Dev notes · 2026-10-20
PTR, October 23 — the rules of the game, and the gun that fires where you point it
PTR: the rules of the game, and the gun that fires where you point it. The label that followed Tuesday's, promoted today. Everything below is measured against the reference and built to its number.
Splash under cover (items 20-21). Splash reaches a target the way the reference tests it: two lines, one from the burst and one from a metre above it, to the target's centre, all or nothing. A corner that blocks both lines protects you; a lip that blocks one does not.
The Vector Cannon's spread (items 20-21). Each round scatters about the gun's own axes, so firing straight up a shaft or straight down on a flag paints the same square as firing level. It used to tighten with the pitch.
The flag on a slope (items 24-29). A loose flag sleeps only on ground the reference would let it sleep on: friction against the slope, not a speed threshold. Thrown up a steep face it comes back down. The cap is the flag item's own box overlap, the return pays by how far from its stand the flag lay on THIS map, and a return during a stalemate pays fifteen, as the reference does.
Known problems in this build.
- 17-18, the contact rule with its slope term and the ledge grace: built and measured against the reference, held one label by a single body-on-body gate; the jet's horizontal split follows it.
- 17-18, doors and flag stands on both maps: players still pass through one another instead of blocking the path.
- 20-21, fighting a moving player: the hit box is still axis-aligned.
- 9-16, base turrets: ours engage anything in range with a clear line; the reference's engage only what the team's sensors see. In hand.
- 24-29, the match rules: the dropped flag's return timer, out of bounds, warm-up, spawn invulnerability and the end-of-match rules are measured this week and are next.
- 23, first-person hands: faceted shapes at arm's length; the interior material set is still ours.
- 33, bots: an engineer can still stall at a court wall (fixed, ships with the contact rule); the reference's objective weights and skill rules are measured this week and are next.
- The four older maps keep their old bases. Vehicles: the pads offer a Razor; the reference's flier is measured and being built.
Dev notes · 2026-10-19
PTR, October 19 — the light that never cast, the base, the scoreboard and the bots as the reference's
PTR: the light that never cast, the base, the scoreboard and the bots as the reference's. Two days after the movement batch, three builds' worth in one label: the rooms have light in them for the first time, the generator and the inventory station take damage and come back exactly as the reference's do, every weapon draws in the reference's half second, the flag throw is the reference's full-strength toss, the scoreboard pays for defence the way the reference's does, and the bots aim and hold their rooms as the reference's do.
The interior light that never cast (item 23, the stipulation). Every lamp we ever hung in a base hall was lighting the outside of the room. The interior material flipped its surface normal when seen from inside a closed box, so no lamp ever lit a floor and no body ever threw a shadow indoors; the halls read flat and grey because they were unlit, not because they were dark. The flip is gone. Lamps light the floor they hang over, a body in a generator room casts a shadow on it, and the plate gate for an interior now asks for real darks, no blown walls, and a shadow under the player. The roof deck keeps no light of its own by decision; it is lit by the sky, as the reference's is.
The generator and the inventory station as the reference's (items 12-13). Both objects now carry the reference's hull and the reference's energy shield in front of it: damage drains the shield first, at the reference's rate per point, and only then the hull; each goes disabled at the reference's fraction and is repaired back from there. Team damage is a server option, off unless the operator turns it on, as the reference ships it. The match log's format moved with these numbers, so the replays of this label do not play in the last one.
Energy at the station (item 13). Visiting a station refills you. Swapping frame at a station keeps your energy as the number it was, not as a fraction of a different bar, which is what the reference does and what a Heavy stepping down to a Light will notice: a full bar stays full.
The bots (item 33). A bot's own aim error is now read off the reference's shot log with the muzzle spread taken out of it, instead of being tuned to a hit rate; the reference's bot closes to about twenty metres before it fires at a standing target, and ours scatters the way its rounds do. A warden defending a generator room now treats the plant's shield as part of its health, so a raid that only drains the shield still raises the alarm and the warden finishes what it went in for; and the way into the room counts as the room, so a warden walking down the bore no longer dances in the doorway while the raider is inside.
The flag throw (items 24-29). The throw key throws at the reference's living strength, which is the same vector as the drop from a corpse at nearly twice the impulse: standing still with a level eye the flag leaves at 18.75 m/s forward and 11.25 up, and running adds your speed inside the multiplier, as the reference does, not beside it.
Falling (items 17-23). Fall damage is the reference's: the speed into the surface along its normal, at or above 45 m/s, times each frame's own scale. A long drop onto a face that falls away from you costs nothing and a shallower one into a rising face can, as in the reference; the old airtime condition is gone.
The scoreboard pays for defence (items 24-29). A kill is 10. Killing the enemy carrier pays 5 more, so does a kill within 20 m of your own flag or your own generator, so does an escort kill beside your carrier, and a return pays 10. A team kill costs 10. Points reach the board through the player's score, not new columns. A timed match now ends on the higher team score, as the reference's does; a tie plays on, and the next score of any kind ends it.
