Three things from the phone test.
The drag meant two different things depending on invisible state: aiming from
pretoss, but walking the player around while the last ball was still in the
air. That "mode between the hits" read as a bug, so it's gone — canAimServe now
covers every phase of splatter, and firing over a live ball is allowed again
(the old one flies on as a ballistic clone). That was the mid-rally re-toss
that used to be the spam vector, and it's safe now because the brake moved into
the pull: a rhythm of lazy 30px pulls fires 100 shots in 30s and kills NOTHING
(the court fills up instead), while 85 committed full pulls kill 11.
hitServe never had doHit's net-clearance loop, so every shot at a shambler
hugging the tape died in the net — not balance, a missing loop. Both paths now
trade pace for arc until the ball is genuinely over, and the ceiling goes 8 ->
12 tries because a target right behind the net needs a near-vertical drop
(measured: clears the tape by 0.20m and connects). The trade is real: the loft
arrives slower and the walk-lead was computed for the original pace, so a lob
is honestly the less reliable shot.
And the camera now rises and leans back a little while the slingshot is drawn.
That steeper look is what makes the gap between the net and the bodies behind
it readable — the shot that used to be blind. Eased once per frame before
anything projects, since one sheared frame would be visible.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The ball economy made it harder in the wrong way: waiting for a ballboy is
friction, not difficulty, and walking with the finger was one gesture too many
for anyone to discover. Both are out — a spent ball hands you a fresh one
again, and the thumb only ever does the slingshot.
The brake moves into the gesture instead. The pull's LENGTH is now the shot's
power and nothing else: under TUNE.zSplatQ it merely staggers, at full draw
it's quality 1.0 with the PERFECT flash and hitstop. A lazy rhythm of short
pulls can't kill anything, so tempo stops being a strategy.
The pull's DIRECTION is a ray, not a landing point, which is the ergonomic fix
for having to drag off the bottom of the phone: distance to the target no
longer costs drag length. The first shambler standing in the lane eats the
ball, whether it's 5 or 21 metres away, and the cone widens with range so
distant lanes stay pickable. Full power now sits at 95px of travel.
Also gone: the free predictive auto-lock on a directionless aim (zombieTarget
returns null with no direction, and a bare hold no longer fires at all). Melee
goes back to cleaving the cluster — it's the panic button — with the 1s
cooldown left in as the brake. The reticle reads power throughout: cool blue
only staggers, hot red kills, the drawn band grows behind you, and the pull
clicks the moment it crosses the kill threshold.
Verified by simulated touch gestures: 10px cancels, 35px = 0.31 (stagger),
60px = 0.60, 95px = 1.00; the same 60px pull reaches shamblers at 5m, 21m and
diagonally; 22 serves in 30s, so the pace is back.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The slingshot serve didn't fix the gameplay because four things were free at
once: pure-hold auto-target with predictive lead, a hardcoded 0.62 serve
quality, infinite ammo with an instant mid-rally re-toss, and a melee swish on
every single tap that cleaved the whole cluster. Perfecting the pretoss/toss
rhythm beat the game; no skill required.
The ball is scarce now. A spent ball LIES where it died (G.loose, ringed on
court) and there is no serve until it's back in your hand: walk it down
(instant, and the only reason to leave the baseline), let a boy scoop it, wait
out TUNE.looseMax, or watch a shambler swallow it — the one real punishment.
Fire rate is a positioning decision instead of a thumb-tempo one.
Also: the far backstop rebounds a ball with pace left, still lethal on the way
home and volleyable (trySwing lets P re-hit their own ball in splatter); melee
drops to nearest-one-only on a 1s cooldown; and the mid-rally re-toss is gone.
With no ball in hand the thumb-drag steers your legs instead of the reticle —
without that, walking your ball down is impossible on touch.
TUNE.looseMax is the fire-rate knob. Measured: ~4s per serve standing still,
~0.4s if you go and get it. 600 taps in 10s now yield exactly one serve.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Feedback batch from a phone playtest:
- Winning a game no longer auto-sweeps the court. The survivors stay and must
be killed by hand (no new spawns, no scoring during the mop-up); only once the
court is clear does play advance to the changeover / next game / set. Replaces
sweepCourt() with a G.clearing gate + proceedAfterClear(). "CLEAR THE COURT".
