[arudaev]

The prologue slice rebuild (docs/15): from the loading screen, through the menu and the whole Hidden Garden prologue, into the anomaly. Five workstreams were built in parallel against one contract, merged and played here. It also carries #154 (Dexter at the coffee machine), #164 (walk and run by stride), the chair pickup and #163 (Jenny's fight), so this branch plays from the title to the ending.

Closes #50, #52, #57, #159. Part of #51, #156, #158, #160.

flowchart LR
  L["loading<br/>pocket-computer CRT,<br/>real progress, never stalls"] --> M["menu<br/>DEGGSTER.EXE over the<br/>garden key art"]
  M -->|"fade, no black frame"| G["Hidden Garden<br/>wind, falling leaves,<br/>blurred foreground over the hero,<br/>pond reflections, feet in the grass"]
  G --> D["Dexter on the bench<br/>hops off, leads, waits,<br/>looks back, points at the roof"]
  D --> S["secrets<br/>muffin in the hollow,<br/>roof glint"]
  S --> P["the pond<br/>the reflection goes wrong:<br/>the rust maze in the water"]
  P --> X["the shove → 404<br/>'404: Hidden Garden not found.'"]
  X --> A["pulled into the void →<br/>clean Rusty Creek"]

Loading

The five workstreams

#	PR	What it delivers
5 art	#165	art/inventory.csv; fx-leaves, fx-ground and fx-water boards; Dexter's dexter-prologue poses (approved); the menu key art; scripts/readability.py (#159)
3 hero	#166	surfaces.json: feet sink 1–3 px by material with grass tufts over them; footstep and landing puffs from fx-ground; jump and fall follow the arc; drawn hurt frames instead of a white flash; steady camera
1 boot	#167	one loader in game/src/boot/, with boards as data in stage/boards.json, retry/continue on failure and a watchdog; the pocket-computer loading screen; the menu over the key art with a live garden behind it
2 atmosphere	#168	depth bands (stage/depth.ts); wind shader anchored on each plant's base; front and back leaves; blurred foreground drawn over the hero; pond ripples, shimmer, lily pads, the hero's reflection; the wrong reflection on anomaly-reveal; addRim
4 prologue	#169	Dexter's tested guide and pond finale models; the 404 crossing variant; secrets; docs/03's prologue as an 8-beat wordless arc

Wave 2: the playtest fixes (P1–P8)

PR	What it fixes
#171 Dexter	he leads at walking pace and is never overtaken (smallest lead 74 px); the hero spawns at the gate, right of the entrance
#172 motion	steadier creek movement, jump buffering instead of slow spam, idles that breathe
#173 terrain	walkability from the art: water respawns at the bank, planks and stairs are steps (≤ 16 px) not slopes, logs and walls block, no falling through
#174 layers	every layer rendered whole in fixed depth bands, so no cut-outs; grass in front of the feet
#175 Region 1	the 404 lands on the creek path (not the rail bridge), one clear ram, the chair moment with a J / X glyph, more rovers, Jenny's knockback and tells

After wave 2:

• Grass strip: the near grass was painted pink; it now matches the hues of the art under it (autumn red and orange).
• Carried chair: the hero has no carrying frames, so the chair vanished after the pick-up. It now rides on his back between swings.
• Gaps: three collision gaps in the creek and the garden were closed, so the creek runs at full speed with 0 resets.
• CI: the art-pipeline job now installs numpy.

Integration fixes on this branch:

• Jenny's ram: the hero kept walking and she passed behind him, so input is now locked from her entrance to the crash.
• ?boss-test spawn: it was 10 px under the floor and looped through resets; it now lands on the walk line.
• Extra region images: Preload now loads the images listed in atmosphere.json assets, after the JSON wave. Without this the pond's wrong reflection was never requested.
• Conflicts: the BOARDS conflicts were resolved by moving the list to boards.json.

