The two dims stopped stacking, and centre court's crowd is graded off a lifted target

Oliver: "it is too dim to see anything on the centre court and the dark court."
Both were the same mistake — standBack was ADDED to a court's own dim instead of
being the default it falls back to. Centre court's crowd sheet is a night-lit
navy that is dark to begin with, and the night court dims the hard-court sheet
on top of that, so the pair of them went to mud.

standDim is now court.dim ?? TUNE.standBack, plus the rot. Centre court carries
a 0.06 of its own, the night court comes down 0.62 -> 0.5 (it no longer has the
base added to it), and clay and hard keep the 0.22 that was approved.

Centre court's sheet is also graded off a LIFTED target now — the old crowd it
matches sat at a mean luminance of 39 against clay's 96, dark enough to throw
the new roll's detail away before any dim ran. A 0.72 gamma on the target brings
the sheet to 60 and the faces come back.

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

assets/_crowdpass.py

@@ -55,7 +55,12 @@ PAL = 128              # colours a sheet is quantised to on save
 # HEAD, so re-running the tool after installing its own output cannot drift the palettes.
 GRADE_REF = '76ea1d0'
 
-COURTS = [('x_crowd', 'x_crowd2'), ('x_crowd_c', 'x_crowd_c2'), ('x_crowd_h', 'x_crowd_h2')]
+# sheet -> how much its grade TARGET is lifted before the histogram match (a gamma; 1.0 is the old
+# sheet as it was). Centre court's old crowd sat at a mean luminance of 39 against clay's 96 — dark
+# enough that the detail in the new roll was being thrown away, and then dimmed on top of that:
+# Oliver, "it is too dim to see anything on the centre court and the dark court". The night court
+# borrows the hard-court sheet and does its own dimming in `COURTS.dim`, so it is fixed there.
+COURTS = [('x_crowd', 0.72), ('x_crowd_c', 1.0), ('x_crowd_h', 1.0)]
 
 MIN_AREA, MAX_AREA = 150, 3000   # an arm blob: one pair of raised arms, or one arm
 ARM_H, ARM_W = (10, 70), (8, 90)  # ...and its shape, in px of the 1408x768 sheet
@@ -199,8 +204,11 @@ def main(review):
     print(f'{len(rows)} spectators can move, {both} of them with both poses (a real clap)')
 
     stack = np.concatenate(frames, 0)
-    for a_name, _ in COURTS:
-        lut = grade(A, old_sheet(a_name))              # the LOOK is judged on the seated frame...
+    for a_name, lift in COURTS:
+        ref = old_sheet(a_name)
+        if lift != 1.0:
+            ref = (255 * (ref / 255.0) ** lift).astype(np.uint8)
+        lut = grade(A, ref)                            # the LOOK is judged on the seated frame...
         pa = os.path.join(REFCHECK if review else HERE, a_name + ('_new.png' if review else '.png'))
         # ...and applied to the whole stack at once, so the frames cannot drift apart in colour
         Image.fromarray(lut(stack)).quantize(colors=PAL, method=Image.MEDIANCUT).save(pa, optimize=True)

index.html

@@ -661,6 +661,6 @@ if (location.hostname !== 'splatter-tennis.wuwi.one' && !window.Capacitor?.isNat
     </div>
   </div>
 </div>
-<script type="module" src="src/main.js?v=300"></script>
+<script type="module" src="src/main.js?v=301"></script>
 </body>
 </html>

