Three animated screens in the storyboard's look, built in the page over
a paused world:
- The act title card: the act's court pans in behind ACT n, its league,
its court and its goal; it closes itself after three seconds or on a
tap.
- The cup's ceremony: YOU CLEARED THE COURT, the rounds and the run's
xp, then the act's weapons drop into a rack one by one ("…and gained
these for the hordes to come"), and the chapter preview with the
mid-boss named and game 10 still "???" until the transformation.
- The act card: what the act cost (bodies, bosses, deaths), what it
opened in the arcade, and the next act's court; CONTINUE goes straight
on, THE CLUBHOUSE goes home.
The checkpoint keeps its in-game banner. Headless, every screen falls
back to the plain card it replaced. v381, staging only.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5.5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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 wanted to rank the level a league was taken at. The challenge held: xp
comes only from playing, so a board that rewards a low level rewards not
playing — it would pay you to avoid the three rooms the season leans on. It
also inverts every other number in the game, freezes after five entries, and
makes the player who played more look worse.
So the league ranks and the level decides between everyone who got equally far,
where "lower is better" reads naturally. BOARDS.u carries subLow; server
rank_key is the other half, and the same key decides whether a submission beats
the row already standing. The level is written once at the promotion — before
the league moves, because it is the level that WON the cup — mirrored like the
rest of the profile, and inscribed under the shield it belongs to. Earned
shields smoulder while they are on screen: five CSS embers each, no loop.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The tournament is the canonical path, so the game finally says so. The splash's
primary button names the next cup fixture and enters the draw; the poster wall
moved one tap down and deals three named rooms (the season, the training, out of
competition) with the cup at the top. Two profile fields remember every attempt
— rounds ever reached per league, and the body that put you out — so a lost cup
is a line on the board instead of a null event, and the training court offers
that body first, marked. The promotion names what waits in the new league.
Overlays consolidated in the same pass: three modal drawers became one box with
a masthead, hairline-separated rows and a real footer button (any tap still
dismisses), and the run-end summary wears the same box — headline, xp, mark, and
the fixture with ENTER THE DRAW beside PLAY AGAIN. The cup's own exit is a
ceremony now: OUT IN THE QUARTER-FINAL, your best standing beside it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
wuwiandClaude Opus 5.5