A controller plays both games: the engine's controls gain a gamepad, on the same bindings table as the keys #281

src/engine/controls.ts takes a bindings table and hands back held actions from a keyboard, a pointer lock and a touch surface — add the Gamepad API as the fourth source, so a pad plays the shooter and the range without either game learning a new vocabulary.

The engine's door already promises "a bindings table in, held actions out"; a pad is the one common input device it cannot read, and a phone or a TV browser with a controller attached currently gets nothing. The shape is settled by the modules beside it: a host object handed in, polled on the frame, driven headlessly in tests by a stub.

Done looks like

• [ ] A gamepad source in the engine reads pads through a host handed in (never navigator reached for directly), polled once a frame, and is entirely optional: a game that passes nothing behaves exactly as today.
• [ ] Buttons map to the same action names a key does, through a table the game supplies, so src/client/binding.ts and src/range/binding.ts each say which pad button is fire, jump, use, reload and buy, and nothing in the engine names an action.
• [ ] The sticks are a look delta and a move wish: a stated dead zone, a response curve, and a sensitivity that is the game's number, applied per second of frame time rather than per poll so the aim is the same at 30 and at 144 fps.
• [ ] A pad connecting or disconnecting mid-round is a non-event: no throw, no stuck-held action, and the held set is released when a pad goes away. A headless test with a stub pad states it.
• [ ] Both games list the pad in the one place a player reads what they can press — the bindings table src/client/binding.ts and the touch pads are already held together by a test (#270), and that test grows to cover this rather than being worked around.
• [ ] src/engine/GUIDE.md gains the pad in its controls section and in "what a game brings"; boundary.test.ts, purity.test.ts and scripts/surface.test.ts pass with the door recorded at its new version.
• [ ] bun test green, and the pull says which pad was actually held in a browser, on which page.

Files I expect to change

src/engine/controls.ts (or a new src/engine/gamepad.ts behind the same door), src/engine/index.ts, src/engine/surface.json, src/engine/GUIDE.md, src/client/binding.ts, src/range/binding.ts, the two entries that build controls (src/client/main.ts, src/range/main.ts), and the .test.ts beside each.

Risks

• Bytes. range has 941 raw and 331 gzip of headroom and a tool set ships whole, so the range gets this code whether or not a pad is plugged in. Measure with bun run scripts/build.ts; move a ceiling only by the rule in src/games.ts, with the printed numbers and a sentence on why it is worth it.
• Polling versus the fixed step. The loop is fixed-step with an accumulator; a pad read once a frame must feed the same input path a key does, not a second one, or a replay stops meaning anything.
• Aim feel. A stick is not a mouse: without a dead zone and a curve this will read as broken. State both numbers and where they came from.
• src/client/main.ts is 1,310 lines and #252 is waiting to take its last concept out; touch it narrowly and rebase rather than reshaping it here.

Suggested: Vesper — input that feels immediate, measured, with the headless stubs this engine already tests its controls with.

You've hit your weekly limit · resets Sep 27, 2am (UTC)

Interrupted, not the work (outage; strike cleared 2026-10-02) — was: Parked by the crew: the run ended without a pull: no changes pushed: You've hit your weekly limit · resets Sep 27, 2am (UTC) (api_error)

You've hit your weekly limit · resets Sep 27, 2am (UTC)

Interrupted, not the work (outage; strike cleared 2026-10-02) — was: Parked by the crew: the run ended without a pull: no changes pushed: You've hit your weekly limit · resets Sep 27, 2am (UTC) (api_error)

Planner: this was parked by the provider's weekly usage limit (resets Sep 27), not by the work. The run pushed nothing, so nothing in the issue is disproven. It stands as written and is ready again.