Braindance and specialized scenes
Braindances coordinate rewindable scenes, recorded animation, layered clues, and cleanup. Custom braindance playback remains Experimental.
The native feature is not one resource or one scene-node option. A reviewable candidate crosses all of these owners:
questphase entry, player hold, and exit cleanup
-> rewindable .scene and its entry/exit contract
-> .scenerid actor, facial, cyberware, and camera channels
-> world scene markers, camera entity, clue entities, and support props
-> visual/audio/thermal clue events and discovery facts
-> journal progress, interruption cleanup, and replay policy
Breaking any join can still leave the neighboring files structurally valid.
For example, a .scenerid can serialize while its scene event points at the
wrong resource/serial pair, and a clue can appear on a timeline while its
world entity or discovery handoff is absent.
Reading route
Read these pages in order:
- Ownership and resource chain — which resource owns quest flow, rewindable screenplay, recorded animation, support entities, markers, clue state, and cleanup.
- RID playback and rewind — how RID resource/serial identities meet scene event references, and why body, facial, cyberware, camera, duration, and rewindability form one contract.
- Clue layers, cleanup, and acceptance — visual/audio/thermal clue ownership, normal and interrupted exits, save-backed state, replay policy, and a practical eight-case test campaign.
Read Scene resource anatomy, Screenplay sections and events, Entry, exit, and quest handoff, and Persistent state first. Braindance adds contracts to ordinary scenes; it does not replace them.
Vanilla references
Extract these resources from your own installed archives into a disposable inspection project. Do not publish or package the extracted files.
| Depot path | Focused question |
|---|---|
base\quest\side_quests\sq012\scenes\sq012_02a_braindance.scene | How one current vanilla scene joins a rewindable section, three RID handlers, support props, clue layers, interruption, and named entry/exit points. |
base\animations\quest\side_quests\sq012\sq012_braindance\rid\sq012_braindance__part_a.scenerid | How a version-5 scnRidResource owns actor and camera tags plus body, facial, cyberware, and camera animation buffers. |
base\quest\side_quests\sq012\entities\sq012_02a_braindance_bdview.ent | The visual-layer support entity selected by a scene prop record. |
base\quest\side_quests\sq012\entities\sq012_02a_braindance_bdfog.ent | The fog support entity selected by a scene prop record. |
base\quest\side_quests\sq012\entities\sq012_02a_braindance_bdsetup.ent | The render-to-texture setup entity selected by a scene prop record. |
base\quest\main_quests\prologue\q004\scenes\q004_05_bd_yorinobu.scene | A much larger main-quest comparison with one rewindable section, layered clues, RID events, quest nodes, and BD action management. |
base\quest\main_quests\prologue\q004\phases\q004_braindance.questphase | The surrounding quest-side setup and teardown decomposition; it is not a self-contained scene template. |
The first two resources were re-extracted from the local 2.31a archives and
serialized with WolvenKit 8.19.0 on 2026-08-09. The focused sq012 scene
contains three scnRidResourceHandler entries, one
scnRewindableSectionNode, 24 scnPlayRidAnimEvent events, three RID-camera
events, six clue events, and two braindance-visibility events. Those counts are
Observed in vanilla for that exact resource only, not minimums or a
copy-ready design.
What you will learn
You will learn to:
- name every owner in the resource chain and the typed identity used at each join;
- inspect a current vanilla reference without redistributing it;
- distinguish serialization success from RID/event compatibility and runtime behavior;
- design a mod-owned candidate and its cleanup contract without relying on a compatible authoring tools;
- run the eight test cases that cover forward playback, rewind, clue layers, normal cleanup, interrupted cleanup, and replay.
Creating compressed animation buffers requires a compatible animation production tool. Inspect the RID/event relationships before producing new assets, then test playback, seek, rewind, and cleanup in game.
Next: Ownership and resource chain.