Housekeeping you will not see. The gliding ribbon reads as a ribbon at a player's range rather than a rope, the gliding eye's plate run no longer spends three GPU comparisons per sweep on a software renderer, the two plate suites write where the sweep can see them, the session log is written per process so two clients on one box no longer tear it, the human-session kit names this week's label, and the twelve rules of capture-the-flag that still read as different from the reference were each ruled: seven are now matched, two are scheduled, one is an experiment with an expiry, two are ours by decision.
Known problems in this build.
- 17-18, both maps, airborne turns: jet steering still uses the older rule. The contact tick is measured and understood; it lands with the slope term it exposed, as one change, in the next label but one.
- 17-18, doors and flag stands on both maps: players still pass through one another instead of blocking the path.
- 20-21, fighting a moving player: the hit box is still axis-aligned.
- 20-21, firing round a corner: splash reaches through cover differently from the reference, which tests two lines of sight and gives all or nothing. Measured this week, in hand.
- 9-16, base turrets: ours engage anything in the barrel's range with a clear line; the reference's engage only what the team's sensors see, about 80 m for the turret's own. Measured this week, in hand.
- 24-29, the return score: ours pays a flat 10; the reference pays 0 to 10 by how far from its stand the flag lay, and 15 on a stalemate. Measured this week, in hand.
- 23, first-person hands: faceted shapes at arm's length; the interior material set is still ours.
- 23, distant gliding players: the long trail is hard to pick out across the icefield.
- 33, base attacks on both maps: bots can spend too long shelling a generator or returning to defence; every bot plays at one skill.
What we are building next, in this order.
- Splash through cover; the base turrets' field of fire; the return score by distance; the cap trigger's square footprint.
- The contact rule with its slope term, then the jet's horizontal split exactly as captured.
- The hit box that turns with the body.
- The first human PTR session: the owner names the night.
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: press SEND LOGS in the launcher and send Chris the file.
3 lines of internal detail omitted from this note.
Dev notes · 2026-10-11
PTR, October 17 (written October 11) — the movement batch, by the numbers
PTR: the movement batch, by the numbers. This build is the reference's movement measured tick by tick from its own captures and matched: how you jump, how you jet, how fast you run in every direction, how you land, and how a round leaves the gun.
Jump and jet as one counter (items 17-18). Jump and jet share the reference's surface counter: after you leave the ground the jet is pure vertical for exactly eight ticks, then it splits. A jump is refused above the frame's jump speed, as the reference refuses it.
Running, in every direction. Three run speeds per frame, forward, back and side (15 / 13, 12 / 10, 7.5 / 5), on a move the game reads in sixteenths per axis exactly as the reference's server does; a shallow diagonal runs at the dominant axis's speed scaled by how hard you push it. The run controller no longer pushes you into a slope: a 31 degree traverse holds its heading to a tenth of a degree.
Landing. A landing keeps one full tick of gravity and then sheds the part of your speed that points into the ground, with your position swept to the contact and slid along it, never snapped. On a 31 degree climb our hop loss per bounce now matches the reference's within 12 percent.
Rounds on their own clock (items 20-21). Projectiles step on the reference's 0.032 s round clock, not the body's; every round flies 2.4 percent further per tick than before, which is the difference between a Impulse Launcher that lands short and one that lands where you aimed. The gun's spawn point follows your pitch the way the reference's animated pose does, from the captured table, for all seven weapons. The impulse jump reads 30 m Impulse Launcher-only and 39 m with a jump, which is the reference's.
Bots (item 33). Bots face where they go. A raider's route keeps clear of a flag it was not sent for, screens its approach posts against the enemy flag's grab radius, and no longer cuts through the stand on its last 50 m. The bots' wall-wait clock ran at half speed (it counted thinks, not ticks); it now charges the climb tank at the body's own rate. On Proving the raid walks in at the bar.
The look (the stipulation). The first-person weapon was being drawn at a quarter of the window's pixels and scaled up. It is drawn at the window now, with the world's anti-aliasing and a real shadow from the receiver onto the hand.
Maps. Proving's long slope had an 8 m toe at 39.6 degrees from a terrain generator blend; it is the 31 degrees the map documents again. The flag's fade now works on the Compatibility renderer too.
Measured, written down, and reversible. Two test calibrations are recorded as experiments (EXP-24, EXP-26) with their cause, their warrant and an expiry; the standing rule is that bars and scenes change only by a written record.
Known problems in this build.
- 17-18, both maps, airborne turns: jet steering still uses the older rule, so sideways thrust and braking do not yet match the reference; a contact with jump held still counts as a landing (the next label).
- 17-18, doors and flag stands on both maps: players still pass through one another instead of blocking the path.
- 20-21, steep downward Strider blast jumps on flat ground: jumping with the shot reaches about 42 m instead of the reference's 37-39 m.