src/config.js

@@ -297,10 +297,13 @@ export const TUNE = {
   // cheered (render's drawClapColumns). Between points the crowd used to be a photograph. This is
   // deliberately slow and single-column: a stand that fidgets constantly is a stand you look AT.
   fidgetEvery: 4.5,
-  // HOW FAR BACK THE STAND SITS. A flat dim over the crowd and the boards, on every court, before
-  // the night court's own `dim` and the splatter rot are added on top. Oliver: "all of the art could
-  // be colored a little more dim as it is perspective wise farther in the background and should not
-  // steal too much attention." The crowd is the only thing on screen that is 30 m away.
+  // HOW FAR BACK THE STAND SITS: a flat dim over the crowd and the boards, before the splatter rot
+  // is added on top. Oliver: "all of the art could be colored a little more dim as it is perspective
+  // wise farther in the background and should not steal too much attention." The crowd is the only
+  // thing on screen that is 30 m away.
+  // THIS IS THE DEFAULT, NOT A FLOOR. A court with its own `dim` (centre court's already-dark crowd,
+  // the night court) replaces it rather than adding to it — stacking the two is what made those two
+  // unreadable: "it is too dim to see anything on the centre court and the dark court".
   standBack: 0.22,
   // ---- damage. Bodies with hp (racket boss 'r', brute 'g') take damage in these units, so a big
   // boss is just a bigger hp number and every weapon stays proportional. Fractions are legal: they
@@ -694,7 +697,9 @@ export const UI = { hot: '#d9705f', warm: '#e0cc72', pick: '#cbd06a', cream: '#e
 //            sits up and drags, acrylic is the middle it always was.
 export const COURTS = [
   { id: 'grass', name: 'CENTRE COURT', sub: 'GRASS · fast, low skid', tile: 'court_grass',
-    ads: 'x_ads', crowd: 'x_crowd', stripes: true, line: '#e8e8dc', border: '#e8e8dc',
+    // dim 0.06: centre court's crowd is a night-lit navy sheet and is dark to begin with, so it
+    // takes almost none of the standBack default (see TUNE.standBack).
+    ads: 'x_ads', crowd: 'x_crowd', stripes: true, line: '#e8e8dc', border: '#e8e8dc', dim: 0.06,
     bounceY: 0.50, bounceXZ: 0.84,
     tennis:   { stands: '#232e42', tierA: '#2a3750', tierB: '#26324a', board: '#0e5c2e',
                 out: '#295c2d', lawn: '#4cae52', stripe: '#46a54c' },
@@ -726,7 +731,7 @@ export const COURTS = [
   // court and the whole picture stops being a night. Nothing else in COURTS carries it, so it is 0
   // everywhere else and reads as absent.
   { id: 'gloom', name: 'THE NIGHT COURT', sub: 'AFTER DARK · TRUE BOUNCE, NO LIGHT', tile: 'court_gloom',
-    ads: 'x_ads_h', crowd: 'x_crowd_h', stripes: false, line: '#dff6ff', border: '#c8dbe6', dim: 0.62,
+    ads: 'x_ads_h', crowd: 'x_crowd_h', stripes: false, line: '#dff6ff', border: '#c8dbe6', dim: 0.5,
     bounceY: 0.58, bounceXZ: 0.80,
     tennis:   { stands: '#0a0d15', tierA: '#0f131e', tierB: '#0c1019', board: '#131a2b',
                 out: '#0f1a15', lawn: '#16261e', stripe: '#16261e' },

src/render.js

@@ -235,7 +235,7 @@ function farB(z) {
 // Asset cache-buster — bump with main.js?v=N (see the img.src note below). EXPORTED because the
 // menu screens hang <img> tags on the same files, and two copies of this number is one copy too
 // many: the one that does not get bumped is the one that serves a cached 404.
-export const SPRV = 145;
+export const SPRV = 146;
 // The boot bar in main.js watches this. Nothing here CHANGES when things load — every sprite was
 // already requested at import — it just makes the wait visible and holds the menu back until the
 // last sheet has landed. See the onerror note below for the other half of "sometimes missing".
@@ -420,14 +420,15 @@ function tickFlashes(standsBottom) {
   ctx.globalAlpha = 1;
 }
 
-// How dark the STAND is: `TUNE.standBack` (every court, always — the stand is scenery a long way
-// behind the court and should not compete with it) plus the court's own night (`dim` on its COURTS
-// row, 0 everywhere but the night court) plus the rot the splatter palette brings with it. ONE function because it is applied
+// How dark the STAND is: the court's own `dim` if it names one (centre court's crowd sheet is
+// already night-dark, the night court is darker still), otherwise `TUNE.standBack` — the stand is
+// scenery thirty metres back and should not compete with the court — plus the rot the splatter
+// palette brings with it. ?? not ||: a court that says 0 means 0. ONE function because it is applied
 // in two places and they must agree exactly — the cached sheet and the live clap columns drawn over
 // it. Two copies of this number is a stand whose clapping columns pop brighter than the rest of it,
 // which is the same class of bug as the crowd frames drifting apart. Capped: past ~0.85 the stand
 // is a black rectangle and the applause stops reading at all.
-const standDim = pt => Math.min(0.88, TUNE.standBack + (court.dim || 0) + 0.26 * pt);
+const standDim = pt => Math.min(0.88, (court.dim ?? TUNE.standBack) + 0.26 * pt);
 
 // THE STAND MOVES IN COLUMNS, and the sheets are cut to match: `assets/_crowdpass.py` guarantees
 // the clap frame is pixel-identical to the seated one EXCEPT inside blobs that each sit inside ONE