The front door now continues the story. An act is its league cup, whose
final is the boss's own body (acts II and IV play their band out of
ladder order for that), then a ten-game gore chapter on the act's court.
The chapter has no duel at all, takes the act's weapon stock into the
rack, meets a mid-boss after game 5 (the checkpoint: restock and full
blood) and the act boss after game 10, then the act card. Death is not
permadeath: it counts the attempt, banks nothing on the boards, and
TRY AGAIN restarts from the checkpoint the profile holds. Barrels hold
what the act has earned. The chapter plays the arcade's games
base+1..base+10 so every director curve keeps its slope.
Profiles from before the story start it from the top (league, cups and
champion reset; level kept). The server mirror stores the act and
checkpoint and only ever moves them forward.
Plain cards stand in for the screens (phase 3) and the transformation
(phase 2). Six new tests.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Oliver on v376: "wenn man doppeltippt, geht er minimal vor". His own
ball's flight covered 4-9 m of the 10 to the net. His next ball was met
from mid-court, outside the net zone, and the recovery after that volley
walked him straight back to the baseline.
The double tap now sets a stance (P.post) that lasts until the next
double tap, a lob he has to run down, or the end of the point. Every
recovery heads for the net at full pace, and every incoming ball is
planned as a net man's. The 'back' stance clears once he is behind the
net zone, so short balls still pull him in.
Measured: contacts while committed are ~35% at the net and ~40% around
the service line, and he no longer falls back. The base ladder is
unchanged. New test; v377.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Oliver: "das Vorlaufen und Zurücklaufen sollte durch einen Doppeltipp
ausgelöst werden". It replaces v374's flick-length rule: the long
up-flick is only the deep ball again, the long down-flick only the lob.
While his own ball flies there is nothing to hit, so a tap there is not
a swing. Two inside 0.35 s take him in to the net from the back, or back
from the net. "TO THE NET" or "BACK" pops under him. An incoming ball
keeps every tap a swing, so the two meanings never share a moment. After
his own serve it is serve and volley. The short-ball approach stays
automatic.
Measured: the base ladder is unchanged, and following the ball in still
pays against pushers and costs against big hitters. Three tests replace
v374's two; v376.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Oliver: "wenn der Autoplay den Ball versucht zu bekommen, zittert der
Player schnell hin und her". Measured: the run's target flipped by
metres every other frame. intercept samples the flight every 10 ms
against a 16.7 ms frame, so any candidate on a margin (a low bounce
peaking on the 0.45 m floor, a point on the back boundary, a dying drop)
passed one frame and failed the next. Frames with no candidate sent him
home and back. 9-62 reversals inside 200 ms per five minutes.
The chase now latches its plan: the flight is fixed at the strike, so
the first point stays the answer while his legs still make it in time,
net of any time he stood (split-step, heels). Reach is judged from where
the chase began, and the target eases with a start/stop hysteresis.
After: no reversals at any rung, timing unchanged. He wastes no steps,
so he is a little stronger, mostly at the bottom of the ladder. New
test; v375.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Oliver: "Steuerung ans Netz gehen", option (1), and "einen Lob vom Gegner
als Volley annehmen soll derb schmettern".
- A long up-flick (90 px or more) is the attack: the deep ball, and he
follows it in. A long down-flick is the lob, and he goes back behind
it. Short flicks keep the deep ball / the drop and leave him where he
is. Length only, never context.
- The net costs him what it costs the CPU: he split-steps (netReact)
before reading the pass, and a CPU facing a net man passes at the
line. Without both, the attacker won 78-95% of his net points.
- The smash: a ball taken out of the air at 1.9-2.5 m is struck harder
and to the open court, read late by the opponent, and pops "SMASH!".
It wins ~80% of its points.
- Lobbed at the net, he decides once whether he can get under it. If he
can, he smashes. If not, he runs it down and only blocks it back, even
if he meets it in the air. Re-deciding every frame smashed every lob.
Measured at level 26: the base ladder is unchanged. Attacking pays
against pushers and touch players and costs against big hitters,
slicers and rushers. Three new tests; v374.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Step 4 (b), Oliver's pick. v372 measured why the ladder could not climb:
nearly every lost point was the player's own early whiff, the CPU barely
missed, and the auto-run reached everything, so no opponent dial decided
a point.
- The follow-through: a groundstroke swing meets a bounced ball up to
60 ms after its window at q 0.05. The early whiff edge goes from ~70 ms
back to ~130 ms, where the volley window had it before step 1.
