8030547e3c
Three holes closed:
philes — 40 written, all in src/philes.js so the next 160 is a writing
job and not a code job. P opens a reader: list on the left,
the text on the right, attributed to whoever wrote it in
whatever year they wrote it. Every level now drops at least
one; previously you collected files you could never open.
save — ESTABLISHED. Every hop writes level/ttl/hop/baud/philes/
cargo/flags to localStorage, and the boot screen offers
R — RESUME. A 64-hop game with no save is not a 64-hop game.
MTU — the HUD has been showing your MTU drop as you take files off
the board while nothing happened. Now two files are free and
after that you arrive in pieces, one TTL per extra fragment,
every hop. You can put things down again from the traceroute
map. Lore costs distance, which is the economy the whole
design is built on.
All 13 hops re-swept: clean.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
120 lines
5.7 KiB
Markdown
120 lines
5.7 KiB
Markdown
# HANDSHAKE
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> *a love story in 64 hops*
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You are **SYN**. You want **ACK**. Root is the only one who can give it to you.
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Design doc: [DESIGN.md](DESIGN.md).
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## Run it
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```bash
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python3 /Users/johnking/Documents/handshake/serve.py 8123
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```
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Then open `http://localhost:8123/`. Headphones — every frequency in this is the real
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frequency and half the mechanics are inaudible without them.
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`serve.py` is `http.server` plus `Cache-Control: no-store`, because ES modules cache
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hard and it makes every edit look like it did nothing.
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## Controls
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| | |
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|---|---|
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| `WASD` | move |
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| `SPACE` | jump / hold 2600 Hz |
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| mouse | look (click to capture; dragging works too) |
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| `E` | use |
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| `M` | traceroute — the level select, and where you drop cargo |
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| `P` | philes — read what you've picked up |
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| `` ` `` | hop select (dev) |
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| `ESC` | release the mouse |
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It saves. Every hop completes a handshake with the world and writes to
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localStorage; the boot screen offers `R — RESUME` when there's something to resume.
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## What's here
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Thirteen playable hops, each a different genre, one renderer.
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| id | hop | what it is |
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|---|---|---|
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| `coldboot` | 1 | FP tutorial in a 512-slot NIC ring buffer, then the DMA rips you out |
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| `stack` | 2–8 | 7-floor third-person descent. NX floors, rate gates, canaries, ASLR reshuffles on death, stateful FIREWALL boss |
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| `timewait` | 9 | walking sim. beige room, 50 Hz hum, half-open connections in plastic chairs, FIN by the door |
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| `war` | 10–16 | EFnet twin-stick. netsplit riding, ops crowns, Sub7 body-snatch |
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| `smash` | 17–20 | 2D side-scroll `char buf[64]`. canary, return address, NOP sled, shellcode |
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| `worm` | 21–28 | Morris worm RTS with the 1-in-7 reinfection locked on. you lose by winning |
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| `cuckoo` | 29–34 | LBL 1986 terminal. connection time is visibility. you get caught |
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| `board` | 35–44 | the BBS. busy signal, ANSI painting at live baud, ratios, NUP gate, ANSI bomb, the sysop watching you type, FidoNet, playable LORD |
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| `handshake` | 45–50 | five-boss rhythm arena. dial tone → DTMF → ANSam → V.8bis → carrier |
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| `copper` | 51–58 | FP through duct, load coils, a Strowger cathedral, a lineman's handset |
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| `bluebox` | 59–63 | playable 13-button blue box. 2600, KP/MF/ST, tandem stacking, then SS7 |
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| `climb` | 63→1 | on-rails reverse ascent. Spectre split-timeline, Rowhammer, Log4Shell |
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| `root` | 64 | the room is empty. then the ACK comes back |
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## The three load-bearing ideas
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**TTL is the health bar and it only goes down.** 64 hops, no healing, ever. Levels
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aren't hard, they're *expensive*.
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**Bandwidth is resolution** — [`src/link.js`](src/link.js). One render target and one
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shader. Your baud rate sets the target height; at 1200 and below the scene renders as
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ASCII glyphs. `HS.link.setBaud(0..6)` in the console to see it. The V.8bis fight sets
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this for real.
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**Every header you drop is a piece of clothing** — `makeSyn()` in
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[`src/kit.js`](src/kit.js). Seven wireframe shells, one per OSI layer, shed as you
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descend.
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## MTU
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Files taken off the BBS are lore, and lore is paid for in distance. Two is free;
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after that you don't fit down the next hop in one piece and every hop costs a TTL
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per extra fragment. You can put things down again from the traceroute map. That's
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the whole economy: everything worth reading costs you some of the distance you have
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left.
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## Audio
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[`src/audio.js`](src/audio.js) — every tone is oscillators, nothing is sampled, and
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every frequency is the real one: 350+440 dial tone, the DTMF matrix, R1 MF pairs with
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real 100 ms KP / 60 ms digit timing, 2600 Hz, ANSam at 2100 Hz reversing phase every
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450 ms, Bell 103 FSK. About 300 lines and zero megabytes.
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## Layout
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```
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index.html shell, all CSS, importmap
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serve.py dev server, no-store
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src/main.js router, TTL, traceroute map, the loop
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src/link.js bandwidth → resolution. the post shader.
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src/audio.js every tone in the game
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src/term.js 80x25 cell terminal, pipe colours, CP437 blocks as geometry
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src/kit.js body/collision, camera rigs, SYN, labels, seeded rng
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src/input.js keys, pointer lock, the ANSI bomb's remap table
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src/hud.js status line, subtitles, title cards, NO CARRIER
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src/levels/*.js one file per hop
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vendor/ three.js r17x, vendored
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```
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Each level exports `{ id, hop, title, via, baud, mount(ctx), update(dt,t,ctx), unmount(ctx) }`.
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`ctx` hands it a fresh scene, camera and collision world, plus `say/card/hint/phile/
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spendTTL/setBaud/next`. Genre switches are just different camera + controller modules
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over one renderer — that's the whole trick.
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## Dev handles
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`HS` on `window`: `HS.goto(id)`, `HS.link.setBaud(n)`, `HS.game`, `HS.philes`,
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`HS.run(n)` — drives `n` frames by hand, because `requestAnimationFrame` is throttled
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to zero in a hidden tab and that makes the game look broken when it's only asleep.
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## Skipped
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- **Multiplayer (`CHECKSUM`)** — the Journey-style anonymous pass-by. Needs a server; add when there's something to connect to.
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- **Playing both fragments** — fragmenting costs TTL, it doesn't split you into two packets you alternate between. Add when a level has a corridor narrow enough to need it.
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- **The 200 philes** — 40 written in [`src/philes.js`](src/philes.js), all readable with `P`. Adding the next 160 is a writing job, not a code job: put the text in that file, call `ctx.phile('id')` wherever it should be found.
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- **Trade Wars** — the second door game. LORD is real and playable; TW2002 is "closed for maintenance since 1994", which is both a joke and true.
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- Levels are one hop's worth of content each, not the full 5–20 minutes the design doc describes. The genres, mechanics and set pieces are all in — the *duration* isn't.
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