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>
The 6DOF unlock the player header has promised since round 1 ("Arena/6DOF mode is round 2;
modeAt() is guarded below"). It unblocks L1 and L3, which are both arena levels in the GDD and
have been skeletons waiting on this.
The insight that made it small: spline space ALREADY spans a room — s is the axial coordinate,
x/y are the cross-section — and world.collide() already resolves against arena spheres
(arenaSpatial, Lane A round 2). So this is not a new controller. The only real difference
between a tube and a room is WHO OWNS s: in a tube the flow carries you and you may only trim
it +/-40%; in a room `intent.throttle` becomes signed thrust with its own damping, so you can
stop dead and you can reverse. That is the whole feature, and it is what "slower, spatial,
exploratory" actually means in play.
- tuning.js: arena{thrust 44, maxSpeed 11, damping 2.2}. maxSpeed sits UNDER the esophagus's
12-20 flow on purpose — the GDD asks for slower.
- player.js: st.vs (axial velocity), the mode branch, surf disabled in rooms (no travelling
wave to ride, and a hanging surfBlend would speed-lock you to a crest that isn't there),
respawn() clears vs so a death in a room can't leak momentum into a tube.
- player:state gains `mode`; `flow` reads 0 in a room and `speed` goes signed.
- hud.js prints "6dof · free" instead of "flow 0 · thr 100%" — two lies on one instrument.
Safe by construction: both arena triggers are opt-in (level.arenas, or a segment marked
mode:"open"). L1/L2/L4 declare neither and are byte-for-byte unaffected.
Verified in L3's stomach: tube hands-off carries you at 4.53 u/s, acid-sea hands-off coasts to
a dead stop (0.0), and a room lets you travel BACKWARDS (-3.8u). Bus reports
{mode:arena,flow:0,speed:0} vs {mode:tube,flow:3,speed:3}.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The deeper payoff of the flora loop. A new `biofilm` level event: cross one and combat checks
BIOME STANDING — high enough (>= need), the native flora PART the biofilm, budding a wave of phage
allies + refilling coat, then spending the goodwill; too low, it stays sealed and you run the
gauntlet raw. Emits `biofilm {opened}` so E can voice both.
- combat/index.js: biofilmGate(ev) on the level:event pump (fields need/allies/coat).
- levels/index.js: the selfcheck knows the `biofilm` type now (validates need 0..100).
- L2: one demoed at s2500 — the opening flora/akkermansia/beacon let you BANK standing, and the
gate cashes it into a phage escort right before the hiatus + reflux finale.
The mechanism is complete; L5 also gets the fast-route/Appendix branch when that level + world
support land. Verified in-engine: high standing -> opened, 3 phages, coat 50->90; low -> sealed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The first ALLY, and the reputation loop that earns it — "don't shoot the biome, it helps you"
(V2_IDEAS) made mechanical.
- combat/enemies.js + balance.js: the `phage` archetype. A friendly seeker that hunts the
nearest FOE (not the player) and rams it — a bacteriophage bursts its host after `bursts`
hits. Fast (26 > every foe) so it catches things, fragile (hp 8) so it is spent, not a wall.
Entities now carry a `foe` flag (foes true; flora + phage false); kill() generalised so ANY
ally scores nothing and never combos. Fallback silhouette is a bare icosahedron = the phage's
real icosahedral capsid. Teal (EMISSIVE.ally), distinct from cyan "don't shoot" flora.
- combat/index.js: BIOME STANDING — one run-scoped float. flora:tended raises it, flora:harmed
drops it 25; at the symbiotic threshold the biome BUDS a phage near you (capped 3, 3s cooldown),
spending standing. Emits `standing {value}` for a future Lane E meter.
- levels/enemies.js: ARCHETYPES += phage; catalogue `phage`.
Verified deterministically in-engine: tending flora budded a phage, which hunted a spore_pod foe
(30hp) and rammed it dead; three-colour readability holds (amber foe / teal ally / cyan friend).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The round-2 microbe pass, vertical slice. Cross-lane (integrator call): the point was one
thread proven end to end — art pipeline in, friend and foe out.
- core/assets.js (D): the GLB loader, finally wired. GLTFLoader was vendored but never
imported and the manifest had 0 models, so enemies.js's `glb?.geometry` hook was dead code.
Now every manifest model preloads (AWAITED — pools set geometry at construction, a late load
can't retrofit an InstancedMesh) into ONE BufferGeometry normalized to a unit bounding
sphere; get('models',n).geometry lights up the hook. Optional-asset law intact: any failure
-> no geometry -> procedural fallback.