- A sitter (a player ball under q 0.5) is put away with a chance that is
the ladder (0.2 at the bottom of the Climb, 0.85 at the Champion, by
difficulty in classic): clean, at the line, bounded by the rung's width.
- The player is on his heels for 0.5 s after a put-away of his own sitter.
Without it the auto-run covered the whole court and no put-away won.
- Fixed a step-2 regression this surfaced: the drop's dig-out cap fired on
every slice drive, so every low contact against the slicer was a sitter.
Measured at level 26: the Climb now slopes from 95% of points at the
Shambler to 28-39% at the Champion. The net rushers are still easier than
their neighbours. The log names put-aways. Three new tests; v373.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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>
Oliver: the target ring twitches sometimes, and "shot of the day",
"textbook" etc. cover the ball. The timed ring re-solved every frame and a
small shift in the auto-run's target moved its moment by up to 158 ms in a
frame; the drawn cue now counts down on its own clock and eases toward
each solve (p99 jump 100 -> 17 ms). The rally's praise word rose straight
into the struck ball's path (and a serve's sat on the far bounce, where the
return comes back); it now lands under the player, behind his feet, and
stays put. Same moment, out of the way. v371.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Oliver's v369 log ("vieeel besser") showed two misses with the auto-run
heading to x 6.5 and 8.7, far outside the frame he is held in. Since the
dip ends at the bounce, a hard cross-court topspin ball drifts sideways
long enough that its comfort point lies off the court; intercept had no
lateral bound, and its last-resort target was never checked at all
(headless: x 14.8). Candidates now respect xLimit — a kicking ball is
taken earlier, on the rise — and the final target is clamped. v370.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A shot's extra gravity is its dive in flight, but it was carried through
the bounce: heavy topspin skidded away low and Oliver met nearly every
ball 0-25 cm off the grass. After its bounce a ball now falls under plain
gravity (tennis modes only), and every planner that rolls a bounce
forward switches at the same moment. The higher bounces pushed the
auto-run into volleys, so it now takes a kicking ball at the top of its
bounce, up to chest height. Median contact rises from 0.42 to 1.13 m at
the bottom of the ladder. v369.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Oliver's v367 log: every 62-64 ms flick landed 76-92 ms early and a 97 ms
one whiffed — v366's touch-down timing for flicks was wrong; a flick is
timed by its swipe (flickLead now 0, the age is still logged). The
early-swing half-volley rescue checked the bounce against the long volley
window and then expired on the bounce frame; it now uses the shorter
groundstroke window. The log also records where he stood when the
opponent struck and where the auto-run was taking him on a miss. v368.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Oliver's v366 log: a LOST "passed you" with no swing. The match gave the
CPU the point the moment its ball crossed 0.3 m behind the baseline — a
line from when the player stood inside it. Since step 1 he waits up to
2.2 m behind the line for deep balls, and a ball going by ~1.5 m beside
him only enters his reach just in front of him, so the point was called
before it was ever playable. In the match "past you" now means past his
reach. The swing log's hits also say whether the timing was early or
late. v367.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
From Oliver's first swing log (cup vs the Brute): 13 of 22 hits were
perfect, 9 badly early or late — mostly forward-right flicks — and the
weak balls became seven "passed you". Every hit was a flick, and flicks
still swung only at the flickMin crossing while the timed ring says "touch
now": they are now timed from touch-down too (capped at flickLead 0.1 s).
The log gains its other half: a THEM line per opponent shot (kind, pace,
where it lands relative to you, coming in) and "never swung" judged per
incoming ball instead of once a point. And an early swing on a low ball
digs it out as a capped half-volley instead of whiffing. v366.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Oliver wants to hand over a log of why he missed balls. It existed behind
a scoreboard tap but was gated on G.mode === 'tennis', so the Climb, the
cup and training (which run as 'splatter') logged nothing. It now writes
in every rally mode: hits with shot, tap age and any quality cap, misses
with the new let-it-bounce reason, and a WON/LOST line naming why each
point went. Tapping the open log copies all 200 entries with a header.
