Parley Hatch
2abfe4abd1
Working title 'tgame' is provisional. Top-level samples/ and docs/samples/ are gitignored; visual/art pipeline lives outside this repo.
127 lines
6.4 KiB
Markdown
127 lines
6.4 KiB
Markdown
# Reveal Choreography
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The card-flip moment after a craft (and other reward reveals) is the highest-leverage dopamine in the game. Designed around one principle:
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**Length scales with magnitude. Buildup is the signal, not manufactured suspense.**
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Players learn the visual/audio language quickly ("oh, it's spinning, that's at least Fine") and never get baited-and-disappointed. Reference: Vampire Survivors chest opens — simple, honest, scales gracefully with the actual reward.
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## Anti-pattern we're avoiding
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The slot-machine pattern: long buildup → suspenseful flourish → common item flops → player feels cheated. We're doing the opposite — a Common item gets a quick honest reveal so the player isn't promised more than they're getting. The reveal *is* the result, not a teaser for one.
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## The five band tiers
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### Crude
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- Card sits on the station, faint dust puff
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- Single quick flip
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- Lands face-up with a soft thud
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- Brief result text, no glow, no particles
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- **Total: ~0.5s.** Sound: soft *thump*
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### Common
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- Card on station, slight tremble
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- One flip with a satisfying *crunch*
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- Settles with a small wobble
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- Subtle highlight on the quality border
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- **Total: ~0.8s.** Sound: hammer-crunch
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### Fine
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- Card on station, harder tremble
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- Silver shimmer along the edges
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- Two flips, metallic *ring* on the second
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- "Fine" ribbon appears with a small particle burst
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- **Total: ~1.5s.** Sound: hammer + chime
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### Masterwork
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- Card vibrates with a low resonant hum
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- Golden glow brightens, particles begin drifting up
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- Three rotations, increasing speed
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- Lands with a metallic *clang*
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- Burst of golden particles, "Masterwork" ribbon flies in
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- Holographic foil shader kicks in and stays
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- **Total: ~2.5s.** Sound: hum → rising chime → clang → soft choir flourish
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### Legendary
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- Screen subtly darkens around the card
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- Low rumble, vibration intensifies
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- Radiant white-gold light pillars from underneath
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- Multiple rotations (5+) with motion blur
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- **Time briefly slows (~0.7×) for the apex** — reserved exclusively for Legendary
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- Bursts in a flare of radiant light, screen flash
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- "Legendary" ribbon arrives with a deeper sound
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- **Bespoke hand-finished art piece revealed** (Legendaries get the bespoke treatment per [07-item-cards.md](07-item-cards.md))
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- Holo foil + ambient glow + drifting particles continue after settle
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- **Total: ~4–5s.** Sound: rumble → slow rising swell → *crack* of light → choir + organ swell
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## Special cases
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### Critical success (band promotion mid-reveal)
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The choreography starts at the *expected* band, then mid-flip kicks up to the next band:
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- A "wait — no" beat: particles intensify, light shifts
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- Reveal upgrades to one band higher than expected
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- "**Critical Success!**" ribbon arrives with the upgraded reveal sequence
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- Player thought Common, got Fine. Player thought Fine, got Masterwork. *Best feeling in the game after Legendary itself.*
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Critical success can be earned two ways: lucky engineer rolls, or hitting both Master's Touch meters perfectly ([16-engagement-layers.md](16-engagement-layers.md)). Same choreography either way, different earnings paths. The forced crit in onboarding ([12-onboarding.md](12-onboarding.md)) is the player's first encounter with this moment — earned by their meter timing on impossibly forgiving meters.
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### New Discovery (recipe unlock, parallel layer)
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Stacks on top of the quality reveal — runs concurrent on a separate channel:
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- Card flutters before settling
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- Scroll/parchment animation overlays
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- "**New Discovery!**" ribbon
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- Recipe added to book with a *whoosh* + book-shut sound
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- ~3s
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## Design principles
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- **Length scales with reward magnitude.** This *is* the signal. Eliminates the disappointment problem.
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- **Honesty over manufactured suspense.** No fake-outs. A Common reveal doesn't pretend to be a Legendary.
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- **Audio carries equal weight to visual.** Each band has an audio signature players learn quickly.
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- **Time slowing is reserved for Legendary.** Rarest cue for the rarest moment. Don't dilute by using elsewhere.
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- **Skippable after the first.** Long-press skips to end-state after ~0.5s. The *first* of each tier the player ever sees shouldn't be skippable; every subsequent one should be. Veteran players' time matters.
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- **Bespoke Legendary art revealed at the apex.** Hand-finished one-of-a-kind art is part of why Legendary *is* Legendary.
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## Implementation sketch
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Choreography is a state machine layered on top of the static card composition system. On craft result:
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1. Receive result `{quality_band, was_critical, was_discovery, components, maker, ...}`
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2. Pick choreography preset by band (or one band lower if `was_critical=true`)
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3. Run sequence: tremble → buildup → flips/spins → reveal → settle
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4. Audio + particles + shaders sync to sequence beats
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5. If `was_critical`, mid-sequence break to the upgraded preset
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6. If `was_discovery`, fire the parallel discovery overlay
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7. On settle, card slides into the vault
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Performance:
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- Single focused card, full shader stack is fine
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- Particles cheap (small counts, short-lived)
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- Time-slow via tween scaling, not actual game time
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- Choreography assets (audio clips, particle definitions, shader configs) preloaded per session
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## Same framework, other reveals
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The pattern extends to other reward moments — same toolkit, different presets:
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| Reveal moment | Preset analog |
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| Expedition return — small haul | Common-tier choreography |
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| Expedition return — rare drop | Masterwork-tier swell |
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| Expedition return — Legendary relic | Full apex treatment |
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| New applicant — common | Quick portrait fade-in |
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| New applicant — rare trait or class | Fine/Masterwork-tier flourish |
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| Patron reward payment | Scales with payout magnitude |
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| Guild Rank up | Apex variant — meta-progression milestone |
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Each variant reuses the same shader / particle / audio toolkit; just different sequence presets.
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## Open questions
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- Skip-after-first per tier vs. per session vs. per install — when does the "first time" lock release?
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- Do we play screen flash on Legendary reveals, or is that too aggressive on mobile? (Accessibility: photosensitivity opt-out should exist regardless.)
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- Do crit-promotion sequences happen visibly on the way up the band ladder, or do we shortcut straight to the upgraded band's preset?
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- Audio mixing — does music duck during reveals so the choreography sounds occupy full headroom?
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- Haptic feedback (vibration patterns per band) — yes for Masterwork+, none for Common/Crude?
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