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Git Recon: menus as a toy-soldier briefing, hill climb to 8/10, rounds 5+ (from #3569) #3575
Description
Score: 5.2/10 (target 8)
Carried from #3569 (round 4, PR #3574; rounds 1 to 3 were PRs #3552 and #3559): Git Recon's menus as a toy-soldier briefing. A toy-soldier third-person shooter fought in a codebase, with glossy black clay soldiers. The menus are the toy box and the field manual: moulded-plastic sprues and runners as frames, a glossy clay sheen on buttons, stencilled field-manual headings, mission cards like punched dog tags. Our own ideas only, never the look of any commercial toy line or game.
Goalpost: 8/10 from the owner on the menus
- In the game's own look. Title, lobby or front, settings, results and any panel read as the same world as the play view: material, type, ornament.
- Artwork, not only CSS. Backplates, frames, textures and insignia as small SVG, procedural canvas or headless-Blender tiles; say what each weighs.
- Still readable, every screen size. Contrast at or above today, play view unobscured, checked with
bun run probe git-recon --shotfrom phone to desktop. - eqosys menus wear it. The sign-in chip, report form, achievement toast and any lobby come through the skin hook from eqosys menus: a game injects its skin once and every shared surface wears it, hill climb to 8/10, rounds 2+ (from #3530) #3541, never a second stylesheet.
- House kit underneath. Components come from
packages/uiandpackages/game-controlsre-themed by tokens; a forked copy of one is a gap.
Where it stands after round 4
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Merged (Git Recon: the menus as a toy box and field manual (menus climb round 1) #3552, Git Recon: a moulded sprue, a tally sheet, your own clay soldier on the menu (menus climb rounds 2 and 3) #3559):
- An olive sprue frame round a manila field-manual page.
- Stencil headings, glossy black clay buttons, embossed dog-tag missions.
- A stamped result with a tally sheet.
- Your own clay soldier turning in the page's corner at every size (
src/ui/portrait.ts). - The loadout as a parts tray.
- The Controls panel in the same page and frame through the
packages/uitokens.
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Round 4 (Git Recon: baked menu art, a sprue of clay soldiers behind the page, the soldier on results (menus climb round 4) #3574): baked art.
bun scripts/menu-art.tsinapps/git-reconrenderssrc/ui/menu-art.tsin headless Chrome with the game's own three.js figure, seeded, and writes WebP files topublic/menu/.backplate.webp(55 KB) is a moulded olive sprue of clay soldiers with numbered tabs, behind the title, loadout and results.soldier-won.webp(4.6 KB) andsoldier-lost.webp(3.6 KB) show on results by how the round went.- Results' buttons are dog tags. Settings' rows are mono, and its reset buttons are olive.
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Shots are in
apps/git-recon/docs/shots-2026-11-04-menus/:before-*,r1-*,r2-*,r3-*,now-*(after round 4). -
Judges (fresh each round, corrected two points down; compare within one judge):
from to main to round 1 1.5 5.0 round 1 to round 2 4.4 5.2 round 2 to round 3 4.8 5.3 round 3 to round 4 4.5 5.2
Next
- Settings and loadout are still CSS, not artwork.
- Give settings stencilled section headings (its "Keyboard" header is still sans) and a moulded panel. Its mono rows read as a terminal, not a manual: try the stencil or a typed-manual face instead.
- Give the loadout's head swatches moulded sockets instead of plain squares.
- The backdrop figures are soft olive blobs, almost invisible on phone. In
menu-art.ts, light them harder (rim light, contrast) and frame fewer, bigger parts so they read as toy soldiers. Re-bake. - Pick one button material per page. Results mixes black clay role pills with steel dog-tag buttons.
- Small fixes.
- On tablet, the backdrop's gate labels are cut at the edge.
- On desktop, the map card overlaps the sprue labels.
- eqosys menus. When the skin hook (eqosys menus: a game injects its skin once and every shared surface wears it, hill climb to 8/10, rounds 2+ (from #3530) #3541, PR eqosys skin: a game injects its look once, and the chip, toast, report form, lobby and spaces wear it (climb round 1) #3540) is on main, put this skin through it for the sign-in chip, report form and toast. Not before.
Activity
QuinnsCode commentedon Nov 5, 2026
Stalled: four rounds tonight have left the score flat at about 5/10 (target 8). Each round's fresh judge, corrected two points down, gave:
Judge drift is as big as the gains. Every judge saw its own round as a rise of +0.5 to +0.8. But each new judge put the result it was handed 0.2 to 0.8 lower than the judge before had scored it. So the headline number sits at 5.0 to 5.3, and three rounds have bought no gain on the climb's own measure.
Did the rendered backplate move the judges? A little, not enough. The judge called round 4's art "the real gain": a sprue of olive clay soldiers baked by
scripts/menu-art.tswith the game's own figure, and the posed soldiers on results. But it read the moulded soldiers as "soft olive blobs", almost invisible on phone. The page is still a CSS card laid over the render, so the score rose by about the same as the CSS rounds did.What I think the real gap is:
Open PR: #3574 (round 4: the baked art, plus
?screen=links that open each menu screen without playing a round).Git Recon: ?screen= opens the loadout, settings or a won or lost resu…
QuinnsCode commentedon Nov 5, 2026
The owner's score and choice of direction: #3576 (MANUAL RUN). This climb waits on it.
Git Recon: baked menu art, a sprue of clay soldiers behind the page, …
Git Recon: a debrief strip on results, darker sealed tags, the recon …
QuinnsCode commentedon Nov 5, 2026
Score: 3.5/10 (target 8)
Round 5 is PR #3593. This round changes direction: the owner, through Nibble, asked for a sniper's mission briefing (the scope, the dossier, the classified marks) on the clean white crafting-sandbox canvas, still rugged, keeping the dog tags. The olive toy box is gone.
A fresh judge gave BEFORE (main, round 4) 3.5 and NOW 5.5, each corrected two points down. It scored against the new brief, so these numbers don't line up with round 4's 5.2.
Shots are in
apps/git-recon/docs/shots-2026-11-05-briefing/(before and now; title, loadout, settings, won and lost at desktop, tablet and phone).What landed:
packages/uitokens.Next: real briefing artwork. Ideas: a manila folder edge or tab, a paper clip, redaction bars, the soldier as a clipped photo. Then a crisp reticle that frames the title or marks the picked mission, and settings and the debrief made more than a white form.
QuinnsCode commentedon Nov 5, 2026
Moved up to #3594
Git Recon: the menus as a sniper's briefing on a white sandbox, keepi…