Its first catch: the gold ring went gold at a distance, which is too
early for the slow balls steps 1-3 brought in. It is now timed off the
ball's real path to his reach (against where his run is taking him):
gold means touch now. ringTime 0 restores the old ring. v365.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Step 2 of the rally rework: eight styles as dials on the opponent rows —
pusher, retriever, slicer, big hitter, baseliner, touch, net rusher,
all-court — read where the CPU chooses its shot (moonball, drop, lob,
spin), plans its approach and serves (serve and volley sprints in). The
walk-on names the style in one line so the player can plan against it.
A player lobbed at the net now backpedals and blocks, like the CPU.
Oliver on v363: the down-flick "always felt like a lob". The length is read
at contact and a thumb has usually travelled on; on the continuum even
50 px floated the ball. Below dropMax (90 px) it is now the drop, above it
the lob. Also un-flakes the machine-squeak test (seed 31337). v364.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Step 3 of the rally rework, Oliver's pick: in rally modes the down-flick
is soft, always, and its length is how far — a dying drop just over the
net at one end, an attacking lob over a net man at the other. One gesture,
one meaning; not the context-armed lob that was cut.
Ballistics from the cut lob (pace derived from the apex); backspin lives
on ball.spin and every bounce planner reads it, netplay sends it. Against
the CPU it was returned ~100% until the real-tennis reasons went in: soft
balls are read late (disguise), a net man reacts to a pass and backpedals
from a lob, and a lobbed or dug-out reply is a weak block. Four new tests;
v363.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Oliver after step 1: much harder, stuck at the Steward, "trotz gutem
Timing nicht mehr bekommen". A tap only proves it is a tap when the
finger lifts, so the swing started 100-150 ms after he meant it; the old
volley window hid that, step 1's groundstrokes did not. A tap made on the
gold ring fell from q 0.82 to 0.09 (and a third were missed at 150 ms),
murky balls landed short and the opponent came in. The swing clock now
starts at the touch's age (rally modes only); flicks keep their crossing.
The opponents' legs had no ceiling: 7.3 m/s at the Runner, 15.7 at the
Champion against the player's ~6.2. Past legKnee (6 m/s) only 15% of the
growth survives, monotone, so the ladder order holds; champion ~7.5. v362.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Every match had collapsed into serve, both at the net, reflex volleys at
~0.7 s per shot. The rally ball landed on the service line by definition,
the match CPU stood on the bounce and volleyed 90-100% of everything, and
the auto-run chased the earliest contact.
Rally modes only (classic + every match; gore and the duel untouched):
rally balls land deep and mistiming only shortens them (no new long outs);
each shot latches the receiver's plan as it leaves the racket — from the
back he lets it bounce and meets it falling, up to 2.2 m behind the line,
a short ball pulls him in and he follows it to the net, nobody approaches
a man already there, and a volley below the tape is a weak block. Measured:
contacts 10.5-13.7 m from the net, back-court volleys 0-8%, 0.8-1.0 s per
baseline shot. Three new tests pin the shape; v361.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two netplay-only finds from Oliver's two-phone session.
THE FRIEND'S STRIKE was silent: every other opponent is simulated locally
and cracks through gameplay's shared return path, but the friend's swing
runs on their phone alone and arrives as a 'shot' message that wrote the
ball and nothing else. netApplyShot now plays the same sample at the same
volume, pitched off the pace that was actually sent (strikeRate, read after
the ball is written). Both netplay modes, not just the death match.
THE REMATCH: the summary's only netplay door was THE CLUBHOUSE, so playing
the same friend again meant two trips through the lobby and a fresh code.
The relay cannot re-pair, so the rematch is the socket that is still open —
one 'again' frame and both phones reset the run under the decisions the room
already carries (same side, same mode, same court, host serves). netAgain
keeps G.net across restartRun(true) and replays netFresh, netStart's own
tail split out so pairing and rematch cannot drift into two courts. Applied,
never echoed; a 2 s window swallows the second frame when both tap at once;
a dead line refuses and falls through to the clubhouse.
Also: the dev server runs with SPLAT_AUTH= (server.py always said local dev
should), which the shared password had been 401-ing. audio.sfxTest is a new
test seam in netTest's shape. 146 tests.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The lingering doubles were a real bug, not a taste problem: racketAI's
!incoming return kept the last chase's vx/vz on the body, so the speed
ghosts trailed a zombie that had already stopped. The velocity dies with
the chase now (tested). The look is halved with it: ghost alphas
0.22/0.10 -> 0.11/0.05, trailK 0.05 -> 0.035 — a hint of speed in the
corner of the eye, never a second body.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Four answers to one phone report:
- THE READ: repeat a lane and the opponent anticipates it; break the habit
and it is wrong-footed for that ball — scaled by rung, so surprise is the
weapon that opens the ladder past the HEAD COACH (TUNE block THE READ).
