, public, released, commercial or distributed project unless you have purchased the corresponding licence from the Unity Asset Store / Synty Studios. Keep them only for internal development and prototyping. Before any public build, refactor the code to use original, free or explicitly licensed replacements.

The same rule applies to the reference logos in MyAssets/Rivals/ (openai.png, anthropic.png, grok.png, etc.). These are private development references only — they are not to be published in any public build, Steam page, trailer or marketing material.

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AI models used to generate the code

The C# source code in this repository was generated with the help of the following AI assistants:

• Unity AI (Unity AI Assistant)
• Claude Opus 4.6 (Anthropic)
• Gemini Pro 3.5 Flash (Google)

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Project at a glance

• Engine: Unity 6000.5.0f1 (URP)
• Language: C#
• UI: uGUI (TextMeshPro) — UI Toolkit migration was planned
• Tests: Unity Test Framework (EditMode NUnit), under Assets/Tests/EditMode/
• Save system: local JSON (save.json in Application.persistentDataPath)
• Target platform: Windows / Steam (not yet integrated)

Folder layout:

Assets/
  Scripts/        Core, Simulation, UI systems
  Prefabs/         Rooms, employees, props, UI
  ScriptableObjects/
  Scenes/          MainMenu, GaragePrototype
  Art/             Placeholder image slots
  Materials/       URP materials
  Animations/
  PolygonOffice/   PAID Synty asset — do not ship
  Synty/           PAID Synty asset — do not ship
docs/              Design and implementation history (English)
MyAssets/Rivals/   Private reference logos — do not ship

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Documentation index

Document	Description
IA-TYCOON-PLAN.md	Historical concept document: original fantasy, rooms, art direction, tech stack, MVP and early development phases.
docs/realistic_ai_company_progression_plan.md	Active gameplay direction for realistic AI-company progression, AI Arena benchmarks, infrastructure, economy, difficulty and future multiplayer readiness.
docs/realistic_refactor_implementation_roadmap.md	Active implementation roadmap for the refactor from the old prototype systems into the new realistic startup experience.
docs/implementation-log.md	Phase-by-phase implementation log of what was actually built.
docs/art-direction-notes.md	Short art-direction rules (isometric, PolygonOffice usage, image slots).
docs/techpulse_diagnosis_and_plan.md	Diagnosis of the TechPulse feed bug and modular plan for a living social network.
docs/rivals_and_progression_system.md	Rival companies, logo mapping, wealth hierarchy and 2017–2026 timeline.
docs/model_foundry_rivals_and_progression_v2.md	v2 design: markets, eras up to 2032, rival archetypes, decision engine, TechPulse rules, data model.

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What is implemented

The prototype reached Phase 8 of the planned 10 phases:

• Garage and office diorama (PolygonOffice prefabs) with isometric camera.
• Founder + specialised hires (ML Engineer, Research Scientist, Data Engineer, Safety Researcher, Infrastructure Engineer, GPU Technician, MLOps Engineer, Backend Engineer, Finance Lead, Recruiter, Product Manager, Sales Executive, Community Manager).
• Project training loop with model selection (Vision / NLP / Agentic) and dataset choice (web scraping vs licensed).
• Office expansion tiers 1–4 (Corporate Suite, Secret R&D Lab, Modular Datacenter, Board Room).
• GPU upgrades, energy/thermal management and NOC panel.
• Procedural commercial contracts (max 3–4 active) with quality goals, deadlines, upfront payouts and penalties.
• Global AI timeline events and dynamic market modifiers (GPU shortage, EU data regulation, generative AI hype wave).
• TechPulse social feed (X/Twitter-style) with competitor posts, organic mentions, inactivity pressure and player launch reactions.
• Venture capital rounds (Series A/B/C) and IPO, Board of Directors with quarterly goals and Board Trust mechanic, M&A of small rivals.
• Dynamic line charts (cash over time, followers, model quality) and analytics panel.
• Local JSON save/load.
• EditMode NUnit tests (~20 tests passing as of Phase 8).

What is NOT finished

• Phase 9 (AGI era, Safety/Alignment crises, War Room, advanced safety hires) — planned, not built.
• Phase 10 (Steam demo, tutorial, accessibility, Steamworks integration, localization, final balancing) — planned, not built.
• Final original art (PolygonOffice/Synty must be replaced before any public build).
• Final original rival logos (reference logos must be replaced).
• Steam integration (Achievements, Steam Cloud, stats).
• Localization pass.
• Marketing material (trailer, screenshots, Steam page).

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Running the project

1. Open Unity Hub and add this folder with Unity 6000.5.0f1.
2. Open the project and let it import (this includes the paid PolygonOffice/Synty assets already present in the repo).
3. Open Assets/Scenes/MainMenu.unity or Assets/Scenes/GaragePrototype.unity and press Play.

For batch test runs from the repo root:

Unity.exe -batchmode -projectPath . -runTests -testPlatform EditMode -quit -logFile Logs/EditModeTests.log

(Use the full path to the Unity 6000.5.0f1 executable if Unity is not on PATH.)

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Licence

This repository is shared for educational/reference purposes only. No commercial release is permitted without:

1. Replacing all paid PolygonOffice / Synty assets with licensed or original art.
2. Replacing all reference rival logos in MyAssets/Rivals/ with original art.
3. Acquiring the appropriate commercial licences for any remaining third-party asset.

The code itself, where originally authored for this project, may be reused and adapted — but the assets carry their own licensing requirements.