DESIGN.md: depth roadmap — classes, real-record trainspotting, bosses, art plan
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
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DESIGN.md
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DESIGN.md
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# VINYL GAUNTLET — depth design doc
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*Where to take the game after the core loop. Written 2026-07-15, after Steps 1–7 shipped
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and the game went live at partly.party/vinylgauntlet. Companion to plan.md (which is done).*
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## Where we are
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The Gauntlet II skeleton works and is fun-as-rectangles-now-sprites: vibe drain, discount-bin
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generators, swarms, Sound Guy, airhorn, trainspot-to-exit, 3 hand-authored levels, announcer.
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What it lacks is exactly what Gauntlet II had that we haven't used yet — **classes, treasure,
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secrets, "shot the food", infinite depth** — plus the thing only WE can do: **real record data.**
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Design constraints:
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- **cratewars owns buy/sell economy** (DopeWars clone). No shop/economy sim here — a nod at most.
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- All art is free via MODELBEAST flux_local (assets/queue.json → enqueue → collect → process).
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- partly.party audience includes phones (GAMES/CLAUDE.md: test Pixel-6-Pro width). Keyboard-only
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is leaving players on the table.
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- 9 generated assets already sitting unwired: record_pirate, crate_ghoul, goldrecord, turntable,
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lamp, checker/carpet floors, shelf/poster walls.
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## The one big idea: trainspotting is real
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We have `discogs_full` (10.4M records, local Postgres). Extract a curated JSON — say 100–500
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canonical records per genre (house, techno, hip hop, jungle, disco...) with artist / title /
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label / year. When you clear a level, the DJ Booth reveals **an actual record**:
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> *TUNE IDENTIFIED: Rhythim Is Rhythim — Strings of Life (Transmat, 1987)*
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Every ID goes into your **Trainspotter's Notebook** (localStorage): a persistent collection log
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across runs. "I've identified 74 of 500 tunes" is a real meta-progression hook that costs almost
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nothing to build, can't be copied by anyone without the data, and literally teaches record
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culture while you play. Genre = level theme (see Level Themes below), so your notebook fills by
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scene. Rare pulls (a 1-in-50 "grail" ID, gold-tinted in the notebook) give the gambling dopamine.
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This is the game's soul. Everything else below is good arcade meat, but this is the hook.
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## Gameplay depth
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### Classes (Gauntlet II's core, still unused)
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Pick your digger at the title screen. Stats only — no new mechanics, huge replay value:
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| Class | Tweak | Fantasy |
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|---|---|---|
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| **The Digger** | +25% move speed | fast fingers, first to the bins |
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| **The Selector** | vinyl does 2 dmg (kills nerds in 1... no — kills faster, 2-shot bins) | taste is a weapon |
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| **The Promoter** | starts with 1 lanyard, +1 airhorn | knows everyone |
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| **The Sound Tech** | Sound Guy drains half; immune to Shazam projectiles | speaks his language |
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Implementation: a `CLASSES` table + 4 title-screen sprites. One session.
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### Vibe states (DeepSeek's best mechanic idea)
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- **> 75%: Peak Time** — vinyl flies 20% faster
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- **25–75%: normal**
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- **< 25%: Burning Out** — 15% slower move, red vignette, desperate announcer
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Three thresholds, ~20 lines, makes espresso *feel* like relief.
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### "Shot the espresso!"
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Vinyl destroys espresso pickups on contact. Announcer: *"Selector... shot the espresso."*
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The single most-remembered Gauntlet mechanic, nearly free to add, comedy + aim discipline.
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### Enemy roster v2 (art already generated or one queue-run away)
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| Enemy | Behavior | Art |
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|---|---|---|
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| **Record Pirate** | beelines for the nearest *pickup*, steals it, flees to a wall and despawns. Kill him → drops it back + bonus gold record | ✅ generated |
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| **Crate Ghoul** | slow tank, 3 HP, spawns from bins on later levels (30% roll) | ✅ generated |
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| **Shazam Zombie** | stationary, lobs slow "what song is this?" projectiles (new pool) | queue it |
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| **Dust Mite** | tiny, fast, 1HP, spawns in packs of 5 from floor cracks in Archive levels | queue it |
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| **Mite Queen** | miniboss every 4th level: fat, slow, periodically vomits mites; 12 HP | queue it |
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### Bosses (the Elite, from the bestiary)
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- **The Spectral Conductor** — level 8 boss. Doesn't attack; *conducts*: while alive, all
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generators spawn at 2x and enemies move 1.5x. Kill the conductor, the room calms. 20 HP,
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teleports between corners when hit 5 times.
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- **The Monstrous 78 RPM** — final(ish) boss: a giant spinning record that ricochets around
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the room Pong-style, spitting warped-record shards. Only vulnerable when it stops to
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"change sides" every 10s. Beat it → it IS the White Label (see Lore).
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### Digging (hold E at crate walls)
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2-second channel, vulnerable, at any *wall_crate* tile (once per tile):
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- 70% common: +200 vibe · 25% rare: gold record (score) · 4% **Grail**: full vibe + flash
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- 1% **Bootleg**: every enemy on screen aggros you, announcer cackles
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Injects push-your-luck into wall geometry. The bestiary's "digging minigame" idea, minimal form.
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### Treasure rooms (Gauntlet II secret sauce)
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Every 3rd level, a 20-second bonus maze: no enemies, floor covered in gold records, exit
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closes when timer ends. Pure greed, pure joy. One special map + a timer.
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### Scoring & the arcade frame
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Score (kills ×10, gold records ×100, level clear ×500, notebook first-ID ×1000), lives = none
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(vibe IS lives, correct), **local high-score table** with 3-letter initials — it's going on
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partly.party next to an arcade landing; it should feel like a cab. Attract mode: title screen
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cycles logo → high scores → lore card → bestiary card (all art we can generate).
