BLOBBO/GDD.md

BLOBBO — Game Design Document

v0.1 — draft for John's review, 2026-07-17. Raw idea capture: docs/IDEA.md. Everything below is proposed-for-review; ⚠️ marks decisions that need John's sign-off before Opus 4.8 execution lanes are written.

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1. Pitch

Fall Guys × Splatoon × Micro Machines. Up to dozens of friendly white blobby dudes race giant absurd Rube-Goldberg obstacle courses. Paint cannons along the course spray colour — whatever sticks to your body is your loadout: the relative % coverage of each colour is your buff kit. The course paints you; being painted changes how you race the course.

The invention nobody else has: paint coverage measured on your own body as the skill system, inside a physics-comedy racer where the course is one giant player-triggered machine.

2. Pillars

1. Comedy through physics — soft wobbly blobs, out-of-scale props, telegraphed chain reactions. Funny beats fair; fair beats random.
2. Paint is everything — identity, buffs, weight, size, strategy all read off your painted body. No HUD-first design: your state is visible on you.
3. Readable chaos — every contraption telegraphs ~0.5s before it fires. Getting flattened must feel earned/funny, never random (random = ragequit).
4. One goo universe — players are goo; the world fights back with other goo (paint, honey, oil, mud, water, bubbles). Viscosity playground, not gimmick pile.

3. The Blobbo

Friendly white soft-body blob — Michelin-man silhouette, fewer rolls, big eyes. Starts every race clean/white. Accumulates paint as a visible skin layer. Soft-body wobble is cosmetic (shader/spring jiggle over a rigid physics proxy — see §9); the comedy is in the wobble, the determinism is in the capsule.

4. Core loop

Race an obstacle course → paint cannons/zones spray colour → manage your coverage mix (seek, avoid, cleanse, smudge) → coverage grants buffs that change traversal → buffs + weight + size interact with the course machinery → finish placement → next round / next course.

5. Feature list

Tiers: [MVP] first playable · [V1] launch · [V2] post-launch/stretch.

5.1 Paint system (the core)

• [MVP] 7 main colours; per-player texture-space coverage mask; live % per colour.
• [MVP] Buff activates at threshold (⚠️ proposal: ≥20% coverage), strength scales with %; dominant colour drives visual/audio identity.
• [V1] Secondary blends: two adjacent colours both ≥20% → blend effect replaces/joins the pair (see §6 table). Way more permutations, mastery = deliberately building a mix.
• [V1] Super-state: ≥70% one colour = amped version of the buff with a drawback — you glow, you're a target, one detergent bubble wrecks you.
• [MVP] Cleansing: detergent bubbles on course (full or partial cleanse ⚠️), water rinses gradually.
• [V1] Contact smudging: bumping other blobs transfers paint both ways (⚠️ transfer vs. plain removal — transfer is funnier and more strategic).
• [V2] Paint flaking: growing stretches/cracks paint off in pickup-able flakes.

5.2 Weight (paint = mass)

• [MVP] Coverage adds mass: heavy blobs sink pressure plates, tip see-saws, wobble slower, launch shorter; clean blobs are light and flingable.
• [MVP] Detergent bubbles double as tactical weight-drops.
• [V1] Buoyancy inversion underwater: clean floats (fast surface lane), painted sinks (slow bottom lane, better pickups).

5.3 Scale (environment scale as mechanic)

• [V1] Colour-driven size: ⚠️ purple = grow, pink = shrink (see §6). Big = heavy/blocks/easy target; small = pipe shortcuts/hard to hit/flung far.
• [V1] Paint dilution: growing increases surface area → your % coverage drops. Size trades directly against your buff loadout.
• [V1] Scale zones: shrink sections racing inside the machine (marble runs, domino chains, gear guts); giant sections stomping over a model town while tiny racers dodge your feet.
• [V2] Players as course furniture: a giant blob is a platform/counterweight for tiny blobs — the machine incorporates the players.