- The opponent walk-on is a real modal now (head, punchline, tap to dismiss)
in arcade, tournament and training — readable without a clock.
- THE TRAINING COURT: third card under ZOMBIE TENNIS, pick any rung, one
game at a time, the felled body walks straight back on, nothing banks,
bleeding out is a popup instead of a death. mode_train.png rolled in the
banner style.
- MOVEMENT READS: sprinting feet kick per-court dust and fast bodies leave
a two-ghost speed streak (trailMin gates both; feel verdict pending).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Oliver, on the build: "all good but the lob. please remove it - this is
totally unpredictable."
Reverted in full — oppAtNet, farBody, TUNE.lobArm, TUNE.lobApex,
SHOT_DEPTH.lob, the branch in doHit and its two tests. The forward flick is
the smash it always was. Everything else from that commit stays: the pace
feedback (streak, crack, camera kick) and the death match's blood alignment.
The reason is worth more than the code, and PROJECT.md carries it as a rule:
a gesture whose MEANING depends on where the opponent is standing is
unpredictable however well the shot is tuned. It is the same objection
input.js already states about the slingshot — the direction you moved is the
thing you asked for, no invisible modes — and the written comparison let
option (c) past it on the argument that context cannot mis-fire. It can: you
do not track where the far body is standing while a ball is coming at you, so
one thumb movement produced two shots for reasons you were not watching. The
LOB word at contact explained the surprise; it did not prevent it.
If it comes back it needs a gesture of its own. The ballistics are solved and
are in the history at 4f4534e.
111 tests pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Three from Oliver.
THE LOB. He picked option (c) from the written comparison — "no additional
gesture to learn" — and corrected the premise: the zombie does come to the
net (racketAI chases to the far service line, the classic CPU to z 9.5). So
the forward flick keeps its one meaning, "put it deep behind him", and the
game picks the trajectory that actually does that: a smash while he is back,
over his head once he is in. oppAtNet() is the whole switch, and it reads the
BODY, not O — in the match O is the invisible tennis body and only moves
between points, so it would have answered "on his mark" all rally.
lobArm 7.0 m is measured, not taste: a lob peaking at lobApex passes a man 7 m
from the net at almost exactly CONTACT.maxY, so the shot arms exactly as far
out as it can still clear him. The pace is derived from the height, so the same
arc comes off the baseline and off mid-court, and SHOT_DEPTH.lob is deeper than
deep — at the ordinary deep target the ball passed 2.05 m over him at the edge
of the band, which is inside his reach.
PACE, SEEN FROM THE STRIKER. "the opponent sees the ball really fast - the
player barely sees the speed increase." Measured: the ball is the same ball on
both phones, the camera is not — it compresses your own ball into the distance
and expands theirs as it arrives. Pace untouched; three channels added on the
striker's side: the ghost streak now reads pace (3-8 ghosts, was 3 at every
speed), the crack is pitched by it, and a fast ball kicks the camera. The
serve's own ladder is 49.2 plain / 50.8-52.4 hard, because serveArc's loft
margin takes 10% of the +9 back — widening that is his call, and PROJECT.md
records the knob and the risk.
THE DEATH MATCH. "each player has 8 blood points but the player explodes for
the winner already at 0:40." Two clocks: a game is four points, a life is
eight. A won game is only a game now (flash, serve, heal); the burst moved to
the death itself, on the dead message, where both phones agree. The summary
waits 1.4 s for the gore, because update() freezes the world on G.done and
would have hung a still frame of an explosion behind the trophy screen. And
bleedO tracks THEIR blood off the pos stream instead of our points-this-game,
which reset every game and ignored the heal.
4 new tests, 113 pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Oliver, three notes; two of them are here.
"when the opponent serves the player does not stand at the baseline - but
that's how it should be." setupPoint's receiving marks sat over a metre
INSIDE the court on both sides (22.5 near, 1.2 far) — where you stand to
attack a second serve, not where you wait for a first one. They mirror the
server's depth now, in the one line every serving mode shares.
"when serving results in an out there should be a second service... the
umpire should announce 2nd service and the player must get another chance."