- Classic shamblers (a/b) now soak one splat-quality wound before they drop
(shamblerHp=2) — swapping to new z_aw/z_bw wound skins that bleed the thin
dynamic trickle plus a small impact pop. Only the runner stays one-shot glass;
brute/boss unchanged. Ball, pellets and triple side-balls all respect hp.
- Winning a SET shows a centered milestone card (a real pause) before the horde;
one reusable drawCard() now backs both it and the reworded sudden-death card.
- Player is no longer pinned to the baseline: free to advance up-court on
keyboard (bounded at the net); touch keeps the baseline (drag is the serve-aim)
and the horde/GUN burst re-brace there.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Tins now accumulate on a courtside rack (cap 3) instead of replacing each other; a PLAIN slot banks specials for later, and GUN is a charge you pop for an auto-fire burst. Tap the rack or press 1-5 to choose what your serve throws. A fresh delivery auto-equips but never overrides a deliberate PLAIN, and the 1:1 sudden-death duel forces plain balls.
HUD gets real art: generated pixel-art weapon icons, an ornate Wimbledon scoreboard PNG backing the live text (no more code-drawn boxes on top), and a bundled Silkscreen pixel font replacing the system serif. Rack tiles get padding, count-over-label alignment, and an infinity marker on the ball.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Personal lane offset (homeOff ±0.8m) + a per-zombie shamble wobble so
on your half they fan around you instead of stacking into one column.
- Eaten check weights depth by 0.75 (z is foreshortened in the projection),
so a head-on shambler kills you when it LOOKS on top of you — fixes
"they touch me and I don't die." Lateral reach unchanged.
- Revert aiFlub 0.14 -> 0.09 (undo the CPU weakening).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Wire the new assets/audio/*.wav samples over the synth SFX:
- Ball hits: per-side tennis-player / tennis-opponent on serve & return,
now with a stadium reverb tail (same convolver as umpire/aww).
- Crowd: tennis-applaus on your points/games (louder on big moments);
tennis-aww when the opponent scores or you're eaten (reverb tail).
- Ambient bed: tennis-ambient-loop from first tap, 500Hz lowcut, low vol.
- Zombie music: zombie-mode loop when splatter kicks in (800Hz lowcut),
fades out for the 1:1 sudden-death duel and back in after.
- Headshots: random headshot-1/-2 on every zombie kill (killZombie).
audio.js: sfx() one-shot player w/ rate+reverb opts, loopBed() beds with
duck/fade, aww() wrapper, hotter reverb send on the umpire voice.
Also: normal opponent aiFlub 0.09 -> 0.14 (a little easier to beat).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- start screen: SPLATTER TENNIS logo + slogan, controls kept
- scoreboard redrawn as a real broadcast board (server ball, name, sets,
games, highlighted points cell); weapon stock moved to a status strip
- kills-to-next-point pips (NEXT ○○○) so the K-kill gate is visible;
TUNE.killPips toggles it
- miss-debug HUD off by default (TUNE.missHud 0), dev-only now
- eaten screen crows "NEW BEST" when the run beats the stored high score
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
1 kill = 1 point made a tennis game trivially short (4 kills). Gate
player scoring behind TUNE.killsPerPoint (default 3) — K kills bank one
point, the rest just splatter. Opponent breaches stay 1-for-1, so the
asymmetry is where the pressure comes from. Live-tunable in the T panel;
set to 1 to restore the old behavior.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The knob stays (TUNE.fps in the T panel) for anyone who wants to trade
smoothness for battery; the pile cache and GC fixes keep their savings.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Runner counter (no new weapon needed — one you don't hold when it shrieks
can't save you): the sprinter is now a GLASS CANNON — any ball contact at
any quality bursts it (main ball and triple-serve side balls; melee and
pellets already killed it). The hold-to-aim auto-lock targets the most
advanced zombie = the charging runner, so touch-and-release is the panic
button. Plus runnerVMax 4.2: the late-game speed ramp is capped so runners
stay humanly reactable.
