Freelandia

# Neon Borough: update log since v16

Covers v16.5 through v18. Everything below was built and tested with an
automated test suite; items marked (play-test) need to be judged by a
person on a real device.

---

## v18: characters and car radio

### New
- **New character looks** (Settings > VIDEO > CHARACTERS: NEW / CLASSIC,
default NEW). Roles are readable at a glance, including in greyscale
and with the colour-blind palettes:
- Player: mint rim and a white facing marker.
- Cops: blue, slim, with a peaked cap.
- SWAT: wide and boxy, with a helmet and vest.
- Mission targets: dark body, gold wide-brim hat and a gold rim.
- Civilians: plain, flat and a little brighter than before.
- Characters are drawn about 15% larger. Hit boxes did not change.
- CLASSIC draws exactly the v17 sprites.
- **Car radio.** Three stations plus OFF, only while you are in a vehicle:
- **NEON FM**: synthwave, 108 BPM.
- **GRIND 99**: industrial techno, 132 BPM.
- **RAIN RADIO**: lo-fi, 76 BPM.
- Keys: **T** next, **Y** previous. Gamepad: D-pad right / left.
Touch: tap the radio widget for next, hold for previous.
- Tuning static between stations, a station ID when you tune in and a
short jingle every few minutes.
- The radio replaces the score while on, dips under gunshots,
explosions and sirens, drops a further 6 dB at 3+ wanted stars and
crackles in storms. It fades out when you leave the car.
- Starts OFF, remembers your last station. Settings: RADIO ON/OFF and
RADIO VOLUME (default 70) under AUDIO.
- All music is generated in the browser; no audio files.

### Fixed
- A crash when the player was thrown out of a car and a drive-by shot was
handled in the same frame (found by the extended chaos test).
- The PC build no longer contains touch-only code from the radio.

### Known issues
- On a tablet at medium quality the radio costs about 1.5 ms per frame
(play-test: tell us if you see stutter with it on).
- The thinner radio arrangements on tablet and phone were never
listened to (play-test).
- Gang and VIP looks exist only on the character sheet; nothing in the
game spawns them on foot yet.
- Not shipped (cancelled): replay camera, controller rumble, colour
grades.

### Under the hood
- Test suite: 221 pass, 1 known fail (T-PERF). New tests T-173 to T-176
(role distinguishability, sprite budget, radio state machine and
loudness).
- Frame cost vs v17 (idle downtown, desktop): -0.10 ms. With the radio on
while driving: up to +0.40 ms (headless software raster, relative).
- Builds: PC 1,103 KB, tablet / phone 1,292 KB, all under 2 MB.

---

## v17: first full release after v16

Includes everything in v16.5 to v16.8 below, plus:
- Footsteps ship as **set C** (chosen by listening).
- Gate E checks: 216 tests passing, 15-minute AI soak clean, iPad
play-test fine.

---

## v16.8: iPad static and footsteps

### Fixed
- **iPad: static noise while a menu panel was open.** Cause found in the
touch audio unlock code: a timer that never expired kept waking the
paused audio engine, so every wake replayed the engine and ambience
buses at their last level. Fixed on touch builds only. In the test,
audio resumes dropped from 29 to 2 and engine noise while paused
from -38 dB to -77 dB.
- **Footsteps rebuilt.** The old tick had an instant onset (0.8 ms) and
grass was nearly inaudible. New steps: soft attack, band-passed noise,
small random pitch and level variation, different sounds for asphalt,
sidewalk, grass, puddles and grates, and quieter pedestrian steps
nearby. Six candidate sets (A to F) were rendered to choose from.