- 20-21, fighting a moving player: the hit box is still axis-aligned and the Vector Cannon's spread uses two angles where the reference uses three.
- 9-16, the generator and the station: hull, disable time and the station's lock still follow our older numbers; the reference's land in the next label.
- 23, first-person hands and rooms: faceted shapes at arm's length; interiors have no light that casts a shadow yet.
- 23, distant gliding players: the long trail is hard to pick out across the icefield.
- 33, base attacks on both maps: bots can spend too long shelling a generator or returning to defence; every bot plays at one skill.
What we are building next, in this order.
- The contact rule: a contact with jump held is a jump, not a landing; then the jet's horizontal split exactly as captured.
- The generator and the inventory station as the reference's (hull, disable, shield, lock).
- The hit box that turns with the body, and the Vector Cannon's three-angle spread.
- Interior light that casts, and the interior material set.
- The first human PTR session: the owner names the night.
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: press SEND LOGS in the launcher and send Chris the file.
2 lines of internal detail omitted from this note.
Dev notes · 2026-10-10
PTR, October 10 — force fields on the base doors
PTR: force fields on the base doors. Build 11: every exterior door of every base is a force field, one door per base stays open, and the bots know which is which.
The doors are fields now (item 2). While a base's generators are up, its exterior doors are force fields: your own team walks through, the other team is stopped as a wall stops them, and shots stop at the face from both sides - a defender cannot fire out through its own door either. Kill the generators and the fields drop after a short coast; bring them back and the fields return. One door on each base is left open on purpose, so a raid is always possible while the power is up - the way the reference's own maps were laid out - and the field is what a defender uses as a shortcut and what stops a shot on the other door.
The bots play the doors (item 33). A raiding bot picks the open door, walks in and puts hull on the generator - on both focus maps now, Proving Ground included; a warden holding the room does not empty its guns into its own door any more (it was shooting the field it meant to walk through), and when it is released from the room it walks home round its own base instead of standing at a ramp with no way through. Vehicles respect the face too.
Running speeds are the reference's (items 17-18). The medium frame runs at 12 and the heavy at 7.5 - our earlier 11 and 6.5 were a tuning experiment, now retired. Forward only; the sideways and backward caps come with the next physics build.
Under the hood. The contact rule that decides "am I standing on something" is one function now, shared by the game and its own tests; and the capture readers that compare our jump and jet against the reference's recordings read the recordings tick by tick (which is how we learned our jump impulse was right all along).
Known problems in this build.
- Movement is otherwise unchanged from build 9; the three measured rules (jump counter, side caps, carving) land together next.
- On Proving Ground a raiding bot whose route passes the enemy flag will grab it and run home instead of raiding; the route is being taught to keep clear.
- The four older maps keep their old bases and stepped edges.
What we are building next, in this order.
- Bots that face where they go, then the physics batch as one (items 17-18, 33).
- Projectiles on the reference's clock, the Vector Cannon's spread, the splash rule (items 20-21).
- The first "better than" look lanes: first person at window resolution (item 23).
- A recorded voice pack for quick chat (item 25).
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: press SEND LOGS in the launcher and send Chris the file.
Dev notes · 2026-10-09
PTR, October 9 — capture the flag by the book, and the camera you were meant to have
PTR: capture the flag by the book, and the camera you were meant to have. Build 10: the BreakFlag rules as the reference played them, the camera you were actually meant to see through, and the first measured verdict on how we look.
Capture the flag, exactly (item 24). The dropped-flag return clock is 45 seconds, armed once when the flag is dropped and cancelled only by a pickup - it never restarts. The flag is lighter (every hit on a loose flag moves it 2.5x further). A hit on a carrier *rolls* to jolt the flag loose instead of always taking it. No grabs, returns or caps from a vehicle seat. The win is the team score at the cap limit x 100, and a return pays the team. The match clock defaults to 30 minutes. Respawn is 2 seconds, with 6 seconds of spawn protection on respawns only.
The camera you were meant to have (item 23). Our "90 degrees" was 90 vertical, which drew 121 wide - fishbowl. 90 is horizontal now, as in the reference, on every aspect ratio. The mouse follows the reference's law (sensitivity scales with field of view), a tap shorter than a tick is counted, and a "Low" fog preset for slower machines.
The look, measured (the stipulation). A ledger now scores 24 things you see at three eyes - 20 m, 200 m and first person - against the reference: 40 below, 19 level, 8 above. The 200 m view already wins (landform, sky, bodies and shadows, the HUD); everything a player touches at a metre - the ground, the gun in the hands, the jet, the hall, the generator - is still below. Nine lanes in order, first-person resolution first.
Known problems in this build.
- Movement is unchanged from build 9 (see above).
- On Proving Ground one bot-defence case still reads short.
- The four older maps keep their old bases and stepped edges.
What we are building next, in this order.
