# HANDOFF — ZOMBIE TENNIS, making it a real mode **TEMPORARY FILE.** Written 2026-08-12 because a session ran out of context mid-slice. When the work below is done, fold anything durable into `PROJECT.md` (the only planning document) and **delete this file**. It is deliberately not in the Dockerfile COPY — docs are not served. **Read `PROJECT.md` first, as always** — especially "How to work on this", the invariants, and the drill/match session logs (passes 13-23), which carry the reasoning behind every number named here. --- ## Where things stand Zombie tennis is a **back-room prototype that plays well on a real phone** ("big improvement on real mobile"). Entry: splash → five taps in the top-left corner (`#hot`) → **MATCH TEST**, or `#match`. Sibling prototypes there: WEAPON TEST, BOSS TEST, DRILL TEST (the abandoned cognitive mode — see below). 49 tests green, seeds clean. Last commit `9b9f18d`, `index.html` at `?v=176`. **What it is:** real tennis against the racket zombie. One game per opponent, tap-and-timing controls, the deuce/ad serve positions, and **the score is the body** — each point you win takes a quarter of its pool and walks it through its wound stages; the game-winning point fells it and a fresh opponent shambles on. Its points draw your blood (`matchPlayerHp` 8, `matchHeal` 2 per game won). It runs on a PERMANENT interlude — `G.interlude` is what makes serving tennis-like, hides the rack and wakes `racketAI` — and the only change is in `resolveInterlude`, which feeds `matchPoint` instead of ending anything. All of it is ~120 lines in `beats.js`. **The ladder** escalates in `racketAI`, not hp: speed (`matchSpeedBase`/`Per`), whiff (`matchFlub`/`FlubKeep`), width (`matchWideBase`/`WidePer`), pace (`matchOppPace`/`PacePer`). Player side: `matchAssist`, `matchReach`. --- ## THE DECISION JUST MADE — scoring model A Oliver picked **A: blood-only**, of three options offered: - **A (chosen)** — the run is one long bleed across opponents; losing a game costs nothing but the blood already spent, and heals are how you last. **The measure becomes OPPONENTS FELLED.** - B — tennis-true: a lost game ends the run. Rejected for now (worth one playtest someday; it might be the mode's real personality). - C — hybrid, lost game drops a rung. Rejected. **Important context for whoever implements this:** Oliver believed losing a match killed him ("i really die losing one match"). It does not — he was bleeding out during deuce wars and hitting zero at their game point. **That misreading is itself the bug to fix**: the mode is not communicating its own rules. Model A only works if the player can see they are bleeding, not losing. --- ## The build slice, in order 1. **Run summary + the measure** *(small, do first — it is what makes A legible)* - Track and display **opponents felled**, not `G.runGames`. Today `matchGameWon` bumps `G.runGames` (beats.js:308) because every mode uses it as the ladder metric; the match needs its own count (`G.match.opp - 1` already is it) surfaced on the death screen and in a match-specific localStorage best (`drillBest` is the pattern to copy). - Death screen should speak tennis: "FELLED 3 OPPONENTS · 14 GAMES". `killPlayer` already owns the single death path and the run summary. - While here: make the blood legible so A reads correctly. The vignette exists (four linear edge fades, sqrt curve) — check on a phone whether hits 1-2 of 8 land hard enough. 2. **Named opponent ladder** *(medium, mostly data)* - `BOSS_ART` already holds **ten named designs with wound stages and throw frames** — GROUNDSKEEPER, LINE JUDGE, CHAIR UMPIRE, HEAD COACH, PHYSIO, SPONSOR MASCOT, THE CHAMPION at ten. Rung N gets a name plate and a personality row. - Personalities are the point, not the names: serve-and-volley, drop-shot merchant, **body-shot thrower** — note `shots[]` and the PARRY are fully built and completely unused in the match. That is the cheapest depth available anywhere in this mode. 3. **Wound-driven play** *(small, big payoff)* — the injuries should MEAN something: a one-armed opponent loses reach, a headless one flubs more. Score-is-the-body becomes score-changes-the-game. Read the fraction the way `drawZombie` and `bleed()` do (never literal hp). 4. **The fall animation** *(art pass — Oliver's idea, and a good one)* — point lost → the corpse COLLAPSES → drags itself up minus the limb. It explains the wound stage popping between points and gives every point a payoff beat. `matchReady()` is the natural slot. **Constraint: draw frames, do not fake them** (settled rule) — this needs a small fall/rise sheet per design through `assets/_regen.py`, not a JS rotate/sink. 5. **Menu entry** *(small)* — the three-mode select Oliver planned: CLASSIC TENNIS / ZOMBIE TENNIS / SPLATTER GORE, replacing the back-room door for this mode. 6. **Teaching** *(small)* — a ghost-hand lesson for the PLACEMENT FLICK. It is the counter-attack (flick during the swing aims the return; wrong-footing is how points are won) and it is taught nowhere on touch. The placement ring (`G.placeMark`) already shows the result; nothing teaches the cause. 