5.4 Course-as-machine (Rube Goldberg)

• [MVP] Contraption toolkit: see-saws, boots, buckets, conveyors, dominoes, gears, catapults, fans — triggered by players, not timers. Everyone upstream rigs the course for everyone downstream.
• [MVP] Telegraph rule: every chain reaction winds up visibly ~0.5s before firing.
• [V1] Colour-keyed machinery: mechanisms respond only to blobs of their colour (green valve needs a mostly-green blob → shortcut opens for them + any tailgaters). Emergent alliances, zero UI.
• [V1] Persistent course state: triggered contraptions stay tripped/reset slowly; sprayed paint lingers on surfaces as slip/grip zones. Back of the pack races a messier course — chaos as natural rubber-banding.
• [V2] Gravity switches as contraption outputs: a lever flips gravity for a zone; heavy blobs slam, light blobs drift. Ceiling-runs through upside-down rooms.

5.5 Physics zones & surfaces

• [V1] Underwater: buoyancy lanes + gradual paint rinse (shortcut costs loadout).
• [V2] Zero-g: momentum pinball; paint floats as wobbly globs mid-air — fly through one to wear it.
• [V1] Honey: slow but sticky — climb walls/ceilings. Traversal tool.
• [V1] Oil: fast, no steering, luge; fire-buffed blob ignites a trail behind them (emergent trap-laying).
• [V1] Mud = anti-paint: coats brown, masks colours, suppresses buffs until washed — makes water double-edged.
• [MVP] Surface material framework (friction/stick/flow per material) so all of the above are data, not code.

5.6 World & tone

• [MVP] Out-of-scale everyday settings (Micro Machines DNA): giant kitchen tables, gardens, bathtubs, desks; comically huge and tiny props.
• [V1] Course sections themed as rooms of one absurd oversized house.

5.7 Format & multiplayer

• [MVP] Local-feel party size first: 8-player online rooms, single race.
• [V1] 30–40 player fields, multi-round elimination show (Fall Guys format).
• [V1] Server-authoritative simulation + anti-cheat from day one — cheating is what soured Fall Guys; non-negotiable design constraint, not a patch.
• [V2] Spectator/replay clips (the game is a clip generator — lean in).

6. Draft colour/buff table ⚠️ (the big review item)

7 mains on a wheel; adjacent pairs blend. All names/effects are proposals.

Colour	Buff	Effect	Drawback / texture
Red	BURN	Speed-boost flame trail; ignites oil; melts wax/ice barriers	Slowly burns itself off (self-consuming coverage)
Orange	BOUNCE	Rubberized — higher bounces, contraptions launch you further	Harder to stop precisely
Yellow	ZAP	Trigger colour-keyed machinery at range; static bump-stun	Attracts to metal (yanked toward rails/magnets)
Green	GRIP	Sticky feet — immune to oil/ice slip, climb like honey, hold on through gravity flips	Slower top speed
Blue	SLICK	Waterproof (no rinse), swim jets, leaves a slippery trail	Your own trail is slippery to you too
Purple	MEGA	Grow big + heavy — plates, see-saws, shoving, blocking	Paint dilutes as you grow; huge target
Pink	MINI	Shrink small + light — pipe shortcuts, hard to hit, mega-flung	Can't trigger plates; gusts/fans own you

Example blends (adjacent, both ≥20%) — final list needs a full pass:

• Red+Orange METEOR — flaming cannonball launches, smash light barriers.
• Orange+Yellow PINBALL — each bounce zaps nearby machinery.
• Yellow+Green MAGNET — stick to metal surfaces/rails, ride them.
• Green+Blue SNAILGOD — climbable slime trail others can also use.
• Blue+Purple TSUNAMI — heavy water cannonball; splash rinses nearby players.
• Pink+Red ROCKET — tiny + flaming = fastest projectile in the game.

7. Courses (initial set sketch)

1. Breakfast Rush [MVP greybox] — giant kitchen table; toaster launchers, cereal avalanches, milk river (water zone), butter pat (oil).
2. The Machine [V1] — you shrink and race through the Rube Goldberg engine that powers the house: marble runs, dominoes, gears.
3. Bathtime [V1] — bathtub ocean, soap-bubble cleansers everywhere, honey (shampoo) walls, mud garden outside the window.
4. Model Village [V2] — grow-shrink alternating; giants stomp the village while minis race through it.