- Force fields on the base doors, one door per base left open, and the bots that go with them (item 2) - built and gated, one bot behaviour short.
- The physics batch: bots face their heading, then jump counter, run speeds and steering together (items 17-18).
- Projectiles on the reference's clock: the 32 ms projectile step, the Vector Cannon's spread, the splash rule (items 20-21).
- A recorded voice pack for quick chat.
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: press SEND LOGS in the launcher and send Chris the file.
1 line of internal detail omitted from this note.
Dev notes · 2026-10-08
PTR, October 8 (evening) — the Lance in your hands, and the engine on paper
PTR: the Lance in your hands, and the engine on paper. Build 9, the second build today: one weapon finished, the plumbing for voices, and a day of homework that changes how the next builds get made.
The Lance is a Lance now (item 19). The bolt tapers and pulses along its length instead of drawing as a plain line; the charge shows on the gun in your hands as the bar empties; it has its own draw and impact sounds; the hit bursts. Damage, charge law and range are untouched.
Quick chat is wired for voices (item 25). A recorded line plays on the UI bus under the same wait rule the announcer uses - it never talks over a flag call - one line per sender at a time, and /mute drops a player's voice along with their text. The lines are still text today: the pack itself has to be recorded, and that is being arranged.
Known problems in this build.
- On Proving Ground one bot-defence case still reads short (the stand left alone after a raid).
- The four older maps keep their old bases and stepped edges.
What we are building next, in this order.
- Force fields on the base doors, with one door per base left open, and the bots that go with them (item 2).
- The look ledger's first "better than" lanes (the ground at a metre, first-person resolution).
- A recorded voice pack for quick chat.
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: press SEND LOGS in the launcher and send Chris the file.
3 lines of internal detail omitted from this note.
Dev notes · 2026-10-08
PTR, October 8 — the real quick-chat tree, and bots that notice they're stuck
PTR: the real quick-chat tree, and bots that notice they're stuck. Build 8 is a smaller one: two things finished properly, and one held back on purpose.
Bots notice when they are stuck. A bot jammed against a face used to reset its own "am I making progress?" clock every time it recharged, so it could stand 90 m from its post for three minutes and never try anything. The clock survives the recharge now; a body that has not moved in six seconds breaks out. This is the fix behind the one Proving bot-defence case we listed yesterday.
Known problems in this build.
- On Proving Ground one bot-defence case still reads short (the stand left alone after a raid).
- The four older maps keep their old bases and stepped edges.
What we are building next, in this order.
- Force fields on the base doors, with one door per base left open (item 2).
- The Lance to the catalogue: the beam's pulse, the charge in your hands, its own sounds (item 19).
- Quick-chat voice: the plumbing now, a recorded pack when we have one (item 25).
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: press SEND LOGS in the launcher and send Chris the file.
2 lines of internal detail omitted from this note.
Dev notes · 2026-10-07
PTR, October 7 (evening) — Proving's bots fixed, the Vector Cannon spins, the launcher rechambers
PTR: Proving's bots fixed, the Vector Cannon spins, the launcher rechambers. Build 7, the second build today, takes two more weapons down the list and fixes the bots we have been apologising for since build 3.
Proving Ground's bots play the generator room now. The mortar raider puts the order on the generator in 8 seconds instead of 36, stays out of the base guns' reach while it walks, and the defender who comes out of the room walks home instead of standing on the hill. The flag carrier finds the flag court's gate instead of a ramp foot. Five of the six things we listed as rough on Proving are gone; one is left (a defender sometimes leaves the stand too long after a raid) and it is in the studio.
The Vector Cannon is a Vector Cannon now. The barrels spin up when you hold the trigger, run at full speed, and wind down over a second when you let go (half a second if you ran the belt dry). Spent cases leave the receiver. Rounds leave marks where they land - six different ones. Spin-up, spin-down, impact and an empty trigger each have their own sound. Fire rate, damage and spread are untouched.
The Grenade Launcher rechambers. After each shot you see the loading gate tip up, a fresh round go down, and the gate shut - the half-second the gun was always taking, now visible. An empty launcher holds the gate open with its own click. The round whistles in flight and the burst throws debris.
The icefield's base is unchanged from this morning (two floors, the ramps); if you found a place to get stuck in it, press SEND LOGS.
Known problems in this build.
- On Proving Ground one bot-defence case still reads short (the stand left alone after a raid).
- The four older maps keep their old bases and stepped edges.
What we are building next, in this order.
- Force fields on the base doors: your team walks through, the other team does not, shots stop (built, gating).
- The Lance to the catalogue (item 19 lane 4).
- The voice packs for quick chat.
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: press SEND LOGS in the launcher and send Chris the file.
2 lines of internal detail omitted from this note.
Dev notes · 2026-10-07
PTR, October 7 — the generator room goes downstairs, V for quick chat, the Impulse Launcher spins
The Impulse Launcher is alive in your hands. The Impulse Launcher spins up when you draw it, idles with a hum, and whines through the air until it hits. Dry-fire has its own click. The numbers - speed, damage, splash - are untouched.