True in tennis mode since forever and absent everywhere else: the duel, the
match and the death match had no service rule at all, so a serve long or
into the net was judged as an ordinary ground stroke — a point, and in the
match a point costs blood. The out branch of onBounce's interlude block
routes a serve to fault() instead, so the second serve, the HUD line, the
umpire and the double fault all come for free.
Three things it dragged out with it:
- fault()'s double-fault branch called pointTo — TENNIS scoring — which in
an interlude banks a number and skips the mode that owns the court. It
goes through resolveInterlude there now. Nothing had ever reached that
line from a duel or a match, because those modes could not fault.
- startDuel never reset G.serveNum: harmless while a duel could not fault,
the next duel's death loop the moment it can.
- the match puts the body back on its receiving mark for the second serve
(placeReceiver, split out of matchReady, which resets the serve number).
"Fault. Second service." is one voiceSeq — a second voice() call would be
dropped, one man one microphone. New recording via the usual say/afconvert.
The service BOX is still not enforced in the match, deliberately: this is
strictly more forgiving than what shipped. The lob gesture is OPEN 14.
4 new tests, 110 pass.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The wobble was never the animation. x_crowd2 was a RE-ROLL of x_crowd, not a
pose of it — 13-16% of its pixels differed, over faces, torsos, seat backs and
the railing — so swapping 16 columns at 4.5 Hz re-hashed a strip of crowd twice
a second. assets/_crowdpass.py rebuilds the pair: the clap frame is now the
seated frame plus 36 genuine raises, each contained in ONE of render's columns,
so any column swap is seamless by construction and an empty column is invisible
instead of being a wobble. The three courts are one composition in three
palettes, so a raise found in one court's roll is transplanted into the other
two through a colour map learnt from the aligned seated pair.
The same tool paints the crowd, because at ~8 logical px a spectator detail can
only mean chroma and silhouette: 55 shirts and 44 heads of hair in colours the
court does not own, 28 caps, 4 flags above the heads, 8 emptied seats, 8 people
permanently standing — and 3 who are already turned, grey-green, mid-row, who
are also the only three who never applaud.
Movement, one draw path and three behaviours: applause scatters per column, a
WAVE crosses the stand for a moment big enough to deserve one (crowd.pop >=
0.75), and with nobody cheering ONE column stands for a third of every
TUNE.fidgetEvery, so the stand between points is no longer a photograph.
Paparazzi now scale with the moment: cheer() records the size of it (vol was
already exactly that at every call site) and queues shutters proportional to it,
drained at a fifth of the normal gap. pop is held at the loudest while an
applause is live, so a won rally landing inside a match-point ovation cannot
demote the stand to a polite clap — that rule has a test.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
A Capacitor iOS project (`npm run ios`), and the first three bullets of LATER item 2 built. The web
build is untouched and stays primary: every line here degrades to a no-op in a browser.
- HAPTICS ride the sound map, as the plan said they would: six call sites, all of them places an
sfx already fires — your racket contact, the serve strike, `killZombie` (the one funnel every
weapon routes through), `explode`, `hurtPlayer`, `killPlayer`, the weapon swap. The restraint
rule lives in `haptics.js`, not at the call sites: a minimum gap per kind, so a bomb that kills
twelve bodies is felt twice and the machine gun is a metronome rather than one long rumble.
Pinned by a test. Untested on hardware — the simulator has no Taptic Engine.
- The plugin is reached through the INJECTED bridge, `Capacitor.nativePromise('Haptics', ...)`.
`Capacitor.Plugins.Haptics` reads like the zero-dependency answer and is silently empty without
@capacitor/core's registerPlugin — it would have fallen through to the web path inside the app
and looked exactly like a phone with haptics switched off. No package JS ships.
- PORTRAIT is enforced where it can be: one orientation in Info.plist, so the app never rotates.
That retires landscape as a surface rather than fixing it (OPEN 6). The web half is best-effort —
`orientation` in both manifests and one guarded `screen.orientation.lock()`.
- SWIPE LEFT GOES BACK. The gesture finds the screen's one visible chevron and clicks it, so the
shape of the wizard stays in the handlers that already own it. Not passive on purpose: a swipe
inside a poster card also fires that card's click, and preventDefault is what stops the screen
answering forward in the frame the chevron walked it back.
- The app has no server behind it, so `config.API` and one branch in `net.js` point the shell at the
live host by name. Consequence: the app always talks to PROD, never staging.
