4e4311b568
7 Commits
| Author | SHA1 | Message | Date | |
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type-two
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b9d9d816ad |
[lane B+E] Stop the game lying: the death sting at living players, the stuck hiss, and a crew naming the wrong organ
Four audio/comms cues wired to the wrong condition. All four are written content that has been
in the repo for rounds, firing at the wrong moment or never firing at all.
THE DEATH STING PLAYED AT LIVING PLAYERS. finish() mapped every non-win outcome to `death` — and
`death` is not a stinger, it is a ~12 s noise table (synth.js). So surviving L1's Mast Cell
("degranulated"), outrunning the Tapeworm ("escaped") and clearing the Sovereign's Toll all told
an alive player they had died, over the top of the next twelve seconds of play. Outcomes are
classified now: won/spared/communion triumph, alive-but-it-went-badly gets a downbeat, actually
dead gets the sting, and housekeeping (reset/dispose) is silent because nothing happened to the
player at all. Verified: surviving the Mast Cell no longer emits `death`; dying still does.
THE PHASE TELL WAS A SUSTAINING HISS. boss.js used `overheat` as its phase-change cue, but that
layer sustains until the engine sends `overheat_clear` on a combat:state.overheated falling edge
— which a boss never produces. Every phase change leaked a ~12 s steam hiss and ducked the mix
under it for the rest of the fight. Three sites, now short cues.
THE CREW HAS NEVER MENTIONED HULL DAMAGE. comms.js gates its two hull lines on
`kind === 'hull_hit'`, but `kind` is the damage SOURCE ('dart'|'acid'|'gas'…), so that branch has
never once been true in the game's life and every hit read as a coat graze. damage() already
computes `leak > 0` for its own audio cue — the bus event now carries it as `hull`.
AND IT NAMED THE WRONG ORGAN. There was exactly ONE boss line — "that is the pylorus. it does not
open for you." — fired for all five bosses, so the tutorial's Mast Cell and the campaign's final
boss were both announced as a stomach valve. Per-boss lines now, off boss:start (which is the only
place the id is known, and for the Sovereign whether there is a fight at all). The Mast Cell's is
doing real work: "wait — wait. that is a mast cell. it is not hunting you." / "do NOT shoot it."
The crew is the game's only tutorialisation channel, and that is the lesson L1 exists to teach.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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type-two
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7455c03ae3 |
[lane B+C+E+F] Playtest blockers: the game never taught its controls, deleted bosses on death, and shipped an unwinnable tutorial
A five-way audit of the shipped build found the first thirty seconds are broken in three
independent ways. All three are verified, not inferred.
1. THE CONTROLS WERE NEVER STATED. The title said "press any key", and aim + fire are both gated
on pointer lock (input.js:45 onMouseMove early-returns unlocked; input.js:50 the first
mousedown only REQUESTS the lock) — so a player who dismissed with a key got no mouse look and
a cannon that silently did nothing. Worse: in an ARENA the forward axis belongs solely to
intent.throttle (player.js), so an untaught player coasts to a dead stop in front of L1's Mast
Cell and reasonably concludes the game is broken. Six arenas across L1/L3/L5/LS are the same
trap. The card now says CLICK TO FLY, takes the pointer lock on any dismissal, and prints the
legend that has existed — written and styled — in flight/dev.html since round 1, visible only
to whoever was running Lane B's harness.
2. DYING DELETED THE BOSS. boot's pump advanced `_ei` monotonically and never rewound. That
reasoning is right for `spawn` and `pickup` (re-firing double-spawns survivors and resurrects
banked pickups) but it silently applied to `boss` as well: die to any of the five, respawn,
fly through an empty lair, cross the gate, and collect a graded medal for a fight that never
happened. Dying was the fastest route past every boss in the game. Now a REARM set ({boss,
acid}) re-fires on respawn while everything else is retired into `_spent`. Verified by event
trace: start:mast_cell -> end:wipe -> start:mast_cell. Also despawns the sentinel's body on a
wipe, which the fix exposed as a duplicate (1 -> 2 Mast Cells per death).