The inventory station has a face. The screen on the pillar shows your loadout, and the station hums when the base has power and dies with the generator.
Bots that do not get lost in doorways. A bot coming at a generator-room corridor from the side used to read the roof above the door as a wall and turn around. It does not any more, and the icefield's warden now walks off the deck and into the room instead of stopping on the roof.
Known problems in this build.
- On Proving Ground the bots' generator-room play is still rougher than on the icefield; the fix is in the studio now.
- The four older maps keep their old bases and stepped edges.
What we are building next, in this order.
- Proving Ground's bots in the room (item 33).
- The Vector Cannon and the Grenade Launcher to the catalogue: spinning barrels, shell eject, decals, their own sounds (item 19).
- Force fields and doors on the two-floor base (item 2).
- The voice packs for quick chat (item 25).
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: press SEND LOGS in the launcher and send Chris the file.
4 lines of internal detail omitted from this note.
Dev notes · 2026-10-06
PTR, October 6 — doors you can fly through, dishes that turn, an announcer
PTR: doors you can fly through, dishes that turn, an announcer. Build 5 answers what you told us about build 4 and takes three more items off the list.
The tower doors are bigger, and you cannot get stuck in them any more. You said the entrance was a bit small and that you could get stuck. Both were real. The mouth of each midfield tower is now 8 m wide and 6 m tall - a door you jet through across a slope, not a door you walk up to on the flat - and each tower has a proper doorstep cut into the hill, so the ground meets the sill the whole width of the opening instead of dropping away under one side. A heavy walks in from any line; a burning heavy clears the lintel with room to spare.
The towers look like concrete now, not a black slab. The outside has its storeys, buttresses and a head you can read from 200 m; the shaft up the middle is lit and open onto every floor instead of a sealed black tube; the rooms have an interior finish.
The two smaller towers and the five spires are rebuilt. The last jagged shapes in the icefield's midfield are gone: the two small inventory towers are buildings with a door, a climb and the station on the deck, and the five tall spires are proper landmarks you can see from across the map and collide with as the shape you see.
The base's power is alive. The sensor dish turns. The generator's core spins and hums. Cut the power and they coast to a stop; kill the generator and they die with it; repair it and they start again.
Known problems in this build.
- Base turrets no longer flash their muzzle while idle; tell us if you see it again.
- On Proving Ground the bots' generator-room play is rougher than on the icefield.
- The four older maps keep their old bases and stepped edges.
What we are building next, in this order.
- The icefield's base on two floors, with force fields and doors after it.
- The weapons, one at a time: model, first person, effects, sound.
- The inventory station: the screen, the loadout, the sound of it.
- Quick chat and the voice packs.
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: press SEND LOGS in the launcher and send Chris the file.
1 line of internal detail omitted from this note.
Dev notes · 2026-10-05
PTR, October 5 — the icefield's towers, and base guns you can read
PTR: the icefield's towers, and base guns you can read. Two things from the top of the list.
Base guns you can tell apart. One turret body, six barrels you can name at 20 m and at 100 m - the point defence, the plasma, the flak, the mortar, the seeker and the siphon. The body tracks what it aims at, recoils when it fires, goes dark with the generators and comes back with them, and dies as a wreck you can read from 100 m. Each barrel has its own sound.
Known problems in this build.
- The two smaller towers and the spires are still the old jagged shapes; they are in the next build.
- On Proving Ground the bots' generator-room play is rougher than on the icefield.
- The four older maps keep their old bases and stepped edges.
What we are building next, in this order.
- The two smaller towers and the five spires, rebuilt.
- The sensor dishes that turn and the generators that spin and hum.
- An announcer for the flag and the generators.
- The icefield's base on two floors, with force fields and doors after it.
- The weapons, one at a time: model, first person, effects, sound.
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: press SEND LOGS in the launcher and send Chris the file.
1 line of internal detail omitted from this note.
Dev notes · 2026-10-03
PTR, October 3 — both sides can take the flag, and a spawn shield
PTR: both sides can take the flag, and you get two seconds when you appear. Yesterday's build put the new bases on the icefield and Proving Ground. This one is the list we said came next, the fix for the worst thing in that build, and the first item from the next list.
The icefield's base guns have moved. All four now stand on the back edge of the deck, over the plaza and the ramp, where they are for what they were always meant for: a vehicle, or a heavy frame that stops in front of them. None of them looks down the approach to the flag any more. The radar and the command mast stand on the two towers.
Bots on the icefield. One side's runner used to die on the way in, every time, and never touched the flag. Both sides now reach it, take it and bring it home. Their runner also knows how to get up the tall face under the deck, and a bot carrying the flag no longer sails off the back of the base into the plaza.
