Splatter: chevrons in perspective, and a smash that actually flies

The chevrons were stepped along the SCREEN line at a fixed size, so they read as
a flat sticker over a 3D court. They now step through world space and take their
size from their own projection scale — near ones roughly twice the far ones —
and they fade IN toward the target so the eye is walked up the lane instead of
being handed a uniform stripe. The arrowhead scales with the target's own depth
too. (proj is a true projective map, so the screen direction stays constant
along the line; only size and alpha needed to vary.)

Hard shots now fly hard: serve pace is weighted onto quality (19 base + 22×q,
so 21 -> 41 m/s) instead of 21 -> 28. Two things had to give way for it.

Serve topspin was a fixed 1 + 0.35q, which meant a fast flat ball could not
both clear the tape and land on a target, so the net-loft loop throttled every
smash back to walking pace — measured 21.8 m/s whether you drew 60px or 95px.
TUNE.serveSpin 1.3 lets it leave flat and DIVE, which is what a smash is.

And the loft loop's margin was doHit's quality cushion, which taxed exactly the
shots meant to hurt. It's now sized to the real error it exists to cover: the
sim samples the net plane once a frame, so a diving ball can test below the tape
when the closed form clears it. Margin = descent rate × the dt clamp. A flat
drive pays almost nothing, a lob pays what it must.

Measured, target 20m out: 24.7 / 32.2 / 41 m/s for weak / mid / full draw. At
the net it's 9.6 / 11.2 / 11.6 — still the slow floaty lob, as it should be.

Ball-vs-shambler contact gets a crude sweep (radius + half a frame's travel),
because a 41 m/s ball steps 0.7m per frame at 60fps and 1.6m at main.js's dt
clamp, both wider than a shambler. Verified the full smash connects at both.

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

zombies.js

@@ -195,6 +195,13 @@ export function updateZombies(dt) {
     }
   }
 
+  // ponytail: crude swept collision — grow the contact window by half the distance the ball
+  // covers this frame. A full-draw smash moves ~0.7 m per frame (1.6 m on a 25 fps device, where
+  // main.js clamps dt), which is wider than a shambler, so a discrete point test tunnels straight
+  // through bodies. Upgrade to a real segment-vs-circle test if the fudge ever reads as a phantom
+  // hit; at these speeds and radii it doesn't.
+  const ballSweep = ball.active ? Math.hypot(ball.vx, ball.vz) * dt * 0.5 : 0;
+
   for (let i = zombies.length - 1; i >= 0; i--) {
     const zb = zombies[i];
     if (!zb) continue; // a bomb detonation splices several out mid-loop and can gut the array under us
@@ -230,7 +237,7 @@ export function updateZombies(dt) {
     }
     if (ball.active && ball.lastHit === 'P' && ball.y < 1.9) {
       const d = Math.hypot(ball.x - zb.x, ball.z - zb.z);
-      if (d < (zb.variant === 'g' ? 0.75 : 0.55)) { // the brute is a bigger target
+      if (d < (zb.variant === 'g' ? 0.75 : 0.55) + ballSweep) { // the brute is a bigger target
         if (ball.bomb) { // detonate on first contact, whatever the pace
           explode(ball.x, ball.z); ball.bomb = false;
           spentBall(); break; // zombies mutated — stop this frame's loop
@@ -311,7 +318,8 @@ export function updateZombies(dt) {
     if (!dead && e.y < 1.9) for (let j = zombies.length - 1; j >= 0; j--) {
       const zb = zombies[j];
       if (!zb || zb.variant === 'r') continue; // side balls pass the boss; !zb: kills can sweep mid-loop
-      if (Math.hypot(zb.x - e.x, zb.z - e.z) < (zb.variant === 'g' ? 0.75 : 0.55)) {
+      if (Math.hypot(zb.x - e.x, zb.z - e.z) < (zb.variant === 'g' ? 0.75 : 0.55)
+                                               + Math.hypot(e.vx, e.vz) * dt * 0.5) { // same sweep: clones inherit the smash pace
         if (zb.variant === 's' && e.vz < 0 && !(zb.shieldT > 0)) { zb.shieldT = TUNE.shieldDown; pock(0.9, 1800); } // chair blocks these too
         else if (e.pow >= TUNE.zSplatQ || zb.variant === 'f') {
           if (zb.hp > 1) { zb.hp--; splat(0.4); } // wounds brutes AND shamblers