3. L1'S TIDE WAS UNWINNABLE, AND MINE. I authored it this morning at speed 5 in a flow-2 segment,
reasoning "5 against 2 catches a dawdler". The player ceiling there is 2.8 u/s sustained
(throttleMax 1.4 x flow 2); boost peaks 5.2 for 0.55s on a 2.4s cooldown. C's own --sim prints
the verdict in plain text — "required 2.50x UNWINNABLE" — and I never ran it. Because
hazards.js grazes on gap<=catchRadius and the gap stays negative once passed, it was a ~74 dps
loop back onto the s=475 checkpoint: a brand-new player, in the default level, hard-stopped
three minutes in. Retuned to 2.4 (required 1.20x — the same shape as L2's teaching burp).
The validator was exempting it: `if (!c.lethal) continue` in levels/index.js meant qa.sh went
green over a death loop. An unwinnable chase is a design failure whatever its lethality — a
non-lethal one you cannot outrun is a continuous-damage trap. That exemption is gone, and all
six levels still validate.
Also: DEFAULT_LEVEL was still 'L2_esophagus' from when L2 was the only finished level, so every
new player skipped the tutorial entirely and started mid-campaign. LANE_C_NOTES §→ Lane F #2
said "change it if you would rather it be L1". It is L1 now.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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type-two
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9f6e91fd8f |
[lane B+C] The Tapeworm and the churn: both deferrals closed, campaign ready for playtest
The two things I deferred out loud, built — and the second one turned out to be the primitive
the first was waiting on.
THE CHURN (the force primitive). Everything in hazards.js pushed the player RADIALLY; nothing
applied a tangential one, which is why both L3's cyclones and the Guardian's arena churn got
deferred. `churn` is now a hazard kind: a tangential impulse that REVERSES on a period, so it
cannot be leaned into, only re-read. Measured: 4.32 u/s of push, direction flipping.
- L3 s1100: cyclones spanning the sea, deliberately overlapping the first tide — the room
starts spinning you at the exact moment the safe air starts shrinking.
- The Pyloric Guardian carries its own (`def.churn` + per-phase `churnMul`), so C's spec is
finally honoured in full: "pushes you at the walls", x1.5 in P2, harder in P3. Measured
2.7 u/s on the player mid-fight. The boss.js header that said this was missing is corrected.
THE TAPEWORM (LANE_C_NOTES §2), the campaign's third pressure: a DISTANCE race. One new idea in
the schedule — `flee` — advances the boss's own s and drags its ring along at fixed offsets, so
6 proglottids string out 70 units down the tube ahead of you instead of sitting in a
cross-section. Fall 110 units behind and it is gone. Verified both ways: fall behind ->
"escaped" after 16.8s having seen only P1; keep up -> all three phases -> win. C's line was "a
chase you can lose without dying", and that is now literally the outcome table.
Placed at L4 s5460, immediately before the biofilm cash-out, so the chase and the reward land
together. L4's "no_miniboss_yet" note is replaced rather than left lying.
PRE-PLAYTEST SWEEP: 6/6 levels valid, all load with ZERO console errors, every level carries
exactly 3 biopsy samples, five bosses across the campaign (mast_cell / pyloric_guardian /
tapeworm / the_blockage / appendix_sovereign), 16,820 units of authored canal, and the chain
resolves L1 -> L2 -> L3 -> L4 -> L5 -> end with LS_appendix rejoining at L5.
Everything in the GDD's roster now exists except the numbers being right, and that is the part
only humans can tell us.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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type-two
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a3784c0371 |
[lane B+C] L5 Large Intestine: the dark, the gas, and The Blockage — the campaign is complete
The last level. 6 segments, 3200 units, 51 events, and the end of the game: `next: null`.
THE GAS. GDD: "flammable gas pockets: shooting inside one detonates it (hurts everyone —
risk/reward)". Built literally, as an entity whose kill() throws a blast:
- one cannon pellet sets it off (hp 10) — the hazard has to be hair-trigger or "don't shoot
near it" is not a constraint;
- the blast reaches 16 units, FALLS OFF with distance, wipes foes, hurts YOU, and chains
through other pockets, so a corridor of them is a fuse;
- foe:false, so the pocket itself scores nothing — you are paid for what the blast KILLS,
which makes the reward self-balancing.
Measured: one pellet into a line of four detonated all four; a blast took 4 virions and paid
240; the player takes 30.3 coat point-blank, 15.4 at mid range and 0 at 20 units. "Detonate
from max range" — which C's Blockage spec calls optimal play — is a real, measurable skill.