Spawn shield. For two seconds after you appear you take no damage. It ends the moment you fire, throw, deploy, light a pack or touch a flag. Your body carries a cold tint while it is up and the HUD says SPAWN SHIELD. A blast still shoves you; base guns and mines still fire at you - they just do not hurt.
Bots go inside a base. A raider walks in for the generator room once the guns are down, and a defender goes in, holds it and repairs the generator. In yesterday's build that fight was yours alone.
Walls. Your body stops at a wall at its shoulders, not at the middle of its feet. No more standing half inside one.
The look. The ground an icefield base stands on is a paved plaza, with kerbs and lights on the ramp. The ring round the sun on the cloudy maps is gone.
Proving Ground has no vehicles. It is the map for fighting on foot. The icefield keeps its vehicles and is where the rest of them will arrive.
Known problems in this build.
- On Proving Ground the bots' generator-room play is rougher than on the icefield; it is next.
- The four older maps still have the stepped ramp edges and their old bases.
What we are building next, in this order.
- The icefield's midfield towers, rebuilt: walk in, climb the shaft, the sensor dish and the inventory inside; the jagged edges go.
- The base turrets, whole: five barrels you can tell apart, bodies that track and recoil.
- Base interiors that are lit like a place: lamps that cast shadows, stations and generators in their own pools of light.
- Duel: one against one on Proving Ground, first to 15 or ten minutes.
- An announcer for the flag and the generators, and the quick-chat menu.
- A vehicle bay at the icefield's base.
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: press SEND LOGS in the launcher and send Chris the file.
Dev notes · 2026-10-02
PTR, October 2 — bases you can walk into
PTR: bases you can walk into. The two maps we play most, the icefield and Proving Ground, have new bases at the size this game is meant to be played at. The other four maps keep the bases they had until each new one is placed without changing how its flag is reached.
What a base is now.
- A hall fifty metres long, with two doors a heavy frame walks through with room to spare.
- Four inventory stations on one wall of the hall, lit, in view from both doors. One more in the generator room and one on the roof by the flag.
- The generators are inside the base, in a room of their own behind the hall. A shell on the roof no longer reaches them: to cut the power you go in.
- Flat walls and flat ramps. The stair-step edges are gone on these two maps.
- Every spawn point is checked for room to stand before you are put there, so you no longer start inside a wall.
The two maps. On the icefield the base is the block you know with a hall and a generator room cut into it. Its doors and one long ramp are on the side away from the enemy, and the flag is still on the deck between two towers. On Proving Ground the base stands seventy metres behind the flag, and the flag stays on its knoll inside a walled court.
The launcher is new too (1.2.0). These notes are a feed you can scroll, and the build you are about to play is named above Play. It updates itself the next time you open it.
Bots. They know the new buildings: the ramp, the doors, the walled court, which stations they can reach. They do not go inside a base to fight for the generators yet. For now that is yours to do.
Known problems in this build.
- A bot ordered into the hall may walk up the ramp instead.
- On the icefield one side's bots rarely get the flag off the other side's deck: a base gun kills their runner on the way in.
- The four older maps still have the stepped ramp edges.
What we are building next, in this order.
- Your body stops at a wall at its shoulders, not at the middle of its feet. No more standing half inside one.
- The ground an icefield base stands on: a paved plaza, kerbs and lights on the ramp.
- The ring round the sun on the cloudy maps is fixed.
- New seats for the icefield's base guns on the new deck, so both sides can reach a flag.
- Bots that walk into a base: a raider for the generator room and a defender who holds it.
- Duel: one against one on Proving Ground, first to 15 or ten minutes.
- New bases for the other four maps, one map at a time.
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: press SEND LOGS in the launcher and send Chris the file.
Dev notes · 2026-09-29
PTR, September 29 — the studio's fifth batch
PTR: batch five. Twenty-one studio branches, one label, qualified the new way: a clean full sweep on the exact commit, then TITAN against the lab, then the channel. Live is untouched.
A first vehicle is in the code. The Razor, a light two-seat hover, exists in the simulation, on the wire and in the replay - not on any map yet. It is the prototype the vehicle work builds on once humans have played the PTR; it changed the wire version, so an old client will be told to update.
Two humans at once. The harness can now drive two real clients on one PTR server, which is how the first two-player match will be measured before friends are invited. The first run of that path found that every human join sends one packet over the MTU; that is the next fix.
Under the hood. Every windowed test runs with the warm-up off on the software rasteriser (the sweep is honest about wall-clock again), the HUD's station glyph is measured on a HUD of its own, the session report keeps the destroyer credit for humans, the map design doc reads the mission's own Glide lines, and the 32 ms tick stays: moving to 60 Hz was priced and the price is not worth it yet.
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: send Chris your launcher.log.
2 lines of internal detail omitted from this note.