8. Asset plan (MODELBEAST — local, free)

• Concept wave (queued now): blobbo character sheet, painted variants, course vistas, contraption props, paint cannon, bubble zone, logo explorations — flux_local on the m3ultra farm.
• Mesh wave (after concept review): hero props + blobbo base mesh via image→GLB (hunyuan3d_mlx / trellis_mac / sf3d), Blender finish on ultra.
• Blobbo is a bespoke simple mesh (sphere-blob + blend shapes), not a character_kit humanoid — the 2-base-mesh fleet rule doesn't apply, but clips/ rigs stay out of web builds per licensing zones (all generated = 🟢 web-ok).
• Paint itself is procedural (shader + splat decals), not generated art.

9. Tech stack ⚠️ (recommendation, needs sign-off)

Recommend: web-first, three.js + Rapier (WASM), server-authoritative Node room server, docker-deployed to the games VPS (partly.party) like the other games.

• Fits the existing pipeline: GLB assets, browser distribution, docker deploys, MRPGI/character-kit tooling knowledge.
• Soft-body is faked: rigid capsule/sphere physics proxy + cosmetic jiggle (vertex springs/shader). Real soft-body × 40 players × netcode is not shippable; fake wobble is indistinguishable in comedy terms.
• Paint = Splatoon technique: per-player UV-space mask texture, splats rendered into it, GPU mip/reduction pass → live coverage %. Cheap, exact.
• Server runs headless Rapier as authority; clients interpolate. MVP at 8 players, architecture sized for 40.
• Decision gate: if browser perf caps out at M1 milestone, port call to Godot 4 (native) — flagged early, evaluated with data.

10. Milestones

• M0 — Playground: one greybox course, blob movement + jiggle, camera. Feels funny to walk.
• M1 — Paint MVP: splat pipeline, coverage %, 3 colours + buffs (Red/Green/Blue), bubbles, weight. Decision gate on stack.
• M2 — The Machine: contraption toolkit, telegraphs, surface materials, Breakfast Rush course.
• M3 — Multiplayer: 8-player rooms, server authority, smudging, race format.
• M4 — The Show: all 7 colours + blends, scale system, 2nd course, juice/VFX/audio, 40-player test.

11. Opus 4.8 execution lanes (preview — full instructions after this doc is approved)

• Lane A — Engine/feel: bootstrap, blob controller, camera, jiggle, greybox playground.
• Lane B — Paint: splat pipeline, coverage compute, buff/threshold/blend framework.
• Lane C — Machine: contraption toolkit, triggers/telegraphs, surface materials, gravity/zones.
• Lane D — Netcode: room server, authoritative sim, interpolation, anti-cheat posture.
• Lane E — Art: MODELBEAST asset flow → GLB integration, paint shader look-dev, VFX.

Lanes A–C can start in parallel worktrees; D after A stabilizes the sim contract; E continuous. Each lane gets its own instruction doc + acceptance criteria.

12. Risks

1. Netcode × physics — the classic killer. Mitigation: fake soft-body, authoritative server, small MVP player count.
2. Readability under chaos — mitigation: telegraph rule as a pillar, paint identity visible on bodies.
3. Scope — this doc is huge. Mitigation: tiers are real; MVP is one course, 3 colours, 8 players.
4. Cheating — server authority from day one; never trust client physics.

13. Open questions for review ⚠️

1. Buff table (§6) — right 7? right effects? purple/pink as the size pair?
2. Thresholds: 20% activate / 70% super — feel right?
3. Smudge = transfer (steal paint) or removal only?
4. Detergent bubbles: full cleanse or dominant-colour-only?
5. Tech stack sign-off (§9) — web-first OK?
6. Name check: BLOBBO vs. globbo (folder says globbo, repo says BLOBBO).