Checks

• Tests: typecheck passes, 268 game tests pass, the build passes, 111 script tests pass, check_docs.py passes, collision_check.py reports 0 problems, and export_stage.py --verify rebuilds every chunk exactly.
• Played in the browser:
  • loading screen → menu → Start fades into the garden
  • 58 fps with the full atmosphere
  • the hero grounded 3 px into the grass
  • Dexter leading
  • the wrong-reflection texture loaded and the reveal ready
• Played by the prologue agent with ?skip-menu: the whole prologue, through the 404 and the pull. Screenshots are in game/verification/prologue/.
• Vercel preview: the preview of this branch builds (it needs the Vercel login).
• Region 1 on the integrated code (stepped in a background tab):
  • clean bridge → Jenny's ram with the hero frozen at x 3238 → crash → OK → maze start, with input back
  • coffee save → bow, sweat, give, idle
  • boss gate → "Jenny 30/30" → 30 hits → boss-defeated → Ending (glitch) with the stage frozen

How to test

git switch slice/prologue
cd game && npm ci && npm run dev

Restart npm run dev after any asset export, because Vite only serves public files that existed when it started.

1. Menu: open it; it loads with progress. Press Start.
2. The garden: walk right (A/D or arrows, hold to run, Space to jump). Watch the grass under the hero's feet, the leaves, the foreground plants passing over him, and the pond.
3. Dexter: walk up to the bench and follow him through the garden. The muffin is in the hollow behind the grass; the glint is on the shed roof.
4. The ending: at the jetty, look at the water, take the shove, press OK on the 404, and get pulled into clean Rusty Creek.

Dev shortcuts:

• ?skip-menu skips the menu.
• game.scene.getScene('Flow').prologue.skipToPond() jumps to the jetty.
• game.scene.getScene('Preload').tracker.summary() shows the load state.

Known gaps

• No mud: the garden art has no mud, so no 4 px material is authored.
• Carrying: the carried chair is the drawn chair frame on his back, not drawn carrying poses.
• Timed run: the 8–12 minute run from title to ending still needs a human player.
• No turn-around: there are no turn-around frames, so facing flips.
• Water: the scene isn't mirrored live; the painted reflection is animated instead.
• Not replayed after the merge: the reveal dimming (it runs on real-time tweens); a full manual run of the maze between the start and the coffee machine.
• Not in this branch: docs: one owner for the whole game after Codex stopped #162 (docs: one owner) is a separate PR.

[arudaev]

Wave 2: Alexander's playtest fixes, all merged into slice/prologue (docs/15 "Wave 2", tracker P1–P8):

#	PR	Fix
P1	#173	Typed terrain. Steps (≤ 16 px) step up; ledges are faces you jump; walls and logs stop you; planks and stairs are flat treads; water is never floor and respawns you. The garden collision is re-authored chunk by chunk.
P2, P3	#174 + 6adf191	Every plate is complete, in hot-dog bands. The near grass strip (depth 120) draws over the hero. It was repainted along the new terrain lines and now covers his feet on 46–68 % of the trail; the rest is paving, planks and stones.
P4	#171	Dexter leads at your pace and can't be overtaken. You start in the gate.
P5, P7, P8	#175	Region 1. You land on the creek path, not the rail bridge. Jenny's ram is one event from the front. The chair has a pickup moment and a J/X glyph. There are 4 more rovers, plus crab and drone controllers. Jenny gets knockback, a rev tell, a glowing open back, hit feedback and hazard parts.
P6	#172	Hero motion. The creek fidget was the deck seams (24 → 5 off-cycle frames per step). Jumps stay crisp under button spam. Idles breathe and the poncho sways with the wind.
#158	84cf740	scripts/assets.py status · check · next: the inventory checked against the repo.

Checks on slice/prologue (6adf191): typecheck passes, 268 game tests pass, the build passes, 110 script tests pass, check_docs passes, collision_check reports 0 problems, and export_stage --verify rebuilds every chunk exactly.

Replayed with the game stepped by hand:

• the garden from the gate to the pond finale, with Dexter's smallest lead 74 px and 0 overtakes
• the creek landing on the path at y 566, then Jenny's ram, then the crash window

Known and still open:

• 2 resets at the hg-3-0 stepping stones when taken at a full run
• creek step-up gaps at rc-0-0 x≈1488 and rc-2-0 x≈5260 (the Region 1 rebuild, Rebuild Region 1 (Rusty Creek) from the art direction #157)
• the grass strip is a little pink in places
• no carry-chair art yet