And the cruelty that makes the level: fog 0.075 is the densest in the game and there are no
real-time lights in GUTS, so THE POCKETS ARE THE LIGHTING. Clearing a room safely also clears
the lights. No new rendering path was added for the dark; the biome's fog and the emissives
already did it.
THE BLOCKAGE (LANE_C_NOTES §Boss specs 3) — 5 armoured plates -> 4 tumbling chunks -> the core
under a 30s doom timer, with gas pockets seeded into every phase, so the boss's own room is its
worst weakness. First cut ran 25.7s, shorter than the mid-game Guardian, which is the wrong
shape for a finale — its windows are continuous by spec, so hp went 120/130/150 -> 220/230/280.
Now: 49.7s brute-forcing the plates, 30.2s using the gas. The room is the weapon, and the
difference is 40%.
The reputation loop lands here as designed: two biofilm gates, the second sixty units from the
final boss. Five levels of deciding whether to shoot the cyan resolve into three phage escorts
and a full coat, or nothing at all, in the dark, at the door.
Registering L5 also closes two dangling threads — L4's ileocecal valve and LS_appendix's exit
both pointed at it and now resolve.
C's tooling: 6/6 levels valid, sim par 540 vs par-pace 505 (reachable, with room for the boss),
pressure 1.33/4.09/3.21/5.75/4.12, min clearance 8.30 vs the 2.5 law. par.score corrected
7000 -> 4000 and a missing checkpoint added at 3060 (the 30s law caught a 34.8s gap I had left
between the boss and the gate).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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type-two
|
f9aeaf259f |
[lane B+C] L1 Oral Cavity: the tutorial, and the Mast Cell — the boss you win by not shooting
L1 has been a 2-event skeleton since round 1, waiting (in its own status field) on "Lane B's arena-mode controller". That exists now, so C's round2_plan is built as written: molar crush-cycles, the saliva tide, amylase droplets, the three samples exactly where C put them (behind the molars / under the tongue / a tonsillar crypt), and the epiglottis exam. 24 events. The teaching order is the level: move (orbs, no current) -> LOOK (the arena opens and you can stop, which no other level allows) -> shoot (one droplet, then two) -> coat (the molar ring grazes you, mucin is right there) -> RESTRAINT -> flow returns (the tide, the funnel) -> the exam. Every verb alone, in the calmest room in the game, before anything is asked of it. Two hazards are deliberately re-used rather than invented: the molar crush IS a ring_gate and the saliva tide IS a non-lethal surge, so L2's gates and its reflux finale become callbacks instead of new ideas. THE MAST CELL (LANE_C_NOTES §Boss specs 5) sits at the exact midpoint. A sentinel immune cell: cyan, no attack, no chase, inert aura (auraDps 0 — it shares the floater's drift branch and its aura does literally nothing). Fly past and the encounter just ends. Shoot it and it degranulates — droplets close in from the walls (which is how "the cavity swells shut" is expressed, because a runtime tube radius is not in Lane A's contract), the coat bleeds, and past half health the airway closes on a 25s timer. You always get through. The only question is what you get through. It needed a new boss `kind: 'sentinel'` with its own update path, because forcing a thing with no rings and no windows through the phase machine would have been worse than a branch. Damage is the failure state, so every number describes a consequence rather than a fight. Verified, all three player choices: SPARE -> "spared", coat untouched at 100, karma +25, score 0. SHOOT -> "degranulated", coat 100->56. KILL -> "anaphylaxis-survived", coat 100->6. Score is 0 in every case: shooting it buys literally nothing, so no medal can ever reward the mistake. Two bugs the testing paid for: `def.phases[0]` crashed on a boss that has no phases, and the first degranulation drain (5/s) was UNDER the player's 8/s coat regen — measured coat going 80 -> 100 during a histamine cascade, i.e. the punishment was healing you. Now 14 and 22, which are net -6/s and -14/s against regen. L1 is no longer a skeleton: its checkpoint-gap and zero-samples warnings are gone, and the campaign now opens on a real tutorial instead of an empty mouth with a gate at the end. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com> |
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type-two
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a318cf09f7 |
[lane B+C+F] The Appendix Sovereign: the secret boss, and a reputation you cannot fake
Two boss specs written to C's format (LANE_C_NOTES §Boss specs, round 3 additions) and the
first of them built. Both extend the roster along C's own law — one boss, one pressure — onto
the two axes the game had systems for and no boss pointed at: reputation (§4 Sovereign) and
restraint (§5 Mast Cell, specced only).
