Design mockup based on the prototype’s interface structure.
↳ Grub accidentally learns something useful.
Your queue is the dungeon
RPGQueue turns waiting for a World of Warcraft group into a small companion game. While the player is queued, a peon named Grub scavenges, trains, naps, and gets into trouble. The player influences that life through Feed, Work, and Praise actions.
The idea is a compact incremental game built around time that already exists in the player’s session. The companion’s simulation is tied to the queue, giving the experience a natural beginning and stopping point.
A small character with competing needs
Grub has vigor and morale alongside slower-growing skill and luck. Events move those values in different directions: training spends vigor to develop skill, while a nap helps restore vigor and morale. Random outcomes add small stories to the progression, such as Grub discovering a questionable trinket or learning something by accident.
The Lua implementation uses weighted events, with adjustments based on the peon’s state and player influence. That creates a relationship between caring for the character and watching what happens next. Feed, Work, and Praise provide simple interventions rather than a long rotation of commands.
Built around the queue
The prototype checks dungeon and raid queue states, with an optional scenario setting. Its simulation defaults to a five-second tick and stops when the active queue state ends. Companion state is kept in WoW SavedVariables so it can persist between sessions; this is not an offline progression system.
The implementation separates saved state, event definitions, the interface, and queue/tick control into four Lua modules. That makes it possible to change event balance without rewriting the portrait or queue detection.
Giving Grub a face
Development included repeated in-game interface iteration: a two-column layout, character portrait framing, stat bars, an event log, and a separate nameplate layer. The original conversation records adjustments to camera zoom and model scale, followed by work to keep Grub’s label readable above the model.
Those details matter in a companion game. The stats describe the simulation, but the portrait and short event messages give the player a character to care about.
Development
RPGQueue 0.1.0 brings together the queue-driven simulation, persistent companion state, and an iterated portrait interface. Developed by CranberryClock & Gizmo, it remains a prototype awaiting complete in-client validation.
UNDER THE HOOD
Architecture & loops
Queue time becomes companion time
The prototype connects queue detection, persistent peon state, weighted events, and player care actions.
Detect a queue
Core.lua evaluates dungeon/raid queue state and starts or stops the simulation.
Advance an active tick
The default five-second tick advances the companion simulation while the queue is active.
Resolve a weighted event
Events.lua selects an outcome influenced by Grub’s state and the player’s interventions.
Update Grub and the interface
Saved state holds vigor, morale, skill, luck, and recent log entries. UI.lua displays the portrait and progression.
Care for the companion
Feed, Work, and Praise influence the next part of the simulation.
Continue while queued; stop the ticker when the active queue ends. State persists through SavedVariables.
Architecture reconstructed from the Lua prototype. In-client gameplay validation remains outstanding.