Dev notes · 2026-09-27
PTR, September 27, second push — the studio's first batch
PTR moved again today. A second build is on the PTR channel, the first one carrying work from the new studio team: four specialist agents (production, gameplay, art, engine) working tickets off a board, handing finished branches to the captain, who reads, merges, sweeps and ships. Live is untouched.
The icefield looks like its concept now. The big map's light was re-tuned against its painting: the fog takes the sky's colour instead of a grey of its own, the key light is up a third, the snow is a touch darker so shapes read, rock shows through on every steep face, and the daytime gas giant is gone from the sky. Side by side with last week's build the difference is the mid-distance: ridges have faces now.
The server got 40% cheaper on the icefield. Every hot loop in the match sim (rounds in flight, the sensor net, item pickups, station walks, the void boxes under the bases) now skips work it could prove pointless before doing it. The icefield's tick went from 4.4 ms to 2.7 ms with 32 players. We put the batch in front of three independent code readers with one question: can any of these shortcuts change an answer, a hit, a take, a detection, and not just its cost. The verdict was no, with the proof written down, and the recorded match replays hash-identical before and after.
Under the hood. A stale terrain bound that two of our own test rigs tripped over is fixed; the plate suites that took pictures of nothing now fail when they render nothing; the sweep grew nine suites.
In test now, next push: the icefield's field of rock fins as real geometry (the lanes untouched, the base-to-base route the same length to the metre); the Strider's production body; the first hero weapon model, the Ion Repeater, plus a fix that had the three existing hero weapons showing a quarter of their texture; the client frame trimmed (the HUD and the base status line were the two biggest costs); and a fix for a long-standing one where a human player's kills could be misread as a base gun's. After that, a look pass per map against its concept plate, and concept plates for the three maps that never had one.
The rotation. PTR runs the icefield and Proving Ground. Live keeps its four-map rotation.
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: send Chris your launcher.log.
Dev notes · 2026-09-27
PTR rollback, September 27 evening
PTR is back on this morning's second build. The third build of the day passed every local check on the test rig but, on the remote run against the real server, reconnected once during the switch to the icefield and played rougher after it. We have the trace and a ticket; the earlier build had a clean remote run, so it is the one on the channel tonight. Nothing you need to do: the launcher follows the channel.
What we changed about how we ship. Four pushes in one day was too many. From here the PTR gets at most one build a day, and only one that has passed the full sweep and a clean remote run through a map rotation. The studio keeps working at the same pace; its work waits in the integration lane until it earns the channel.
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: send Chris your launcher.log.
Dev notes · 2026-09-27
PTR, September 27, fourth push — the studio's third batch
PTR, fourth push today. The studio's third batch, seventeen branches, is on the PTR channel. Live is untouched.
Three maps got their light. Echo Ridge had been wearing Ascent Prime's weather: a warm sun and a green valley on a map whose painting is a cold overcast bowl of wet black rock. It has its own sky now. Ascent Prime was measured against its own render for the first time and its haze goes blue with distance instead of white. The icefield got its second pass: the fins from the last push are now lit the way the painting is lit, from the angle of the sun and the depth of the air, not from painting the rock darker.
Nine more hero weapons. Repair Gun, Siphon, Range Finder, Grenade Launcher, Arc Prod, Spotter, Plasma Thrower, Gravity Mortar and Seeker Launcher all have modelled first-person bodies with distance meshes. Every weapon in the armoury now has one. Along the way the generator that builds them turned out to wind a third of its faces inside out; fixed for all of them.
The icefield's ground was drawn five times a frame. The map's ground was a single mesh, so the renderer could never cull any of it, and the sun's four shadow passes each drew all 717,000 triangles again. It is chunks now. That was most of the "three times any other map" cost.
The client, four fixes you will feel. Leaving a PTR game no longer offers you the Live address; a join that never gets an answer now times out with a reason instead of sitting forever; a stalled server is noticed by the client in three seconds instead of up to thirty; and a map switch now re-dresses the world and clears the HUD, so no more old-map markers, no phantom health flash on respawn, and a rejoin no longer eats the kit you had queued.
Under the hood. The weapon warm-up at startup had been culled for weeks and compiled nothing, so first sight of a weapon stalled; the bots' flag grab no longer runs a blocking cross-map search; the plate suites crop in the right coordinate space and pin their window; the icefield's lanes are measured by the sweep at last.
Waiting on Chris. Concept boards for Tallow Reach, Proving Ground and Skerry Yard are in front of him; their look passes start on his yes. The Ranger's production body is built and waits on a fix to the friend-or-foe gate that cannot see hue on a dark pixel.
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: send Chris your launcher.log.
1 line of internal detail omitted from this note.
Dev notes · 2026-09-27
PTR, September 27, third push — the studio's second batch
PTR, third push of the day. The studio's second batch is on the PTR channel. Live is untouched.