Battery (iPhone drain):
- TUNE.fps = 30 (T-panel tunable, 0/60 = uncapped): frame-skip cap in the
RAF loop — halves paint work on a 810x1440 canvas, the dominant cost.
dt clamp raised 0.033 -> 0.04 so 30fps doesn't run 1% slow-motion.
- Gore piles pre-rendered to per-pile cached canvases (rebuilt on growth /
orientation change): 1 drawImage per pile per frame instead of ~26
ellipse paths — late-game courts had ~800 path fills per frame.
- matchMedia('(pointer: coarse)') hoisted out of the render loop (was
allocating a MediaQueryList every pretoss frame).
Verified: weak (pow .05) ball kills a runner; max-ramp runner v = 4.2
exactly; piles render from cache (screenshot, pl.cv set); frame-cap
arithmetic yields clean every-other-tick at 60Hz RAF (RAF itself is paused
in this pane — logic deterministic); tennis serve benchmark 30/36 across
runs (flub-band; diff is provably tennis-neutral); no console errors.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Umpire chair moved courtside (UMP_X 5.6, was 7.1 — which projected to
x=272 on a 270px-wide portrait canvas: literally one pixel off-screen).
Tap-cheat coords follow the constant.
- Generated pixel-art night crowd (x_crowd.png) replaces the tier stripes +
random dots; drawn in 16 columns that bounce independently while the crowd
cheers. Old procedural crowd kept as the loading fallback.
- Generated courtside sponsor boards (x_ads.png): ACEADE, TOPSPIN & CO,
VOLLEX, NETTO GRIP, SLAMWICH — tiled at native aspect so lettering is
never half-cut at any viewport width. Replaces the 'SPLATTER OPEN' text.
- One rot tint over crowd + boards driven by the shared paletteT() (new
helper), so the stadium dims into splatter and brightens back for duels.
Verified: fresh origin; tennis + splatter screenshots (boards tile cleanly,
crowd reads, tint dims, umpire on-screen beside the court); umpire triple-tap
works at the new chair position; tennis serve benchmark 33/36 across two runs
(first 12 was flub noise); no console errors.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- RES 2 -> 3: phone screens now DOWNSCALE the canvas (crisp pixels) instead
of upscaling it (soft). Umpire-tap coords un-hardcoded from RES=2.
- Flatter lens: camZ 36 -> 42 with camF scaled per orientation (406/580) so
the PLAYER stays the same size — far-court zombies render ~25% bigger and
finally read as individuals from the baseline.
- Smoother animation: 4-frame walk cycles for both classic shamblers and the
runner's sprint (new sheets, same style anchor; z_a1-4, z_b1-4, z_f1-4).
Same cycle frequency — frames subdivide the stride. Render falls back to
2 frames per variant until its sheet loads.
- Tiered gore (GORE_MUL): the more advanced the zombie, the more absurd the
mess — classics 1x (base bumped 24 -> 30 particles), runner 1.8x, shield
2.5x, racket boss 3x, brute 4x (120 particles, a scatter of stains, an
instant size-3 mound).
Verified: fresh origin, canvas 1440px, umpire triple-tap works at RES 3,
all 4 anim frames cycle at the old stride rate, brute kill = 120 parts /
2 stains / size-3 pile, far-court lineup screenshot clearly readable,
portrait layout numbers correct (810x1440, camF 580), tennis 11/12,
no console errors.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Oliver's six complaints, addressed:
1. Opponent never came — a racket zombie now spawns on EVERY game you win
(if none alive); endHorde no longer double-spawns
2. No wave-cleared feeling — sweepCourt: at game end the surviving wave
collapses, every game gets a real beat (gameBeatT 1.6 / changeover 4.5),
and 'GAME N' announces the next wave when play re-arms
3. Serve-posture lockup during machine gun — root cause: any 'over' beat
expiring into setupPoint() -> pretoss during auto-fire (no movement outside
rally, no serving during horde/GUN). The over-expiry now returns auto-fire
modes to 'rally', never the serve loop
4. Forced bomb spending — specials commit ONLY on deliberate serves: flick
(or arrow-aimed keyboard serve) fires the tin, plain tap keeps it; serve
prompt teaches it ('FLICK FIRES THE BOMB - TAP KEEPS IT')
5. Auto-aim — free-aim: the flick vector maps to a landing point (length =
depth, up to 22m), zombies within zSnap 1.4 magnet the shot, otherwise the
ball lands exactly where flicked; taps keep the old auto-target assist;
flicks now also work at the toss apex
6. Zombies walking through you — option (a): touch is honest. eatenR 0.9
(brute +0.2) matches the visual sprite overlap
Phase 13 — SUDDEN DEATH interlude: court clear + un-dueled racket zombie +
about to serve -> 'Quiet, please. Play will resume.' / 'Sudden death.' One
point under REAL tennis rules (line calls live, the boss plays every ball,
spawns paused). Win (line call, double bounce, or regicide by any weapon) =
the next tin delivered on the spot; lose (out, or its return passes you) =
a game on their scoreboard + an instant 5-shambler surge. One duel per
opponent. New lines: play_resume.m4a, sudden_death.m4a.
