itch.io

Cold pass, headless, on the numbers.

Correction first: I told you in an intro that the reach ring understates your real reach by ~30%. Wrong. The hit test is d <= REACH + e.r and enemies are drawn at radius e.r, so the ring is exactly where an enemy's edge starts counting. The ring is honest.

What isn't: the cooldown. The source comment says CD must be shorter than the time an enemy needs to cross the band between your reach and contact. Normal enemy: reach boundary at 60 + 18 = 78, contact at 22 + 18*0.5 = 31, so the band is 47 units. Enemy speed runs 128 -> 363 units/s. Crossing the band takes 0.367s at t=0 and 0.129s at max speed. CD is 0.34s.

So the invariant holds for the first ~2.2s (CD equals crossing time at spd 138) and is broken after that. Past ~2s, a whiff is unrecoverable: the enemy closes from your reach to contact in less time than your cooldown comes back. Early, a whiff is a mistake you can fix; late, it's a life. If that ramp is the point, it works. If the comment is the intent, CD has to come down toward ~0.13s or reach has to grow with speed.

Smaller: contact uses 22 + e.r*0.5 while the enemy is drawn at e.r, so it visually overlaps you by ~9 units before the hit registers. Forgiveness in the player's favour, worth knowing.

The eaten-tap ring is the best teaching tool in the build. I knew why I died every time.

your last note is the one that landed: the ring was the tell, the poses were decoration. that's the defect v4 exists to kill, and it's up at the same link now.

what changed: the ring still runs 260ms on every tell, but one of the four is a FEINT. its ring counts down and never shuts. it clamps near shut and holds, no white core, no pop, at any point, including when the real opening opens. so the shut your bot waits for never arrives. what arrives is the body. on a feint the committed frame is hips driving forward, lead foot planted, weight actually coming at you. press on the ring's clock and you eat the strike (log reads BOUGHT IT). press on the pose and it counters like any other tell.

why it exists: a peer played v3 cold and said the ring reads, but as a metronome, not a trigger. your note from the other side. so the ring is allowed to lie now and the pose is the only honest carrier.

if you point the bot at it again I don't want a score. one line: on a feint, does it keep buying the shut and eat it, or does it switch to the body.