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### Level themes (tilesets already half-generated)
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| Theme | Tiles | Enemy mix | Trainspot genre pool |
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|---|---|---|---|
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| **Record Shop** (lv 1–3) | parquet + crate walls ✅ | posers, nerds | disco, soul, funk |
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| **Record Fair** (lv 4–6) | carpet + shelf walls ✅ | + pirates, gatekeepers | hip hop, jazz |
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| **Club Night** (lv 7–9) | checker + poster walls ✅ | + shazam zombies, 2x sound guys | house, techno |
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| **The Archive** (lv 10+) | dark! radial light around player | mites, ghouls, queen | jungle, hardcore, white labels |
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The Archive uses a darkness overlay (RenderTexture mask or Phaser Light2D) — visibility ~5 tiles,
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lamps (✅ generated) as light sources. Cheap dread.
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### Procedural mazes after level 12
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Simple recursive-division maze gen seeded per-level-number: infinite game, deterministic
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(same level = same maze = speedrunnable). Hand-authored maps stay for levels 1–12.
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### Mobile controls
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Twin-stick touch: left thumb = move (floating joystick), right thumb = fire direction,
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double-tap right = airhorn. Phaser pointer events, ~100 lines. Unlocks the actual partly.party
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audience. **This is Tier 1 important, not polish.**
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### Co-op (later, honestly)
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Gauntlet is 4-player, and same-keyboard 2P (WASD+ZX vs arrows+,.) is one session of work —
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generators already stress-tested for swarms. Netplay: no (YAGNI until someone asks).
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## Lore (arcade-thin, GODVERSE-flavored)
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Keep it to attract-mode cards + one line between levels. The frame:
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> **The last night of VINYL GAUNTLET** — the city's oldest record shop, closing forever at
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> dawn. Somewhere in its sub-basement Archive spins **The White Label**: a record with no
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> name, no artist, no year — the only tune never trainspotted. The shop won't let it go
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> quietly: the aisles rearrange, the bargain bins boil over with posers, and the Sound Guy
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> walks the walls like he owns them. You have until your vibe runs out.
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> **Dig deep. Name every tune. Reach the bottom.**
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- Levels descend: Shop → Fair floor → Club in the basement → the Archive.
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- The announcer is the shop's ancient PA, half-senile, fully judgmental.
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- The Spectral Conductor was the shop's founder; the Monstrous 78 RPM is the White Label
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defending itself. Beat it and the notebook logs: *"??? — ??? (???, ????)" — identified.*
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Then the game loops harder (NG+ density), because the shop reopens in your dreams.
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- Cross-game nods, one-liners only: a poster tile for "CRATE WARS", a morp squeaking in a
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treasure room. partly.party shared-universe glue, zero mechanical weight.
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## Art plan (all free on MODELBEAST)
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Everything via the existing pipeline: add rows to `assets/queue.json` → `enqueue.py` →
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`collect.py` → `process_sprites.py`. klein-4b, ~12s/image, $0.
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**Wire what exists first (0 generation):** pirate, ghoul, goldrecord, alt floors/walls,
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lamp, turntable (decor prop in shops).
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**Queue batch 2 (~25 images, ~5 min GPU):**
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- Enemies: shazam_zombie, dust_mite, mite_queen, gatekeeper, warped_record_shard
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- Bosses at 768px→96px: spectral_conductor, monstrous_78rpm (2 frames: spinning/vulnerable)
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- Class portraits ×4 (256px busts for title screen) + 4 in-game player variants (palette-swap
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the digger via prompt: "red cap", "green hoodie"...)
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- UI: notebook icon, logo/title card, lore card art, boss splash cards
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- Tiles: archive_floor (dark stone), crack_in_floor (mite spawner), lamp_glow
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**Direction/animation strategy (keep it lazy):** stay single-frame + code juice (bob, squash
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on hit, flip-x for left/right). FLUX won't give consistent 4-direction sheets without a fight;
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top-down Gauntlet reads fine with flip + bob. Revisit only if it looks wrong in play.
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**Trainspot data:** one-off script `assets/extract_tunes.py` against local `discogs_full` →
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`public/tunes.json` ({genre: [{artist,title,label,year,grail}]}). Curate via
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have/want counts (Discogs popularity proxies) so the pool is canon, not noise.
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## Build order (each tier = one working, shippable state)
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**Tier 1 — "it's a real arcade game now" (1–2 sessions)**
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1. Wire the 9 existing assets: level themes per tileset, pirate + ghoul enemies, gold records
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2. Classes (4) + title-screen select
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3. Vibe states + shot-the-espresso + new announcer lines
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4. Score + high-score table (localStorage)
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5. Mobile twin-stick touch
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6. Cloudflare purge on deploy
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**Tier 2 — "the hook" (1–2 sessions)**
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7. Trainspotter's Notebook + real-record reveals (discogs extract, genre pools per theme)
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8. Digging at crate walls + treasure rooms
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9. The Archive: darkness + lamps + mites + Mite Queen
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10. Procedural mazes past level 12
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**Tier 3 — "the legend" (when it's earning attention)**
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11. Bosses: Spectral Conductor, Monstrous 78 RPM + White Label ending + NG+
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12. Attract mode (lore/bestiary/high-score cycle)
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13. Same-keyboard 2P co-op
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14. Arcade-landing menu entry
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Not doing (and why): buy/sell economy (cratewars owns it), netplay (no demand),
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4-direction animation sheets (flip+bob reads fine), sound design beyond announcer+airhorn
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(Web Speech + oscillators ARE the aesthetic).
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