Verified in browser: horde 'over' beat -> rally (lockup dead); game win ->
sweep + boss + beat -> SUDDEN DEATH chains naturally; duel lose path (GAME.
THEM., surge 5, scoreboard), no re-duel, fresh-boss duel, bomb regicide ->
tin on the spot; tap serve keeps stock, real touch-flick consumes + lands
at the flicked point, magnet snaps when near; eaten at 0.85m; tennis 11/12;
no console errors. PLAN.md/HANDOFF updated: plan v2 complete.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Deliveries cycle BOMB -> TRIPLE -> FIRE -> GUN (G.deliveries indexes the
ladder); one tin at a time, a fresh delivery replaces unspent stock. All
weapons stay one-thumb: the serve auto-consumes, zero new inputs.
- Triple serve (x3): one real serve fans two ballistic clones +-6deg (extras[]
in zombies.js — NOT the reverted rapid-fire: each fan costs a proper serve).
Side balls respect variant rules (wound brutes, clank off chairs, pass the boss)
- Flame ball (x3): kills on ANY contact regardless of pow, chair ignored,
full pierce (splatter pace tax undone), ember trail, white-hot render
- Machine gun (8s): horde auto-fire as a pickup — no serving, drag steers,
no assist, spawner keeps running, ammo bar drains on the HUD, then the
serve loop resumes
- HUD pips per type (black/yellow/orange) at the bomb slot; flash names the
tin ('NEW BALLS: FIRE')
Verified: ladder cycles across 5 deliveries; triple spawns 2 extras and the
fan kills flanked targets; pow-0.1 flame ball clears shambler+shield+brute in
one pass with TRIPLE KILL chaining; GUN tin arms at changeover, blocks taps,
streams pellets (kill in 5 frames), expires back to pretoss; tennis 11/12;
no weapon-flag leaks into tennis; no console errors.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Spawn mix (pickVariant): roster grows one type per set — runner from set 1
game 3+ (12% slot, at most one alive, shriek on spawn = the fairness contract),
brute from set 2 (15%), shield from set 3 (15%); classics fill the rest
- Runner ('f'): 3.2x shamble speed, faster leg cycle; new shriek() synth in audio
- Brute ('g'): hp 2 vs splat-quality balls AND pellets, 0.55x speed, 0.75m target,
pushback-immune, 0.9m eaten radius, dies to double gore + size-2 pile, towers
at 1.5x height
- Shield ('s'): blocks front balls with the chair (clank, ball spent), the block
drops the chair for shieldDown 1.5s — any splat-quality ball kills in the
window (z_s3 staggered pose renders); chair recovers after; always dies to
bombs, melee, pellets
- TUNE: runnerSpeed 3.2, bruteHp 2, shieldDown 1.5
Verified in browser: per-variant stats; brute soft-ball immunity, 2-hit kill,
2-pellet kill, size-2 pile; shield block->window kill->chair recovery->blocks
again; melee kills f/s but not the racket boss; tier-2 spawn mix over 1500
spawns = 14/15/8/63%; all five sprites render with correct scale+occlusion;
tennis regression 11/12; no console errors.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Deliveries are scheduled by the rules of tennis: game ballChangeFirst (3),
then every ballChangeEvery (4) games; the tin lands at the NEXT changeover
(a due tin survives hordes and even-game endings until a changeover comes)
- Fresh tin = bombMax (3) bombs; boy run + 'new balls, please' + NEW BALLS flash
- Shame rule: zombies took a game since the last delivery -> NO NEW BALLS,
slate wiped either way
- killMeter/bombEvery deleted from state/config/zombies
Verified: delivery at game 3 (bombs 3); due-but-even games hold the tin until
the next changeover; NO NEW BALLS withholds and clears shame; bomb serve still
arms and detonates; killMeter gone; no console errors.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Spawn director: gap and court cap scale with games finished (runGames);
