The last skeleton. L3 has been 4 events since round 1, waiting (in its own status field) on
"the pH field" and a boss framework; both exist now, so the level is authored: 46 events,
2500 units, the sea, and the Guardian at the end of it.
THE PH MECHANIC, finally load-bearing. Lane A built an acid plane in round 2 and left two
hooks on it — depthAt() labelled "B:" and set() labelled "C's event pump drives this" — and
nothing had ever called either. Now:
- player.js scales the biome's ambient coat drain by SUBMERSION. Stomach 2.2/s x5 = 11/s
under the surface (measured: 8/s net of regen, and regen is off for 2.5s after any hit,
so it is brutal mid-fight); x0.15 above it, which is effectively safe air.
- a new `acid` level event names a target height and boot eases the sea toward it in step(),
so a RISING TIDE is a beat C can author. L3 uses two: -14 -> -6 mid-sea, then -6 -> +2 in
the antrum, where the surface goes ABOVE the centreline and the safe lane simply stops
existing. Measured: the identical spot (y -5) goes from 0/s to 9.67/s across that tide.
This is the GDD's "mucus shallows are safe lanes" expressed as DEPTH rather than wall-hugging,
which is better on two counts: it reads instantly (you can SEE the surface) and it makes the
vertical axis matter in the one level that is a room. Every collectible worth having is under it.
Gated on the sea's s-span, not on depthAt alone — depthAt returns a bare -1 outside the span
and that is indistinguishable from "1 unit above the surface", so reading it naively would have
quietly scaled ambient drain on every level in the game. Caught before it shipped.
Level: cardia (still teal, so the fundus can REVEAL the sea) -> fundus (the teaching room:
huge, low tide, nothing kills you fast) -> body (the sea proper, tide rises while you are in
it) -> antrum (no safe air left, only speed) -> pyloric antrum (the Guardian). H. pylori is
taught alone in the dome and tested in a rising sea; pepsin swarms scale 3 -> 6; bezoar_chunk
is a new catalogue row for the stomach's traffic.
L3 has NO commensals and no biofilm gate, which is anatomically exact — acid sterilises, which
is why H. pylori is famous for surviving it. So BIOME STANDING goes quiet for nine minutes and
comes back in L4, which makes L4's colonies read as relief rather than furniture.
C's sim: par 540s vs par-pace 555s ("requires pushing above par-pace"), pressure
3.75/1.50/2.44/2.16, min clearance 7.15 vs the 2.5 law, all 21 checkpoint gaps under 30s.
par.score corrected 9000 -> 5500, because 9000 was above everything the level can actually pay.
Deferred, and said out loud rather than quietly dropped: churn cyclones. A vortex that flings
the player is a FORCE and no hazard in the tree applies one; it wants the same A/B work as the
Guardian's arena churn and should land with it.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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