Keep the praise word on screen, and take the cliff out of the groundstroke

Oliver on v371: the praise word is cut off on the left on the iPhone. It
is centred under the player's feet, so out wide it ran past the edge;
every pop is now clamped to the canvas by its measured width.

Step 4, measured first. The rally sim gets a human bot (taps on the timed
ring with a timing spread), a Climb mode and a lost-point breakdown. At
level 26 the ladder falls over six rungs and then goes flat: nearly every
lost point is the player's own early whiff, the CPU barely ever misses,
and the auto-run reaches everything, so no opponent dial decides points.
A quality ramp, a follow-through and CPU put-aways were each measured
and reverted; the options go to Oliver in PROJECT.md.

Shipped: in the rally modes q no longer drops from 1 to 0.43 one ms past
PERFECT; it falls smoothly to the window's edge (TUNE.qSeamless). A tap
30 ms early is q 0.86 instead of 0.61. Same window, same whiff edge. v372.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>

src/config.js

@@ -153,6 +153,9 @@ export const TUNE = {
                            // screen: a short swipe is a safe half-court ball, and only a committed
                            // one goes hunting the line, which is what makes going OUT a chosen risk.
   perfectMs: 45,           // |offset from window center| for PERFECT
+  qSeamless: 1,            // rally modes: past perfectMs, q falls from 1 to the window edge with no step.
+                           // 0 = the old curve, 1 - off/half, which dropped a groundstroke 1 ms past
+                           // PERFECT straight to q 0.43 (step 4, 2026-10-14 — see gameplay.trySwing)
   // The tennis CPU only exists in the OPENING match (after the transition, tennis never comes
   // back — duels use racket* dials), so these three are the "how long until the first game is won"
   // knobs. Testers needed several games to get past him: softer cap, twice the whiffs, and

src/gameplay.js

@@ -1687,6 +1687,15 @@ function trySwing(ch, isAI, qCap = TUNE.aiQualityMax) {
   const center = TUNE.swingWindup + win / 2;
   const off = Math.abs(t - center) / (win / 2);
   let q = Math.max(0.05, 1 - off);
+  // ...WITHOUT A CLIFF in the rally modes (step 4, 2026-10-14). The line above runs from the centre, so
+  // q was 1 inside perfectMs and 0.43 a millisecond outside it: a groundstroke's half-window is ~80 ms
+  // and PERFECT owns 45 of them. The volley's 1.8x window used to hide that (q 0.69 at the edge); step
+  // 1 made the rally groundstrokes, and a 30 ms early tap came back at q 0.6 (0.89 now). Same window,
+  // same PERFECT, same whiff edge — only the step between them is gone. It does NOT move the ring bot's
+  // win rate: points are decided by whiffs, not weak balls (see PROJECT.md, step 4's measurement).
+  const p = TUNE.perfectMs / 1000, half = win / 2;
+  if (rallyFeel() && !isAI && TUNE.qSeamless && half > p)
+    q = Math.max(0.05, 1 - (Math.abs(t - center) - p) / (half - p));
   if (Math.abs(t - center) * 1000 < TUNE.perfectMs) q = 1;
   ch.facing = dx >= 0 ? 1 : -1; // forehand right (righty), backhand left → mirrored sprite
   // the LIVE swipe outranks the released one: since the crossing fires the swing (input.js), the

src/render.js

@@ -2883,7 +2883,11 @@ export function render() {
     ctx.save();
     ctx.globalAlpha = Math.min(1, f * 3);           // holds, then a quick fade at the end
     ctx.font = B(13); ctx.textAlign = 'center'; ctx.textBaseline = 'top';
-    shadowText(p.text, Math.round(pr.x), Math.round(pr.y - (p.still ? 0 : (1 - f) * 14)), p.col || '#ffffff');
+    // kept on screen: a word under a player out wide (the rally's praise, v371) is centred on his feet,
+    // and "SHOT OF THE DAY" off a man near the left tramline lost its first letters on the iPhone
+    const hw = ctx.measureText(p.text).width / 2 + 3;
+    const x = hw * 2 < W ? Math.min(W - hw, Math.max(hw, pr.x)) : W / 2;
+    shadowText(p.text, Math.round(x), Math.round(pr.y - (p.still ? 0 : (1 - f) * 14)), p.col || '#ffffff');
     ctx.restore();
   }
   // (a PERFECT-contact spark ring lived here for one build — Oliver's verdict: too much. The