game 1 is three lonely shamblers, late runs approach zSpawnMin/zMaxCap
- Changeover after odd games: 4.5s forced breather, no spawns, no serving
(melee still works), boys mop, umpire calls 'Time.' (new time.m4a)
- 6 games = a set; set end launches the horde (replaces the splatGames>=2 trigger)
- Zombies taking a game sets shameGame (phase 9 withholds the delivery)
- Eaten = the run is over: GAME, SET, MASSACRE summary with games/sets survived
and best run (localStorage); HUD shows sets in splatter (SETS·GAMES PTS)
- spentBall() helper so dead-ball paths can't clobber a changeover's beat
- T surface: splatPoint + explode exposed for verify scripts
Verified: game-1 cap 3 held 25s; changeover blocks taps+spawns then resumes;
6 games -> set+horde -> racket zombie; runGames=6 tempo ~6 spawns/10s;
eaten writes best; tennis regression 11/12 CPU returns; no console errors.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Survive a horde and a racket zombie takes up residence on the far court
(variant 'r', one per horde survived) — the tennis rally skill lives on
inside zombie mode. It reuses the turned-CPU z_c sprite (already holds a
racket) and a slimmed copy of the tennis AI: holds station deep, chases a
ball laterally at TUNE.racketSpeed (2.8), and returns your SOFT shots
(pow < zSplatQ) as live lastHit:'O' balls with quality capped at
racketQMax (0.55) and racketFlub (0.2) whiffs. trySwing gained an
optional quality-cap arg (defaulted, so tennis is untouched).
It's a mini-boss with TUNE.racketHp (3): only splat-quality balls hurt it
(-1 hp, staggers the ball; the killing blow runs the full splatter). Soft
balls pass through for it to rally; melee and pellets don't touch it. Its
return that gets past your baseline is a point for THEM; you can rally it
back with the existing player hit. A red HP bar floats over its head.
Verified via window.T: endHorde spawns exactly one (hp 3, z 3.5); three
splat hits kill it (2→1→dead); a pow-0.3 ball is returned toward you; an
'O' ball past your baseline scores for THEM; melee spares the boss but
cleaves the shambler beside it; tennis still 12/11/12 and a normal
shambler is still one-shot; renders with its HP bar; no console errors.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
From Oliver's feedback round:
- Racket melee: any swish (tap) in splatter cleaves shamblers within
TUNE.meleeRange (1.7m) — a close-range survival tool. Works during a
horde too (tap = swish only, still no serve). The racket-zombie boss
(Phase 6, not built) is immune by design.
- Zombies home in on you: on YOUR half (z > netZ) they now drift toward
P.x instead of walking a straight lane; far half stays an aimless
shamble.
- Multi-ball / rapid fire: splatter is now a shooter — every tap/flick
fires immediately (dropped the toss ritual there), and serving while a
ball still flies stashes the old one into a new extraBalls array so it
keeps arcing and killing (cap 6). Refactored the kill into a shared
killZombie() with no ball coupling, used by ball hits, pellets, melee,
and extra balls.
- Machine-gun mode clarity: confirmed free-walk (drag/arrows move you,
auto-assist off) and tap-doesn't-serve during a horde; added a
code-drawn "rambo" racket held forward with a muzzle flash over the
player, and a splatter-specific serve prompt.
REVIEW on your phone — two opinionated calls, both easy to revert:
1. Dropped the toss in splatter (tap = instant quick-serve, pow 0.62).
Rapid fire, but no apex-timing quality/pierce. Want the toss back as
an option?
2. MG posture is a code-drawn forward racket, not a real body sprite —
good enough, or worth a proper p_mg sprite later?
Also: each rapid serve still auto-consumes a stocked bomb, so bombs
deplete fast now — flag if that feels wrong.
