v0.8.0.1 — bot play was way too fast, and the last step never got its moment

Two things from the first real play on phoenix.local. One bug: busy() was
pending.length > 0, so the final step of a burst reported the queue idle the
instant it was shown — the district panel snapped back to the viewer's own board
and the countdown row vanished before either could be read.

And calibration. "Start at 1s and tune down" was applied to switching, while a
250ms action tier was invented beside it — fine for a switching burst, wrong for
the common case, since switching is not legal until there is track down. A real
early-game bot turn measured 750ms end to end. Actions are 700ms now, and
localOps.choose moved out of bookkeeping: it is the line announcing what a bot is
about to do, and at zero dwell nobody ever saw it.

The viewer's own moves now cost nothing — their board comes from their own Frame,
so holding their click only delayed the thing they wanted to watch. And pace
supports 2 and 3 as asked, bounded by MAX_PACE so a typo cannot look like a
frozen board; every tier scales together, so the weighting survives any speed.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01X6cF1iYvJ1kNmzYBzu4QX6
This commit is contained in:
Jesse.Markowitz
2026-09-09 17:20:18 -04:00
co-authored by Claude Opus 5
parent 02289e94b8
commit 0cfeb4c496
7 changed files with 258 additions and 22 deletions
+43 -7
View File
@@ -37,7 +37,9 @@ export type StepKind = 'switching' | 'action' | 'phase' | 'bookkeeping';
* it is deliberately not the only way to change the pacing. A viewer's own `pace` multiplier
* (`Settings`, `localStorage`) and a `?pace=` URL parameter both scale these without one, and
* `pace = 0` turns the animation off entirely, which is also TODO #18's "a player who has seen it a
* hundred times will want it off".
* hundred times will want it off". **Multipliers above 1 are supported and expected** — Jesse asked
* for 2 and 3 explicitly after the first play — up to `MAX_PACE`, and every tier scales together so
* their relative weighting survives.
*
* NOT IN GAME-CREATION SETTINGS, on Jesse's call 2026-09-09: dwell is presentation, not a rule, and
* `config` rides along in saves and replays. If it ever moves there, the config field supplies this
@@ -46,8 +48,17 @@ export type StepKind = 'switching' | 'action' | 'phase' | 'bookkeeping';
export const DWELL: Record<StepKind, number> = {
/** A train physically moving on the board. The thing worth watching, and protected accordingly. */
switching: 1000,
/** A card, a car or a load changing hands somewhere visible. */
action: 250,
/**
* A card, a car or a load changing hands somewhere visible — and the announcement of what a
* player is about to do.
*
* WAS 250ms, WHICH WAS WRONG, and wrong in the way that mattered most: an early-game bot turn has
* no switching in it at all, so it was six steps of 250ms and 0ms — **750ms for a whole turn**.
* Jesse, from the first real play on `phoenix.local`: *"bot play was way too fast. I briefly saw
* that it was the bot's office area then their turn was done."* His instruction had been "start at
* 1s and tune down", and that was applied only to switching while this number was invented.
*/
action: 700,
/**
* An automatic phase that DID something — TODO #18.
*
@@ -107,9 +118,17 @@ export function kindOf(cause: StepCause): StepKind {
case 'redFlag.play':
return 'action';
// Ending a phase or a turn, choosing what to do, voting. The consequences are worth watching;
// the declaration itself is not, and there are more of these than of anything else.
/**
* `localOps.choose` IS AN ANNOUNCEMENT, NOT BOOKKEEPING — moved out 2026-09-09 after the first
* real play. It is the line that reads "Player Bot 1 chose to SWITCH — six Moves to shunt cars
* around the yard": the heading for everything that follows, and at zero dwell nobody ever saw
* it, so a bot's turn began with no indication of what it was about to do.
*/
case 'localOps.choose':
return 'action';
// Ending a phase or a turn, and voting. Nothing to see: the consequences were the thing, and
// there are more of these than of anything else.
case 'loadUnload.end':
case 'draw.end':
case 'switch.end':
@@ -119,9 +138,26 @@ export function kindOf(cause: StepCause): StepKind {
}
}
/** How long to show one step, in ms, at a given speed. `pace` of 0 means "do not animate at all". */
/**
* The widest multiplier that is a speed rather than a mistake.
*
* `pace` has no lower surprise — 0 means off — but an unbounded upper one does: `?pace=300` from
* somebody typing 3.00, or a corrupt `localStorage` value, would give a switching move a five-minute
* dwell and look exactly like a frozen board. Ten is far beyond any speed anyone would choose (2 and
* 3 are the ones actually asked for) and well short of unusable.
*/
export const MAX_PACE = 10;
/**
* How long to show one step, in ms, at a given speed.
*
* `pace` scales every tier by the same factor, so **the tiers stay in proportion at any speed** — a
* switching move outlasts an ordinary action at 0.5× and at 3× alike. That is deliberate: the
* relative weighting is the design (a train moving is worth more attention than a card changing
* hands), and the multiplier is only how fast the whole thing runs. `0` means do not animate at all.
*/
export function dwellFor(cause: StepCause, pace = 1): number {
return Math.round(DWELL[kindOf(cause)] * Math.max(0, pace));
return Math.round(DWELL[kindOf(cause)] * Math.min(MAX_PACE, Math.max(0, pace)));
}
/**