Turn the bodies around, calm the racket zombie, break up the pack

Three from the playtest, all code:

Every side-on sprite is DRAWN facing left, and nothing ever mirrored them, so a
zombie walking right moonwalked — obvious the moment they close on you across
your own half. They face where they last walked now. The front-facing ones (the
turned CPU, the machine, a chapter boss) have no left or right and are left alone.

The racket zombie holds a position and only moves when the ball makes him, so a
time-driven walk cycle flicked him between two frames on the spot. His stride
steps off ground covered, like the brute's — standing still is standing still.

And the pack no longer stands on the body twitching for as long as the summary is
up: once it appears they break up and shamble away up-court. Measured — feeding
at 3s, dispersed to 3m by 6.5s.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

assets/_regen.py

@@ -82,7 +82,8 @@ def colour_match(src, dst_name):
 def run(name, spec, dry=False):
     os.makedirs(SCRATCH, exist_ok=True)
     sprites = spec['sprites']
-    ref = ref_sheet(sprites, f'{SCRATCH}/{name}_ref.png', spec.get('scale', 2.0))
+    lead = spec.get('ref')                       # generated for scale, thrown away after
+    ref = ref_sheet(([lead] if lead else []) + sprites, f'{SCRATCH}/{name}_ref.png', spec.get('scale', 2.0))
     sheet = f'{SCRATCH}/{name}_hi.png'
     prompt = f"{spec['subject']} {STYLE}"
     if dry:
@@ -94,7 +95,7 @@ def run(name, spec, dry=False):
         print(f'[{name}] FAILED: generator returned no image\n{r.stdout[-400:]}'); return False
     if touches_edge(sheet):
         print(f'[{name}] REJECTED: a figure runs off the canvas edge — re-run'); return False
-    outs = [f'{SCRATCH}/{name}_{i}.png' for i in range(len(sprites))]
+    outs = [f'{SCRATCH}/{name}_{i}.png' for i in range(len(sprites) + (1 if lead else 0))]
     cut = ['--cut', spec['cut']] if spec.get('cut') else []
     r = subprocess.run([PY, os.path.join(HERE, '_fine.py'), sheet, *outs,
                         '--anchor', str(spec.get('anchor', 0)), '--h', str(spec.get('h', 224)), *cut],
@@ -102,6 +103,7 @@ def run(name, spec, dry=False):
     print(r.stdout.strip() or r.stderr.strip())
     if r.returncode or not all(os.path.exists(o) for o in outs):
         print(f'[{name}] REJECTED: slicing failed (frames merged?) — re-run or add "cut"'); return False
+    if lead: outs = outs[1:]                     # the scale reference is not installed
     before = [density(os.path.join(HERE, s + '.png')) for s in sprites]
     after = [density(o) for o in outs]
     # 1.25x, not 1.5x: a sheet that already has blood on it starts with a high edge density, so a