Verified via window.T: melee kills a 1.0m zombie and spares a 4.5m one;
a near-half zombie drifts x 3→1.9 toward you; firing twice leaves 1
stashed ball + a fresh serve (barrage screenshot); extra balls kill and
pierce; free-walk during a horde (x 0→2.7); horde-tap melees without
serving; tennis toss-serve and Phase-4 bomb consume still work; no
console errors.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Winning your 2nd splatter game (G.splatGames) — or triple-tapping the
umpire in splatter (forceZombies now calls startHorde) — launches a 12s
horde (TUNE.hordeLen). During a horde: the match ball is gone and taps do
nothing; the racket auto-fires pellets straight up-court at TUNE.mgRate
(6/s, ±4° spread, 26 m/s, flat, 1.2s life) and the thumb DRAG steers you
(auto-assist disabled). Zombies pour in at TUNE.hordeRate (2.5/s) from the
far baseline and the sides, ignoring zMax; the speed ramp still applies.
Pellets live in a new zombies.js `pellets` array, kill on contact (always
splatter-quality). splatter() gains a fanfare flag — pellet kills make
gore/piles/points but skip the multi-kill streak so a horde doesn't spam
MASSACRE. splatPoint() gains a quiet flag: during a horde the umpire only
calls a score every >2s (game-win lines always speak); the HUD score keeps
ticking. Horde ends → setupPoint() resumes serving, voice('quiet_dark');
leftover zombies stay for you to mop up. Eaten stays lethal during hordes
(a zombie reaching you ends it and clears the swarm). Pellets render as
2×2 yellow tracers with a ground shadow; serve prompt suppressed while
G.horde. window.T exposes pellets + forceZombies.
NOTE for Oliver: per spec every game won after the 2nd triggers a horde,
and games won by the machine gun mid-horde count too, so play gets very
horde-heavy after game 2 — flag if you want a cooldown or a knob.
Verified via window.T: cheat + 2nd-game both launch the horde (1st does
not); ~29 spawns over exactly 12s; pellets stream (7 in flight) and clear
a lane, building piles/gore; 4 points scored but the umpire speaks once
(rate-limited); horde ends cleanly back to pretoss; eaten still fires
mid-horde; regression ladder green — tennis 11/12, Phase 1 flick-serve,
Phase 2 DOUBLE→TRIPLE, Phase 4 MASSACRE ×4; no console errors.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Ball boys deliver a bomb ball every TUNE.bombEvery (8) splatter kills, up
to TUNE.bombMax (3) in stock (G.bombs / G.killMeter in state). The next
serve auto-consumes one (hitServe, splatter-only) — no extra input, keeping
one-handed play. A bomb detonates on first zombie contact (regardless of
pace) or, if it misses everyone, on its first bounce: explode() splatters
everything within TUNE.bombRadius (2.5m), each kill feeding ball.kills so
the Phase-2 fanfare escalates naturally, and leaves a crater — big stain,
size-3 pile, 40 particles, 0.1s hitstop, boom(). New synth boom() in
audio.js. Bomb ball renders black with a flickering orange fuse; the HUD
shows stocked bombs as black/orange pips by the YOU line. Both explode
sites set phase='over' so the serve loop doesn't stall on the killed ball.
Alternative delivery ideas Oliver floated but not built: umpire throws it,
or court pickup.
Verified via window.T: 8th kill earns a bomb (meter resets); a serve
consumes one and renders #111 black + orange fuse; a pow-0 bomb amid 4
clustered zombies kills all 4 with 'MASSACRE ×4', boom, hitstop 0.1,
crater stain (r1.4) + size-4 pile; a bomb that misses still craters on
first bounce; bombs never leak into tennis (mode guard); 3 HUD pips; no
console errors.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A single shot that splatters ≥2 zombies now escalates: DOUBLE KILL /
TRIPLE KILL / MASSACRE ×N flash, louder crowd, and a new umpire line
(double_kill / triple_kill / unbelievable m4a, recorded say -v Daniel).
ball.kills tracks the streak, reset on every fresh shot (doHit + hitServe).
zombies.js imports cheer (now exported from gameplay). The splatter pace
cut is now TUNE.zPierce (0.75, was hardcoded 0.5) so a hot ball plows
through a lined-up lane instead of stalling on the first kill.