THE SOVEREIGN. The appendix is not vestigial: it is a biofilm reservoir where the gut's flora
shelter and re-seed the colon after a purge, and the whole fight is that fact. It is the only
boss whose existence is decided before you arrive — read once on entry:
karma >= 70 THE COMMUNION — no fight at all. Full coat, a permanent phage escort. The
reward for five levels of restraint is being spared a boss.
karma >= 30 THE TOLL — P1 only.
below THE SOVEREIGN — three phases. P1's matrix is immune to the cannon and only the
antacid torpedo disperses it (a mature biofilm's whole defining trait); P2 is a
quorum bloom that re-armours when the room gets crowded; P3 is a 20s reseed run.
And the mechanic that makes it this boss: the lair is seeded with YOUR OWN FLORA, and it feeds
on dysbiosis — every commensal your stray fire kills re-armours a plate, live, mid-fight.
KARMA vs STANDING — a real bug found in testing, and worth the extra number. `standing` is a
SPENDABLE meter: a full bar is consumed to bud an ally, dropping to a 50 floor. That meant a
perfect player could never HOLD >= 70, so the Communion was almost unreachable — verified: a
symbiotic pilot showed standing 50 and was demoted to "toll". `karma` is the same inputs with
nothing spending it. The Sovereign's tier and gates' `secretTo` branches read karma; E's bar
still reads standing.
Also: boss.js generalised to a registry, which was the claim its header made — the Sovereign
needed zero changes to enemies.js. LS_appendix (3 segments, 800 units, 16 events), reached from
L4's ileocecal valve via `secretTo`/`secretNeed` — anatomically exact, the appendix hangs off
the cecum right past that valve. The secret is hidden behind conduct, not behind a wall.
C's selfcheck caught par.time as a free medal and the fix improved the design: par 160 sits
under the timid traversal, so only a Communion run (which has no fight) can beat it. The time
medal rewards the same conduct the level is about.
Verified: all three tiers branch correctly (communion = 0 nodes + 4 phages; toll = 1 phase;
full = 3 phases, 4 armoured); killing a commensal mid-fight re-armours a plate (reason
"dysbiosis"); the valve routes karma 100 -> LS_appendix and karma 0 -> L5. Levels 5/5 valid.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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type-two
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7709484ea7 |
[lane B] The Pyloric Guardian: the first boss, built to C's spec
GUTS has had three bosses designed and none implemented. This is the first, and the framework the other two should reuse. Built to LANE_C_NOTES §Boss specs, phase table and all. WHY IT IS SMALL. A boss here is not a parallel entity system, it is a SCHEDULE over the enemy pool. The nodes and vents are ordinary enemies, so weapons hit them, the InstancedMesh draws them and enemy:die reports them for free; the fight's identity lives entirely in WHEN they can be hurt, which is two flags (`invuln`, `armor`) honoured by enemies.hurt(). boss.js is a state machine and nothing else. Faithful to C's table: P1 4 rim nodes, iris opens 2.5s every 8s P2 4 nodes, opens 1.8s every 5s, TWO armoured — and only the antacid torpedo strips them P3 the core alone, 60hp = C's "x5 hits", plus the 25s doom timer that kills you if you stall Telegraphs are C's too: a "deep gulp" 2s before each window (boss:telegraph + audio), and nodes go amber -> white-hot exactly when they become shootable — one uniform driven off `invuln`, so the thing that glows IS the thing you can hurt, always. Vents are turrets at fixed arcs: a turret already fires a telegraphed homing projectile on a cooldown, which is what an acid vent is. hp is B's call (C: "numbers need B's framework to tune against"). 150 per rim node means a ring outlives its first window, so you must come back for it — which is what lets the stomach's coat-drain be the real clock. C's pillar, verified: parked in the lair for 20s without fighting back, coat goes 100 -> 0. "A race against your coat, not its hp." Verified end-to-end: a paced pilot (11 shots/s, ~70% uptime) wins in 38.8s across 9 windows at 0.38 open-duty (spec: 31-36%); phases report 4/0 armoured, 4/2 armoured, 1 core; damage is refused while the iris is shut; the two armoured nodes consumed exactly 2 torpedo strips. Not included: C's arena churn (a force on the player, the one part of the spec that is a feel change rather than a schedule) — noted for the round that tunes it. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com> |