`node test.js` green (105) over four seeds; builds, launches and reaches the native plugin on the
iOS 26.5 simulator; swipe-back walks the whole wizard in the browser pane.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
'No that's way too difficult now - I am dying constantly of out. revert
it.' aimAnchor is gone — the lane is absolute again, every out invariant
back exactly as tuned. What survives is the answer to his follow-up: the
ball sometimes flew a LITTLE RIGHT out of a left flick, because a
mistimed left flick's target sits only slightly left of CENTRE — which
is right of a player standing in the left service box. The absolute
lane's blind spot, stated the other way round.
The aimed target is now clamped to the player's own x on the flicked
side, bounded at flickWidth so a body parked in the alley clamps to the
corner rather than conjuring an out. From the left box a left flick goes
at least down your own line, from centre it can no longer cross centre,
a perfect corner flick and the crosscourt sweep are untouched, and the
outward scatter tail keeps the whole tuned out-risk. Verified in his
scene: ten rushed weak left flicks land -2.0..-2.7 where the same case
used to target -0.7..-1.3 (a visibly rightward flight); the clean full
flick still lands -3.92.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Third round of the flick report, and this was the core all along: 'when
the opponent and the player are both standing in the left service box it
is virtually impossible to flick the ball into the left out. no matter
how hard/good I flick.' The lane was absolute — a full flick asked for
flickWidth off the court's CENTRE — so the gesture saturated near a
sideline: from x -2 a perfect left flick moved the ball under 2 m and
could never pass the line, and the better the timing the firmer the cap,
because scatter was the only thing that could cross it. 'Left is
impossible, right works' was never left-vs-right: it was
toward-the-near-sideline vs across-the-court.
TUNE.aimAnchor: the anchor slides from the court centre to the player's
own x as the swipe commits (ch.x * |sway| * aimAnchor), so a flat tap is
exactly what it always was and a full flick is a full sweep from where
you stand — including past the line. Out-by-aim is a choice now, per
Oliver's explicit direction; the placement ring already turns red for
it. 0 restores the absolute lane, blendable live in the panel. Player
rally lanes only; the opponent's lanes and the centre-stated pOut
invariants are untouched. Verified in his exact scene: full left flick
from the left box lands -5 (the alley), half swipe -3.07, full right
+1.93.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Second round on the service-line flick report. The crossing-fired swing
alone did not move the feel, and Oliver's sharpened observation — the
flick only lands left when the opponent already stands left — pointed at
a magnet that does not exist: measured with the body teleported at
contact, the aim never tracks it. The real mechanism: at rushed quality
the symmetric scatter (aimError x (1-q)) outweighs the quality-shrunk
aim, so a mistimed left flick landed anywhere in a ~4 m blob around
'slightly left' — usually centre — and the eye anchors that on the
opponent. Its position was a proxy for preparation time all along.
TUNE.aimTrust: an outward scatter roll is untouched — the committed
swipe's chance of sailing keeps its exact tuned shape, flickReach stays
the only out dial — but an inward roll keeps only 0.3 of itself. Bad
timing costs width, never direction. Player lane shots only; the
opponent's symmetric scatter is its width mechanic. Verified at
worst-case q~0.08: 14/14 rushed left flicks landed left, 9/9 right
flicks right, where before it was a coin toss. The suite pins the
direction guarantee and the aimTrust/aimError/flickReach relationship.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Oliver's service-line report: flicking the incoming ball LEFT was near
impossible mid-court at the service line while RIGHT worked, easing toward
the baseline. The lane math was symmetric to the centimetre — the defect
was latency. The swing waited for the RELEASE, so the whole gesture ran as
dead time on top of the windup: ~120 ms of lateness drops contact quality
1.0 -> 0.08, where flickReach halves the width and aimError drowns the
rest. A left swipe is a right thumb's slowest direction, the service line
leaves ~700-870 ms of budget (measured), and any swipe over FLICK_MS was
silently dead. Left + service line was the slowest gesture meeting the
shortest budget.
Now, in rally modes: crossing flickMin fires the swing (once per gesture,
rally phase only) and the vector stays LIVE — trySwing reads G.swipe at
contact, with the released flickAim carrying the aim only when the ball
arrives after the finger lifts. The FLICK_MS deadline goes with it where
the crossing can fire; it survives where it cannot (gore free-aim, the
serve strike). Serve gesture, duel, gore and keys untouched.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The rally flick was read as three lanes: sideways past 0.38 of its own length
took the whole corner, a hair under it took dead centre, and nothing lived in
between — "sometimes applied very strong, sometimes it barely does anything",
with no way to tell which one you had asked for. swayOf reads the swipe's LENGTH
as a continuous strength, exactly as the serve already did, and doHit spends
that instead of the lane vote. Keys keep the full lane; the opponent's aim has
no length and is untouched.
