Make the parry reachable, and stop a boss dying to one flame ball

Six reports from Oliver's first playtest of the boss build. Two mattered.

A boss sprite turned up in the shambler crowd because z_B1.png and z_b1.png
are the same file on a case-insensitive filesystem — writing the boss frames
silently overwrote the 'b' shambler's first two frames, and `ls` only ever
showed the original lowercase name. Restored from HEAD~1, boss frames renamed
z_boss*, and the rule is now in the asset pipeline notes.

The parry was unreachable, which killed the entire new mechanic: P.swingT is
only set in keyPressed's `phase === 'rally'` branch, and splatter sits in
pretoss almost all the time, so every tap aimed at an incoming shot tossed the
serve ball instead of swinging. An incoming shot inside parryArm now owns the
tap in every phase, with its own generous reach and window — this is a phone,
one thumb, against something aimed at you. The three fail cases (too early,
too late, no tap) are what keep it a timing skill. The swish no longer eats
shots: it runs first in keyPressed and was swallowing the very ball the parry
was about to return.

One flame ball killed a 16 hp boss, and that was a bug rather than tuning. A
flame ball is not consumed on contact (full pierce, so it can cut a lane) but a
boss is not removed when hit, so the same ball re-wounded it every frame. Boss
bodies now take a contact cooldown and flame spends itself on them. Chapter 1
costs 4 flame balls or 16 clean smashes, and bossHp goes 10 to 16.

The boss had no wounded state while throwing — correct, the wound skins were
standing poses only. New sheet gives all four damage states their own overarm
pitch. The ball machine's four painted rects are replaced with a real sheet,
idle and firing, keeping only the muzzle glow procedural because the telegraph
has to read at 20px tall. And the player's blood no longer sits on him as a
painted layer: live drip and the screen-edge wash, nothing else.

Tennis untouched: 30 tapped points, 50 hits / 0 whiffs. 45-game soak clean,
all four chapters firing.

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

gameplay.js

@@ -775,6 +775,16 @@ export function keyPressed(code) {
   // a swish cleaves adjacent shamblers — but it's on a cooldown now: the panic button, not the
   // default attack. A whiff costs nothing (nothing was in range), a connect locks it for meleeCool.
   if (G.mode === 'splatter' && G.meleeT <= 0 && meleeSwipe(P.x, P.z, TUNE.meleeRange)) G.meleeT = TUNE.meleeCool;
+  // AN INCOMING SHOT OWNS THE TAP. The parry used to live behind the `phase === 'rally'` branch at the
+  // bottom of this function — and in splatter you are in `pretoss` almost all of the time, so a tap
+  // aimed at a machine's shot tossed the serve ball instead and the return was, in practice,
+  // impossible. Oliver could not land one. A hostile ball in the air is the most visible thing on the
+  // screen, so "the tap is a swing at it" keeps one gesture meaning one thing at any given moment.
+  if (G.mode === 'splatter' && shots.some(s => Math.hypot(s.x - P.x, (s.z - P.z) * 0.8) < TUNE.parryArm)) {
+    P.swingT = 0; P.pose = 'swing'; P.poseT = 0; G.swung = true;
+    swish(0.3);
+    return;
+  }
   if (G.horde || G.mgT > 0) return; // auto-fire modes: a tap only swishes, never serves
   if (G.changeover) return; // the breather is mandatory — the melee swish above still works
   if (G.interlude && G.interlude.introT > 0) return; // let the umpire finish announcing the duel
@@ -964,7 +974,9 @@ export function update(dt) {
         r: TUNE.reach * (volley ? VOLLEY.reach : 1), w: TUNE.swingWindow * (volley ? VOLLEY.window : 1) });
     }
     trySwing(P, false); // a contact resets swingT to -1 inside trySwing
-    const win = TUNE.swingWindow * (ball.active && ball.bounces === 0 ? VOLLEY.window : 1); // match trySwing's volley window
+    // volley-length window while a hostile shot is in the air too, or the swing clock expires at
+    // 0.24 s and closes TUNE.parryWindow (0.34 s) before it has had its chance
+    const win = TUNE.swingWindow * ((shots.length || (ball.active && ball.bounces === 0)) ? VOLLEY.window : 1);
     if (P.swingT > TUNE.swingWindup + win + 0.02) { P.swingT = -1; if (G.phase === 'rally') swish(); logWhiff(); } // log even if the point ended mid-swing
   }
   expirePose(P, dt);