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>
The touch serve drag now inverts: pull toward yourself to launch up-court.
The first pull past the deadzone starts the real toss animation (serveToss),
dragServe fires straight from the toss phase without banishing its own fresh
toss, and a held aim keeps the toss airborne instead of dropping. Render shows
an Angry-Birds dotted trajectory racket->target (red = zombie locked). Two-stage
tap serve, mid-rally re-toss/banish, and keyboard serve+arrow-aim unchanged.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- Stand at the baseline: in splatter the player is pinned to the baseline
(a turret, side-to-side only) — the duel is exempt so it keeps free depth.
- Zombie 1:1 duel now plays like real tennis: no free-aim flick, no drag
reticle; lane aim + the toss-then-hit serve (gate on !G.interlude in
doHit/hitServe/keyPressed/canAimServe).
- Rapid serves: the two-stage reticle serve now fires mid-rally too — a ball
still in flight is banished to a ballistic clone so the next serve launches
at once. Serve as fast as you can drag-release.
- Wounded skins for multi-hit foes: brute (arm off) and racket boss (arm off,
then headless) swap by remaining hp, with a graceful fallback to the healthy
sprite. The headless boss is drawn a head shorter so the shoulders line up.
- Dynamic gore: the blood is NOT painted in — open wounds gush live particles
every frame (arm stumps + a neck geyser on the headless boss), absurdly, and
bounded so it self-regulates.
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>
THE FREEZE (root cause found): the game-winning kill fires INSIDE the zombie
update loop — killZombie -> splatPoint -> gameOver -> sweepCourt guts the
zombies array mid-iteration, the loop reads zombies[i] === undefined, throws,
and the un-rescheduled RAF chain dies: a permanent hard freeze. Crowded courts
(later games, brutes) make the mid-loop game-winner likelier — hence 'freezes
around game 3 when the fat zombies arrive'. Fixed at the root (null guards in
every loop whose body can cascade into a sweep: zombie walk loop, meleeSwipe,
explode, pellet + extras inner loops) AND made frame() reschedule RAF FIRST so
no single bad frame can ever kill the loop again.
Aim awareness: the reticle now appears the moment the thumb lands (mag 0 =
auto-target the most advanced zombie, red lock immediately). A pure HOLD
(>250ms, no drag) releases into the auto-target serve; dragging aims as
before; the serve prompt switches to 'RELEASE TO SERVE / RELEASE FIRES THE
BOMB - DRAG BACK TO CANCEL' while aiming.
Duel presentation: the interlude now opens with a 2.4s intro beat — serving
blocked, centered card (SUDDEN DEATH / ONE POINT - THE LINES ARE LIVE / WIN
IT FOR THE NEXT TIN), and the palette lerps back to the TENNIS colors for
the duration of the duel (duelLerp, 0.8s each way) — order visibly restored,
then the rot returns.
Machine-gun steering: absolute now — the finger x IS the player x, zero lag
(was sign-quantized velocity). Clamped to what the camera can see
((W/2-14)/proj-scale — portrait's world bounds are wider than its viewport),
keyboard steering clamped the same during auto-fire.
Verified: the exact pre-fix crash scenario (game-winning kill mid-loop,
9 zombies + brute) survives and sweeps clean; intro blocks taps then the
duel plays; hold-release fired at the auto-lock and won a tin end-to-end;
screenshot shows tennis-green court + centered card + GAME 2; MG jumps
P.x to the finger in one frame, clamped; tennis 12/12; no console errors.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Flick-to-aim was aim-by-faith — you learned where you aimed after the ball
was gone. Now, at a serveable pretoss, touching and dragging shows a LIVE
reticle (same mapping: direction + length = landing point); release serves
there. The magnet is finally visible: within zSnap the ring turns red and
rides the locked zombie (plus a marker over its head) — you see the lock
BEFORE you commit the tin.
- Context locked at touchstart: a movement drag started mid-rally never
morphs into a serve when the ball dies (sub-300ms releases still count
as the rapid flick re-serve — the Phase 1 cadence survives)
- Drag back home = cancel: no serve, the tin stays in stock
- Aimed (drag) serves commit specials at fixed 0.62 quality; the tap-toss
ritual keeps the PERFECT-timing power ceiling and the stock — placement
vs power is now a real choice
- Rally / horde / machine gun untouched: drag steers, flick swings
- Serve prompt: 'TAP TO SERVE - HOLD + DRAG TO AIM' / 'AIMED SERVES FIRE
THE BOMB - TAP KEEPS IT'
Verified with synthetic touch sequences: drag arms the reticle without
serving and it tracks the thumb; release serves at the marker with the bomb
committed; cancel keeps the tin; rally-started drags never morph; locked
reticle renders red on the zombie (screenshot); tennis 12/12; 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>
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