The one mechanic. Everyone is a swimmer in a shallow sea with no wind, no walls and no features
of its own: the only terrain is the wake other players left behind. Your own thruster is deliberately
feeble — a full burn takes the better part of a minute to cross the arena — but every moving body
deposits its momentum into a coarse field of currents that decays over a few seconds, and that field
drags every body inside it. So speed is never yours: it is somebody else's last five seconds, and the
fastest thing in the world is a lane four people have been swimming down. The round's shared goal is
the bloom, a body fifty times your mass that has to reach a gate on the rim; no thruster shifts it
measurably and no single swimmer can raise a current strong enough, but three swimmers braiding one
lane throw it across the arena in seconds. The shared danger is the same fact turned around: the
current built to carry the bloom carries you too, and the rim scatters anything that hits it fast —
a lane someone else built can be the thing that throws you out of the round. Alone, the sea is flat
and the bloom ends the round where it started. With six people it is a braided river. That is the
test the direction sets: not "better with others" but the map is made of other people.
Why this one wins the only-exists-because-others-are-there test. Tether (#TETHER) is more literal
— no engine at all without a partner — but it makes the first visitor's five seconds empty, and an
empty room is the common case for a new app. Commons (#COMMONS) is a rule about other people rather
than a world made of them; you feel it as a number going down. Wake makes the other players the level
geometry, while still leaving a lone visitor something true to do: drift, steer, and start a lane the
next arrival can ride.
Starting numbers (tunable — the invariants below are what must hold, not the constants): arena a
circle 1000 units across · tick 20 Hz, one loop, server-authoritative · frames out at 10 Hz · current
field 32×32 cells · field half-life ≈ 2 s, effectively gone by 8 s · thrust capped so a lone mote needs
≈ 60 s to cross · drag toward the local current strong enough that a built lane is 5× thrust speed ·
bloom mass 50, no thruster · gate a 60° arc on the rim, moved each round · round 180 s, intermission
20 s · roster cap 24, then spectator.
Invariants every build issue is measured against
[ ] A lone mote at full thrust cannot cross the arena inside 45 s of ticks.
[ ] A mote dropped into a lane two other motes built crosses it in under 10 s.
[ ] One mote thrusting at the bloom for 10 s moves it less than one cell.
[ ] Three motes braiding one lane put the bloom through the gate inside a round.
[ ] With no input, total field magnitude strictly decreases every tick and reaches zero: no energy
from nowhere.
This issue is the design record for the direction (#1), not a build task. It stays open while the map
is built against it, and closes when the vertical slice (#CANVAS, #LEARN) is live and these numbers
have been tuned against real play.
The one mechanic. Everyone is a swimmer in a shallow sea with no wind, no walls and no features of its own: the only terrain is the wake other players left behind. Your own thruster is deliberately feeble — a full burn takes the better part of a minute to cross the arena — but every moving body deposits its momentum into a coarse field of currents that decays over a few seconds, and that field drags every body inside it. So speed is never yours: it is somebody else's last five seconds, and the fastest thing in the world is a lane four people have been swimming down. The round's shared goal is the bloom, a body fifty times your mass that has to reach a gate on the rim; no thruster shifts it measurably and no single swimmer can raise a current strong enough, but three swimmers braiding one lane throw it across the arena in seconds. The shared danger is the same fact turned around: the current built to carry the bloom carries you too, and the rim scatters anything that hits it fast — a lane someone else built can be the thing that throws you out of the round. Alone, the sea is flat and the bloom ends the round where it started. With six people it is a braided river. That is the test the direction sets: not "better with others" but the map is made of other people.
Why this one wins the only-exists-because-others-are-there test. Tether (#TETHER) is more literal — no engine at all without a partner — but it makes the first visitor's five seconds empty, and an empty room is the common case for a new app. Commons (#COMMONS) is a rule about other people rather than a world made of them; you feel it as a number going down. Wake makes the other players the level geometry, while still leaving a lone visitor something true to do: drift, steer, and start a lane the next arrival can ride.
Starting numbers (tunable — the invariants below are what must hold, not the constants): arena a circle 1000 units across · tick 20 Hz, one loop, server-authoritative · frames out at 10 Hz · current field 32×32 cells · field half-life ≈ 2 s, effectively gone by 8 s · thrust capped so a lone mote needs ≈ 60 s to cross · drag toward the local current strong enough that a built lane is 5× thrust speed · bloom mass 50, no thruster · gate a 60° arc on the rim, moved each round · round 180 s, intermission 20 s · roster cap 24, then spectator.
Invariants every build issue is measured against
from nowhere.
This issue is the design record for the direction (#1), not a build task. It stays open while the map is built against it, and closes when the vertical slice (#CANVAS, #LEARN) is live and these numbers have been tuned against real play.