- combat/enemies.js + balance.js (B): two new archetypes.
flora — the FIRST FRIEND. Cyan (ART_BIBLE: flora reads friendly). Drifts like a
floater but its aura HEALS (sheds coat), never harms. Shootable — and shooting
it is the reputation trap: kill() gives no score, no combo, emits flora:harmed.
Verified: the aura fires player.refill({coat}); a shot flora scores 0.
spore_pod — a foe yeast cluster: the floater's drift+aura, but its OWN pool so its blobby
GLB will not reskin the food-debris floater.
Pool geometry now scales a GLB by the archetype radius (GLBs ship unit-normalized).
- levels/enemies.js (C): ARCHETYPES += flora, spore_pod; catalogue entries lacto_drifter
(Lactobacillus) + yeast_pod (Candida). L2 gets a light teach beat in the calm opening — a
friendly reef at s180, one yeast at s300, both off the racing line.
Ships playable as glowing primitives (a capsule + an icosahedron), exactly like the rest of
the round-1 roster; the Trellis/Hunyuan meshes drop in via the manifest with no code change.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Wired B's player/combat + event pump, D's assets, C's level pick into boot.
Fixed qa ESM gate (node --check no-op, found by B) + added spline selfcheck.
TECH: world contract FROZEN v1.1, bus events ratified, colorspace + crest-speed
laws (CREST_FACTOR 1.6 — B proved surfing lost to throttle at 1.0). Stub complies.
Verified integrated build via 60s stepped sim: 9 draws, 0 errors, 0 asset misses;
one known gap (fiction-id spawn resolve) confirmed and assigned as B's top item.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Data spine:
- Schema v1 ratified (TECH.md, C-owned). Additive over v0: schema/par/next, segment
name, cross-section placement (theta/rho as a FRACTION of safe radius), spread, span,
pickup+gate event types, hazard params. STUB_LEVEL synced (that const only, per
ROUND1 §Lane C.1) — world.hash() unchanged (1bdf001), geometry provably untouched.
- levels/index.js: registry + loader (node+browser, no THREE), real schema selfcheck
(qa's --selfcheck hook is now live) and a pacing simulator (--sim). Consumes the other
lanes' contracts live rather than restating them: A's biomes.js for ids and
wave.amp+breathe, A's SKIN, B's tuning.js hull radius, B's balance.js for scores.
- levels/enemies.js (fiction id -> archetype join table), levels/difficulty.js.
L2_esophagus — the vertical slice, complete: 3600 units, 7 beats, 47 events, 65 enemies,
10 checkpoints, 3 samples, reflux-surge finale. L1/L3 skeletons (shape only).
Anatomy is the level designer: the three real esophageal constrictions are the three
setpieces, and all three enemies are real esophageal pathology (bolus chunk, eosinophilic
esophagitis, candida esophagitis).
Measured (node web/js/levels/index.js --selfcheck|--sim; qa GREEN):
- selfcheck 3/3 valid, exit 0.
- pressure curve 0.27 -> 2.14 -> 4.35 -> 0.69 -> 4.53 -> 6.35 -> 4.40 (breather/pressure/
spike/breather/pressure/peak/finale).
- par 3:30 vs measured 2:47 speedrun / 3:19 par-pace / 4:22 timid; par.score 9000 of a
9400 kill budget (95%), computed from B's scores.
- all 10 checkpoint gaps within the <=30s death-cost law (max 28.8s); min clearance 2.73.
Two contract collisions found and resolved (LANE_C_NOTES):
- Biome ids: authored mouth/pharynx/cardia/pylorus; A's registry has six canonical ids and
rejected all four. A is right — biome = look, segments[].name = anatomy. Conformed.
- Balance: my first enemies.js restated hp/size/speed/score that B owns in balance.js.
Cut to a join table; index.js reads B's scores via scoreFor().
Caught live: A raised esophagus wave.amp 0.9 -> 1.4 mid-session, making the diaphragmatic
hiatus unflyable (2.33 vs the 2.5 floor). Widened 6.5 -> 6.8. The invariant also failed my
own aortic constriction's first draft (radius 7, symmetric squeeze) -> radius 9, directional.
No in-engine flythrough: ?stub=1&lvl= does not compose (snippet offered to F) and the stub
is single-segment, so it could only render beat 1. The pacing evidence is a kinematic model,
not a playtest — it proves L2 is flyable, paced and survivable, not that it feels good.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