### New
- AUD debug panel on tablet and phone builds (add `?debug=1` to the URL).

---

## v16.7: zoom and bright display

### New
- **Zoom range 0.85 to 1.20** (step 0.05, default 1.00). Aim assist,
touch aim, audio range, ambient detail, radar crop and marker size all
follow the zoom.
- **DISPLAY: CLASSIC or BRIGHT** (Quick Settings and Settings > VIDEO),
with **BRIGHT STRENGTH** (0.5 to 1.5). BRIGHT lifts the ground about
1.5 times at night so roads, sidewalks and parks separate. Neon, lights
and cars stay the brightest things. CLASSIC is pixel-identical to
before.

### Polish
- Quick Settings: solid close bar, one-line rows on phone screens.
- Edge arrows: bigger, slide along the edge clear of HUD boxes and buttons.
- Kill-frenzy: a chevron on every target, labels on the nearest five.

### Known issues
- Zooming out to 0.85 costs about 0.5 to 1.4 ms per frame on high quality
in tests; slower devices may notice (play-test).
- In BRIGHT mode, cars and people are not lightened like the ground.

---

## v16.6: target markers and Quick Settings

### New
- **Targets are easy to find.**
- HOSTILE chevron, RIVAL diamond, TARGET chevron in a ring, drawn in
the world with a bobbing label.
- Up to 3 edge arrows (objectives first, then the nearest hostile
off-screen), with distance.
- Radar and map blips for every hostile.
- Every kill-style contract shows "N LEFT".
- A one-time "FOLLOW THE ARROW" hint on your first contract.
- TARGET MARKERS: FULL (default), MINIMAL or OFF.
- **Gear button and Quick Settings** in one tap, on every build: music,
SFX, rain and fog, weather, brightness, zoom, target markers (touch:
also controls size and steering). Opens from play (pauses, closing
resumes), from the pause menu (first entry) and from photo mode.
RESET TO DEFAULTS and ALL SETTINGS buttons.

---

## v16.55: escort and street-race fixes

### Fixed
- **Escort missions.** The VIP no longer parks at the destination while
waves still arrive: waves are called along the route (at 12%, 42% and
72%), the destination is marked with a SAFEHOUSE marker and arrival is
announced. A watchdog puts a stalled VIP on the same unstuck ladder as
other cars. Long stops over 8 s fell from 41 to 15, none over 15 s.
- **Street races.** Rivals used to ram each other and bunch up. Now they
take separate lanes and start slots, keep spacing, take bends more
slowly, and are only damaged by the player. Races where a rival was
wrecked: 24 of 30 down to 0. Races with a three-car pile-up: 8 down to 0.

### Known issues
- The VIP still waits at the destination while the last wave is fought
(up to about 23 s in the stress test).

---

## v16.5: reliability

### Fixed
- **Vehicles driving off the edge of the map.** The world now has walls
for every vehicle and driver, with a last-resort position clamp. In the
test, 387 of 1,365 runs left the world before; now 0.
- **Black screen flashes.** Two real causes found and fixed: the canvas
was resized between drawing and showing a frame (one black frame per
resolution step), and a lost WebGL context was never recovered (black
until reload). The game now falls back to the 2D canvas at once and
rebuilds WebGL when it returns. A black-frame detector is available
(`?debug=1`). A third suspect (resize, rotation and tab switching)
could not be reproduced.
- **AI cars getting stuck.** One shared unstuck system for traffic,
police and mission cars: measured progress, then reverse, nudge, ghost
through and finally re-seat. Wide vehicles no longer enter alleys, the
pier containers no longer block lanes, and the VIP, tail and truck
obey red lights. 15-minute stress test, before and after:
- civilians stuck 1.13% to 0.07% of driving time
- mission cars stuck 4.63% to 0.02%
- longest mission-car stuck run 81 s to 7 s
- police stuck in the 5-star stress test (T-52) 6.58% to 2.43% on
average

### Known issues (carried to v17 and v18)
- Police cars still get stuck more than the 1% target (about 3.7% in the
worst-seed stress test): junctions, street furniture and police
against police.
- T-PERF, the frame-time test, still fails on the test machine
(11.6 to 12.0 ms against an 11.1 ms limit).