7. **Opponent serve games** *(bigger, later)* — the zombie never serves today. Alternating service is real tennis and doubles the skill surface (return timing). Expansion ideas that survived discussion, in `PROJECT.md`'s LATER: the **tournament frame** (QUALIFYING → ROUND OF 16 → THE FINAL vs THE CHAMPION — gives the run a destination), the Hawk-Eye **challenge** as an earned continue, sudden-death deuce past a rung, doubles, and **item 7: multiplayer** (ghost match first). --- ## THE TOOL THAT MATTERS: the flight recorder Four rounds of "still the same behaviour" were ended by watching Oliver play, not by measuring with an autopilot. **Autopilot measurement lied for three passes straight** because the autopilot set `autoAssist` by hand and therefore had legs the real player did not. Recipe — inject into the Browser pane, let him play, then read it: ```js window.__rec = { losses: [], wins: [], trail: [] }; let lastPts = '0-0', lastHp = null; setInterval(() => { const T = window.T; if (!T || !T.G.match) return; const G = T.G, ball = T.ball, P = T.P; window.__rec.trail.push({ pts: T.score.pts.join('-'), phase: G.phase, hp: G.hp, bx: +ball.x.toFixed(1), bz: +ball.z.toFixed(1), bAct: ball.active, bLast: ball.lastHit, px: +P.x.toFixed(1), pz: +P.z.toFixed(1), swing: P.swingT >= 0 }); if (window.__rec.trail.length > 100) window.__rec.trail.shift(); const pts = T.score.pts.join('-'); if (pts !== lastPts) { const wasO = pts.split('-')[1] !== lastPts.split('-')[1] || (pts === '0-0' && G.hp < (lastHp ?? G.hp)); (wasO ? window.__rec.losses : window.__rec.wins).push({ at: pts, from: lastPts, trail: window.__rec.trail.slice(-30) }); lastPts = pts; } lastHp = G.hp; }, 16); ``` Then classify each loss by: minimum player↔ball gap, whether he swung at closest approach, how far he ran, where the ball died. That triple diagnosed every defect in the contact chain. - **Sample at 60 Hz, not 20** — a 20 Hz sampler overstates closest approach by up to ~0.5 m on a 20 m/s ball, which is the entire size of the effect being measured. - It is passive. Do not "help" the player from inside it. - A page reload wipes it. Re-arm after every module refresh. --- ## Traps this mode has already sprung (do not re-learn these) - **`autoAssist` is 0 on `pointer: fine`.** The desktop pane has no auto-run. The match floors it with `matchAssist`, and `assistK()` is shared by the mover AND `intercept` — computing reachability with the raw knob made the planner answer "run home" forever. - **The contact chain is three separate things**: LEGS (`matchAssist`) → DESTINATION (`assistK` in `intercept`, plus the `anyHit` short-ball candidate that chases dying rollers) → REACH (`matchReach`). Each was a separate defect found in a separate recorded session. - **`ball.lastHit` must be stamped by `tossBall`.** A stale `'O'` on a toss from behind the baseline read as the opponent's passing shot: a point and blood PER TAP. Fixed, but the shape recurs — anything that revives the ball must own it. - **`G.serveNum` is only reset by tennis's `pointTo`**, which the match bypasses. `matchReady()` resets it; a new mode with its own point boundary must too. - **A 20 Hz snapshot of a population that legitimately empties is not a measurement** (this cost a flaky test that blocked the pipeline). The suite is **seeded** — `SEED=1234 node test.js` fuzzes; a fixed seed can silently turn a guarded test into a no-op, so check guards still run. - **`?v=` in index.html on every push, or phones keep the old build.** Bump `SPRV` too if sprites change. ## Do not - Re-add regicide to the match (killing the body with a smash) — removed deliberately; it made every hard serve a free unaimed kill and smeared the score-is-the-body relationship. - Turn `drillOneShot` on as a default — it skips every `ZWOUND` stage, so the roster's best art never renders. - Touch the gore mode's contact/recovery rules while tuning the match. `matchReach` and the centre-recovery are match-only ON PURPOSE; gore splatter's tight contact and depth-only recovery protect the sidestep. - Revive the TRIAGE DRILL without a new idea. It is still in the back room and it works exactly as designed, but it failed the only test that matters: *"i think the normal player does not grasp this."* Four designs died learning that **an invented rule needs teaching; the rules a scene already implies do not.** That is why the match is tennis.