VAULT Visitor Guide

How to Explore VAULT

Use the visible movement controls to walk through doorways, inspect fixtures and items, open the map, search, share or bookmark an approved public location, restart, exit, and recover safely. Permanent Help remains available from every normal museum scene on desktop and mobile.

Move and Look Around

Use Forward, Back, Look left, Look right, Sidestep left, and Sidestep right. When the scene owns input, W or Up moves forward, S or Down moves back, A or Left looks left, D or Right looks right, Q sidesteps left, and E sidesteps right. On touch screens, supported swipes perform the same actions only when scrolling is unavailable. Every shortcut and gesture has a visible labeled control.

Doorways, Paths, and Return Routes

A highlighted doorway is an available graph-defined route. Enter doorway is the same action as Forward. Back follows the valid route behind you; dead ends preserve a safe Back or recovery action and never require changing the recipe.

Use the Map and Legend

The map is a live, non-modal navigation companion. It shows room topology, landmarks, your current position, and the same eight-direction heading used by the scene. It never shows a route trail, reachable-route line, or map breadcrumbs. Keep the map open while using every accepted keyboard, swipe, tap, or virtual movement control; the scene, map puck, and heading pointer update together. Opening, closing, reading, or scrolling the map never changes the recipe, share state, or browser history.

Inspect Fixtures, Items, and Images

At a display stop, choose Inspect fixture or press I when the scene owns keyboard input. Moving forward into the centered front of a nearby item-bearing display also opens that fixture; walls, backs, corners, solid faces, other directions, and distant fixtures remain blocked. Open an item to start with its first approved image. Images remain proportionally contained on their approved white background and appear in Main, then 2 through N order; when no approved image exists, VAULT uses its standard No Photo image. Closing inspection returns to the same museum position and orientation.

Search the Museum

Open a Search terminal and enter one to ten strings. Every submitted string must match. Search values remain in the active form only, are cleared when the surface closes, and are never placed in a visible URL, bookmark, share link, breadcrumb, history entry, log-safe snapshot, or guide state.

Find a Collection Vault

Use the Collection Vault action and submit exactly one username, public name, or email address. Username and public name are exact-match identifiers. Email lookup is privacy-safe: the value is sent only in the protected POST body, cleared before the outcome appears, never echoed, never listed publicly, and produces the same neutral result for missing, ambiguous, ineligible, or unavailable collectors.

Explore a Collection Vault

A resolved public Collection Vault shows only the approved public display name, represented categories, distinct eligible exhibits, aggregate quantity badges, category breadcrumbs, a visible return to the Collection Vault hub, and explicit exit, restart, and recovery actions. Current eligibility and privacy settings are authoritative on every access. Collection updates and regeneration are reflected on the next protected read; a changed location recovers through the current public vault rather than stale cached content.

Understand Context and About This Room

The concise title and breadcrumb identify VAULT, the current category or public Collection Vault, any represented category, and the current room role. About This Room explains the generated room purpose and date or search scope when available. Context text stays in the header or details panel and never covers exhibits or doorway controls.

First-Visit Tutorial and Permanent Help

The tutorial appears only after the first successful normal museum entry when the saved preference is eligible. Dismiss, skip, or complete it without moving the museum. Reopen the full guide through Help or How to Explore, and reset the tutorial preference from Help or More. Resetting the preference does not immediately interrupt the current scene; the tutorial becomes eligible for a later successful entry. If browser preference storage is blocked, unavailable, malformed, or cleared, Help remains fully usable; tutorial completion is kept only for the active session when possible and never changes room recipes, share links, navigation, or Collection Vault privacy state.

Return, Restart, and Exit

Choose Categories to return to category selection. Restart returns to the entry of the current ordinary room or the Collection Vault hub while preserving the current public recipe. Exit Collection Vault clears protected collection session and local collection context before returning to the VAULT entrance. Exit to VAULT entrance leaves the current room and returns to the root entry without carrying lookup values, token contents, form state, guide state, map state, or visitor-position fragments.

Recover from Invalid or Changed Links

An invalid or expired ordinary link, unsafe fragment, missing category, removed group, missing fixture, vanished node, invalid Collection Vault token, or changed collection scope never reveals why the protected resolution failed. VAULT selects the nearest compatible current target in this order when available: exact node, fixture, pairing, category hall, Collection Vault hub, or room entrance. Otherwise it presents a neutral unavailable state with Return to VAULT entrance, Choose a category, Retry, or Close.

Browser Back, Forward, and Deep Links

Browser history stores only canonical public room routes or the opaque Collection Vault route. Back and Forward reload the requested public recipe without replaying form, lookup, guide, map, overlay, or cleared sensitive state. Optional ordinary position fragments are validated independently. Malformed or unsupported deep links recover safely rather than corrupting navigation.

Accessibility, Printing, and Alternative Controls

Screen-reader and focus behavior are explicit: dialogs announce their titles and current sections, focus moves to a meaningful heading, remains inside the active surface, and returns to the invoking control when closed. The map is instead a labeled non-modal region: opening it does not move or trap focus, hide the scene, or disable navigation. Live status messages announce navigation, loading, recovery, and Collection Vault outcomes without repeating submitted identifiers. Help is keyboard and touch operable, uses labeled controls, preserves a logical reading order, respects forced-colors mode, reduced motion, 200% zoom, and large text, and does not move the museum while read. The printable HTML and plain-text guide contain the same authoritative sections and map symbols and remain understandable without imagery, color, gesture, or sound. Use the browser Print command from Help for a paper or PDF copy.

Map legend

You are here: Current location with a filled marker and facing pointer.
Entry: The validated room or Collection Vault entrance.
Collection Vault hub: The public collection hub and return-to-hub destination.
Exit: The validated exit from the current museum context.
Category portal: A portal to one represented category hall.
Doorway: A validated doorway to a public destination.
Fixture: A labeled display fixture that can be inspected.
Search terminal: A control that opens search without submitting automatically.
Search results room: An opaque room context containing bounded search results.
New Arrivals: The public room for the accepted inclusive 60-day arrival window.
Facing direction: The pointer shows the same committed N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, or NW heading as the scene.
Updated version available: A non-disruptive notice that a newer public collection revision is available.