Verified via window.T: a low ball down a one-side lane kills 3→TRIPLE and
5→MASSACRE ×5 with escalating flash, streak resets on the next serve, the
three new lines serve 200 and match the existing m4a format, no crash when
the ball dies mid-streak, no console errors.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Input during the 'over' beat is no longer swallowed: a tap/flick while
G.phase==='over' (splatter only) resets inline and falls through to the
serve logic, so the finger is the only cadence limit. Spent balls
(lastHit 'X' after a stagger bounce) and hopeless balls (out of the
z/x bounds) are retired immediately instead of lingering until they roll
out. New TUNE.splatterOverT (0.1) replaces the hardcoded 0.25 over-timer.
The out-of-bounds z-bounds gate on travel direction so a quick-serve born
behind the baseline (P.z up to 26, heading vz<0 to the far court) isn't
killed on frame one.
Verified via window.T: flick/tap during 'over' serves same frame; spent
ball dies the frame it bounces; serve->serve latency 0 frames with
immediate flicks; tennis 'over' unchanged (2.2s pause, tap ignored);
tennis CPU still returns 11/12 serves; no console errors.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Whiffed swings sample the ball's approach each frame and classify the
miss at swing expiry: tap too early (with ms), tap too late, ball line
wide, too high/low, out of reach. Balls that die on your side without
a swing log as PASSED with closest-approach data. Ring buffer of 50 at
T.G.missLog; the latest miss reason flashes on the HUD for 3.5s
(TUNE.missHud to disable). CPU serve-return benchmark still 11/12.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A ball passing pre-bounce moves at full pace with no bounce cue to time
against, so marker-behind volleys needed frame-tight taps. Pre-bounce
player contact now widens reach x1.4 and the swing window x1.8 (VOLLEY
in config.js). Also clear G.wasServe in doHit so a serve returned out
of the air doesn't fault-check the return, and launch.json uses
autoPort.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Win your first game and the applause cuts off mid-clap. The palette drains,
the umpire lowers his voice ('Quiet... please'), your opponent turns — torn
red polo, dragging his racket — and shamblers come over the billboard wall.
The scoreboard rewrites CPU to THEM. 'Play.'
- zombies.js: shamblers walk your way; quality shots splatter them (gore
decal + particle burst + wet synth splat), weak sitters only stagger them
back; one crossing your baseline is a point for THEM
- tennis scoring machinery keeps running untouched: fifteen, thirty, deuce,
and 'Game, set... massacre' on a game win, all in recorded umpire English
- ball boys mop the gore they pass (their destiny fulfilled)
- transition: palette lerp, scripted spawns incl. the turned opponent,
new recorded lines (quiet_dark, remain_seated, play, new_balls)
- moan ambience, drained splatter palette, all zombie params in TUNE
Verified: transition triggers on first game win, splat/stagger/baseline
scoring all correct, dead-ball flow feeds fresh serves, tennis mode
regression clean (6/6 returns, 6/6 points resolved).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
game.js (830 lines) -> 9 modules, native ES modules so still zero build step:
dom canvas handles (imports nothing; keeps cycles harmless)
config TUNE (live-tunable) + structural constants
state all mutable game state (G) + setupPoint/sendBoy
audio sfx synthesis, recorded umpire voice, reverb, speech fallback
input keyboard + touch, exports axes and takeFlickAim()
gameplay ballistics, swings, serve, rules, AI, update loop
render camera, viewport, sprites, crowd, all drawing
panel T tuning UI
main boot, loop, intro, window.T test hooks
Deduped into named constants: bounce tempo (was in 3 places), contact
height band, intercept zone depth, home positions, player bounds, toss
params, shot depths, pose hold time, sprite scale, actor heights. Also
extracted drawShadow/drawBall/expirePose from repeated code.
One intentional import cycle (input <-> gameplay), safe: both sides only
call functions at runtime, never during module evaluation.
Regression-verified in browser sims: point cycle, CPU returns 11/12,
assist contract 8/8, corner-winner gradient intact (0/12 perfect corners
returned, 10/12 center balls returned).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
wuwiandClaude Opus 5