Gore opens in the gore, the theme comes back, and every mode gets a board

Splatter gore no longer makes you win a game of tennis first — the mode you
pick is the mode you get, with the man you came to play already turned. The
transition itself is untouched and still reachable; it just isn't a toll booth.

The menu theme could only ever be started, never brought back, so the first
run of a session silenced it for good while the court's ambience followed you
into the menu. Starting a bed now un-ducks it too.

Three world boards instead of one: kills, opponents felled, and games taken
off the CPU, each with its own name prompt and its own row per player.

...and the gore economy stops paying a barrel for every game won past game 16,
while the shamblers, the mix and the ball machines keep escalating past the
point they all used to stop.

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

src/config.js

@@ -121,10 +121,17 @@ export const TUNE = {
                        // ceiling after 105 seconds of splatter, i.e. during game 2 — so shamble speed
                        // was never a progression lever at all. g12 matches the old top speed (1.75
                        // m/s), and it climbs to 2.7 m/s by game 22.
-  zSpeedMax: 2.9,      // cap on that ramp (top speed = zSpeed * 3.9). runnerVMax still caps runners.
+  // THE LATE GAME HAD STOPPED GETTING HARDER (Oliver, 2026-08-15: "it now gets too easy to just
+  // play through — the splatter gore should be unbelievably hard towards the end"). Every ramp in
+  // this block used to reach its ceiling by about game 25 and sit there, while the barrel economy
+  // above kept climbing — so a run got RICHER after game 25 and never more dangerous. The body
+  // COUNT still caps (zMaxCap is a readability ceiling on a 270 px screen and stays), but what
+  // those bodies are and how fast they arrive now keeps climbing well past it.
+  zSpeedMax: 3.6,      // cap on that ramp (top speed = zSpeed * 4.6), reached ~game 28 instead of 22
   nastyPerGame: 0.03,  // share of spawns drawn from the advanced roster, per finished game
-  nastyMax: 0.75,      // ...capped here (g14 matches the old 0.42, g25 hits the cap). The old mix was
-                       // frozen at exactly 0.42 from game 12 to the end of the run.
+  nastyMax: 1.0,       // ...and by game 34 there are NO ordinary shamblers left in the mix at all:
+                       // every body that walks out is off the advanced roster. That is the wall the
+                       // end of a run is supposed to be.
   hordeGrow: 0.2,      // horde length AND spawn rate both scale by this per set already banked
   zHordeCap: 34,       // hard body ceiling DURING a horde. A horde ignores the director cap on
                        // purpose (that is the point of it), but hordeGrow means a late wave now tries
@@ -140,7 +147,11 @@ export const TUNE = {
   // so it never crosses your baseline and never scores — it is a standing threat you choose when to
   // deal with, which is the target-priority decision the game was missing.
   machEvery: 4,     // games before the first machine can appear, and games between them after
-  machMax: 2,       // machines allowed on court at once
+  machMax: 2,       // machines allowed on court at once...
+  machMaxPer: 18,   // ...plus one more for every this many games survived, up to machMaxCap. A third
+  machMaxCap: 4,    // and fourth gun is the one kind of late pressure that does NOT crowd the
+                    // ground: they hold position and shoot, so the court stays readable while the
+                    // number of things that can reach you goes up.
   machHp: 6,        // splat-quality hits to wreck one. It is a steel cart, not a body — and it now
                     // shows the damage on the way down (z_machw1 dented, z_machw2 split open)
   machRoll: 1.6,    // m/s it trundles when it repositions. It CANNOT fire while rolling, which is
@@ -427,11 +438,16 @@ export const TUNE = {
   dmgBeam: 8,       // what it takes off a BOSS. An ordinary body is not damaged by the beam, it is
                     // DELETED by it (see fireBeam); bosses "must suffer severely" but survive.
   // ---- the weapon barrel: the only way to get the four weapons that are not on the duel ladder
-  barrelEvery: 3,   // games between barrels being rolled on (like the ball machine's machEvery)
-  barrelRamp: 8,    // ...and the gap SHRINKS by one for every this many games finished, floored at
-                    // every game (g8 every 2, g16+ every game). Late runs live on the barrels: past
-                    // the point where every tin is capped, fast tapping was the only way left to
-                    // keep up, and "more inventory for strategic use" is the answer to that.
+  // HALVED, AND FLOORED (Oliver, 2026-08-15: "in splatter gore it now gets too easy to just play
+  // through, maybe we should reduce the barrels again — pretty early in the game every won game
+  // gives a barrel"). He is right and the arithmetic says so: at 3/8 the gap hit ONE at game 16 and
+  // stayed there, so the whole back half of a run handed you a weapon for every game you won, which
+  // is the opposite of a difficulty curve. The ramp is still there — the late game does need more
+  // inventory than the early one — it is just slower and it stops.
+  barrelEvery: 5,   // games between barrels being rolled on (like the ball machine's machEvery)
+  barrelRamp: 14,   // ...and the gap SHRINKS by one for every this many games finished
+  barrelFloor: 3,   // ...but never below this. g14 every 4, g28 every 3, and that is as good as it
+                    // ever gets — a barrel is a reward for surviving, never an income.
   barrelRoll: 2.6,  // m/s it trundles across the far court — fast enough to have to be led
   barrelHp: 1,      // anything pops it: ball, pellet, bomb, flame, swish. It is a target, not a body
   barrelH: 1.15,    // drawn height (a body is 1.8)
@@ -671,7 +687,9 @@ export const MODES = [
   { id: 'classic', name: 'CLASSIC TENNIS', sub: 'REAL TENNIS · BEST OF THREE SETS', art: 'mode_classic' },
   { id: 'zombie',  name: 'ARCADE',         sub: 'ONE GAME PER OPPONENT · BLOOD ONLY', art: 'mode_arcade' },
   { id: 'cup',     name: 'THE TOURNAMENT', sub: 'FOUR ROUNDS · THE CHAMPION WAITS', art: 'mode_cup' },
-  { id: 'gore',    name: 'SPLATTER GORE',  sub: 'THE MATCH TURNS · SURVIVE IT', art: 'mode_gore' },
+  // ...and gore no longer opens on a game of tennis (see gameplay.startGore), so its blurb stopped
+  // promising one: the match already turned, you just arrived late
+  { id: 'gore',    name: 'SPLATTER GORE',  sub: 'NO WARM-UP · SURVIVE THE DEAD CLUB', art: 'mode_gore' },
 ];
 
 // THE SETUP SCREEN'S TOP ROW (Oliver's two-step menu, 2026-08-14): three posters, and picking one