The icefield has its rock fins. The concept's field of rock teeth is in the map as real geometry: twenty-metre teeth on the plain, forty-metre blades on the flanks, seventy-metre ranks on the high ground. The lanes run between the clusters, never through them. We checked the things that matter before shipping it: the base-to-base route is the same length to the metre, the run times are identical, the bots' routes, footing and defences all pass, and the sim tick moved 1.5 to 1.6 ms. The landform reads now. What it did not do is darken the frame the way the painting is dark; that turns out to be the light, not the shape, and it is the next art ticket.
The Strider has a production body. The light frame gets the same treatment the Bulwark got last week: a real body from its concept plate, on the shipped skeleton, with a distance mesh that wears the same textures. Fingers, exhausts and paint get the same polish pass the Bulwark's are waiting on.
The first hero weapon, and a fix for the three you already had. The Ion Repeater, the gun every respawn hands you, has a modelled body now. And the three hero weapons that shipped on September 4 turned out to be showing a quarter of their own texture: they were authored at 2048 but imported at 1024, uncompressed. They now ship at full resolution and compressed, four times the detail for a fifth less memory.
The client frame is lighter. Two cuts: the base status line on the HUD was recomputed every frame from a walk of every prop on the map (2.3 ms on the icefield; now it updates when the snapshot does), and the HUD itself stopped redrawing every element every frame. Bodies outside your view are posed every fourth frame; bodies in view are exactly as before.
One long-standing bug. A human player's network id could collide with the ids the base guns use, so a defender who repaired what you broke was never paid for it, your kills could count towards a base gun's tally, and one pedestal gun could not hit you at all. Fixed; three bugs under one line.
Under the hood. Twenty plate suites share one format-safe image blit (the old one silently drew nothing on the card); a client-frame profiler and bench with a committed baseline; the movement test's icefield line moved off a fin.
Next: a look pass per map against its concept plate, concept plates for the three maps that never had one, and the base buildings themselves as production architecture. Then vehicles.
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: send Chris your launcher.log.
Dev notes · 2026-09-27
PTR, September 27
PTR moved today. The build with the new Bulwark bodies is on the PTR channel. Live is untouched.
The Bulwark, in production. The heavy frame has real bodies now, four of them, and the pack you wear picks the one you get: Assault by default, Guard with the Barrier Pack, Siege with the Munitions Pack, Support with the Mender Pack. Friendlies read blue and enemies read red whichever team you are on. The jets moved to the boots, the belt and the back of the body. Hitboxes, stats and the network format are unchanged: this is how the Bulwark looks, not how it plays.
- Textures. The first cut of the bodies carried 2.4 GB of textures, which no card should be asked to hold for one frame. They ship compressed at 2048 now, 85 MB for all four variants and their distance meshes, with no visible change at the studio lens.
- Still to polish: open fingers under the weapon grips, the exhaust particles, the daylight tint of the paint.
The rotation. PTR runs the big icefield map and Proving Ground: one big map, one dueling arena. Live keeps its four-map rotation.
The review. We did a full read of the code against the plan it started from, six in-house readers and two independent ones. The verdict, honestly: the movement and combat phases are done. The core prototype phase has all its content (BreakFlag, three frames, thirteen weapons, six packs, eleven deployables, base defence, six maps, bots, the launcher, the backend) but its exit test, an 8-a-side session with humans that produces real tactics, has not been run; the records hold no match with more than one human in it. One blocker was found (the host rebuilding its defence visuals every frame) and nineteen majors, most of them things a human session would hit before a bot does. Those are the fix list before that session.
Next: the first session with two humans on the PTR, with the evidence kept; the "before humans" fix lane; then vehicles, the next big push, with the bots taught to use them and to counter them.
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: send Chris your launcher.log.
Dev notes · 2026-09-13
PTR, September 12–13
PTR moved tonight. Two rounds of work since the last dev notes, both on the PTR only — Live is untouched.
Round 2 (Sept 13): what you told us after playing.
- Flag timer. A flag nobody holds — not a player, not its stand — comes home after 60 seconds, wherever it lies. A flag that ends up under the ground surfaces first.
- The "flag stuck in the mountain." That was a bot carrier hiding on its own flag-room floor, under the deck, waiting out a standoff for up to three minutes. Carriers now leave any room by the door and wait the standoff out on their stand, in the open.
- Inventory stations you can see. Every station on every map is drawn now (several were invisible boxes with a signpost). Each has a large ground ring in your team's colour that refits you when you stand in it, a glyph on the radar, and Tallow, Ascent and Proving got a field pad near each base so the first walk is seconds, not twenty.
- Respawn kit. Before you pick a loadout and after every respawn you carry a cell pack, the Impulse Launcher with 10 rounds and the Vector Cannon with 50 rounds. Anything more, hit a station.
- Repair gun. If you drew the repair gun with F, a number key could fail to switch you off it on a slow-frame client. Fixed.
Playing it: the launcher's PTR channel updates itself. Bugs, hangs, a stale build: send Chris your launcher.log.
3 lines of internal detail omitted from this note.
MACH//BREAK