That is also what hands the OUT back: going out was never a choice, because
every aimed shot took the full width and then the scatter on top. Below about
0.7 of a full swipe — the line minus aimError, over the width timing can earn —
the worst mistiming in the game cannot sail it now, and above it the old risk
curve is exactly as tested.
And the aim is drawn while the thumb is still moving: the placement ring is a
receipt that arrives with the ball already gone, so the same ring is shown live
with a ray from the player's feet, cream while the ask is safe and hot once the
sway crosses that derived threshold. The receipt goes red when the shot really
is out, so the two rings together are the lesson.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Score-is-the-body was a picture: the opponent lost an arm and swung exactly as
far, lost its head and missed exactly as often. Two dials now read the same
racketStage the SKINS are picked with, so what you watch it lose is what it
loses — deliberately small (6% reach, 17.5% whiff per stage), texture under the
ladder rather than a second difficulty curve, with a test on that ceiling. An
unhurt body still returns exactly 1 and 1, and the whole thing is gated on
G.match: the gore duel's racket zombie is untouched.
And the placement flick, the mode's one act of skill, was taught nowhere on
touch — the placement ring is a receipt, not a lesson, and you only get one if
you already knew to swipe. The ghost hand teaches it now, in the same register
as PULL DOWN and TAP AS IT ARRIVES, riding the failure it answers: a run of
returns that left with no aim on them. The tap lesson still wins when both
qualify — placement is the wrong thing to teach someone who cannot reach the
ball.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The trick: hard serve, slight slide, and the first ten opponents died where
they stood. Measured headless — that serve was returned 0 times out of 24 at
EVERY rung. Three things were wrong and all three were the same thing: he
waited on the tennis mark 1.3 m off the centre line (covering the T, conceding
the whole corner), he took no first step, and he chased the ball's LIVE
position, which during a serve is still up by the server's baseline.
Now: he waits on the bisector of the serves he has to cover, takes a
returner's first step (serve-scoped — the rally is untouched), and runs at the
bounce instead of at the ball. The slid serve comes back from rung one; a
flush serve into the very corner of the box still aces the bottom of the
ladder, which is the reward placement is supposed to earn.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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>
Six new opponent families (head coach, stringer, strawberry seller, chair
umpire, spectator, roller man) through the famroll/zsheet route, placed by
hierarchy into an 18-rung ladder; the champion steps up behind them.
THE DRAW: picking the tournament now rolls its own bracket in front of you —
only the final was ever settled — and what lands is what walks on.
Netplay, off Oliver's cellular report: the mid-flight early-decide was missing
its !G.net gate, so the striker judged its own outbound flight and the two
scoreboards drifted a point apart into a court nobody could serve on. The
host's court now rides the room, its scoreboard rides the pretoss stream, and
a called ball rolls to its own halt instead of freezing where the call caught it.
Plus the night court, and somebody in the stand is taking pictures.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Three chips under VS A FRIEND — the host's pick rides the room and the
start message rebuilds both courts on pairing. In the death match your
opponent IS the zombie: their lost points tear its wound stages, their
won points draw your blood, and bleeding out crosses the wire as the
other phone's win. The same receiver-is-judge verdicts drive the match
machinery through resolveInterlude, so the fall, the mop beat and the
burst come along unmodified. New: gushProne — the game-winning body
bleeds out on the ground, from prone-height anchors, until it bursts.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
One event on the toss, replayed as a real toss over O — update() already
poses the server off the phase and drops an uncaught ball back to pretoss
by plain physics, so the wind-up, the cancel and the re-toss all carry for
free. The strike's shot event overwrites whatever drifted.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
VS A FRIEND on the mode screen (host a code, join a code), a ~110-line
RFC6455 relay in server.py that holds no game state, and src/net.js: each
phone plays itself near-side and the opponent's court is this one rotated
half a turn about the net. The phone a ball flies toward makes every call
on it; the striker's copy is picture. Six tests pin the rule from both
seats. No reconnect yet — a dropped radio is a card and a reload.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
wuwiandClaude Opus 5.5