Mythic Masters: combat feel hill climb to 7/10, rounds 6+ (from #4046) #4149

Carries the climb on from #4046 (round 5), which carried it from #3688 (round 4), #3511 (round 3), #3493 (round 2) and #3465 (round 1). Part of #2945 (orbit-and-commit combat, weighty attacks). The attacks redesign in #3268 (shapes, tempos, field kits, then telegraphs and effects) is the main thing this climb judges, so rounds follow its steps rather than racing them.

The goalpost

Target 7/10 for how a fight feels to watch and to play: weighty, committed melee where the fighters circle but never stand and trade, hits you can see land (squat, stagger, camera shove, shockwave), and wind-ups you can read and punish.

Agent judges run about 2 points high on visual climbs (#2943: judges 5, owner 3), so the owner's score at the target decides it, through one MANUAL RUN.

Rounds so far

Scores are on the owner's halved scale since 2026-11-05: each round adds half the judge's gain. Now at 3.75/10.

One round

One worker, from main:

1. BEFORE: cd apps/mythic-masters && bun scripts/burst-shots.ts docs/shots-<date>-combat before --combat (one fight per archetype, a wind-up burst, a dodge burst cued on a locked swing, and a hit burst, side camera).
2. The change the newest Next: line names.
3. NOW: the same command with now. Then a fresh judge agent scores BEFORE vs NOW out of 10 without the worker's reasoning. Keep the change only if the score went up.
4. Balance must hold: bun scripts/tune.ts --each 6 --rust before and after, every creature within 40-60% (main sits at 44-57%). If the change shifts it, bun scripts/tune.ts --fit 6 3 --rust re-fits src/balance.json. Then check bun test test/journey.test.ts, because its Jersey Devil wall is sensitive to that creature's edge.

Carried over (each has its own issue)

• Owner feel on a controller: MANUAL RUN MANUAL RUN: feel of weighty hits on a controller (Mythic Masters, PR #2946) #2947 (weighty hits) and MANUAL RUN: Mythic Masters orbit feel check on a controller (about 5 min) #2964 (orbit). Ask for them again once this climb reaches its target, not before.
• Animation rounds: Mythic Masters: animation hill climb, rounds 5+ (a real meet, billowing membranes, lag) #3219. Graphics: Mythic Masters: animation and graphics hill climb to 9/10, rounds 13+ (from #3441) #3455. Both are their own climbs; this one is the fight's feel only.

Ending a round

Comment here, first line Score: x/10 (target 7), then the shots, then Next: <the judge's top gap>. The PR says "Part of #", never a closing word. Then hop forward (the baton text is in scripts/climbs.ts).

Learned in round 5

• A render or tooling change can't move the sim, so it skips the tune and the wasm rebuild. Say so in the PR.
• The dodge burst now retries up to four times for a dash (window.__dashed, watched from the lock for the burst's 1.2 s). Three of four fights caught one on the first or second try; the skirmisher fight is short, so it often ends first.
• The judge's view of NOW: hits read harder, dodges and the punish after show (now-bruiser-dodge-b1 dash, b5 punish). Still: the struck body stands up a frame later (now-tank-dodge-b1..b3), and fighters stand square-on one body-length apart in several bursts.

Learned in round 4

• Most locked swings that landed on a busy defender were not a defender choosing to swing into a wedge: both bots pressed on the same tick, because two committing heavies cross the striking distance together. A gate in press that refuses a swing the incoming heavy would beat changed nothing for that reason; splitting the scratch tally by who pressed first (o.t against f.t at the lock) found it.
• A defender that holds its swing has to leave the other's heavy sweep too: the ring (RING, 0.8 m past reach) sits inside it, so waiting on the ring just eats the blow (tanks fell to 29-46% until it backed out).
• main drifts: other rounds left five tanks at 36-39% before this one. Take the BEFORE tune on today's main, not the number in this issue.

Learned in round 3

• The fight plays on the wasm sim (Mythic Masters: the page plays its fights on the wasm sim (sim-rs) #3668). A bot or sim change goes in src/bot.ts/src/sim.ts and sim-rs/src/, statement for statement with every rnd() in the same place. Then bun scripts/sim-rust.ts rebuilds src/sim.wasm and checks 24 fights hash for hash. Run it again after a balance.json re-fit, since the data is written from the TS.
• The shot counts and the sim's counts can disagree. Measure what changed in the sim (a scratch loop over newMatch/step with both bots) before blaming the change, and fix the cue so the shots catch it.
• A burst after the fight ends shoots the result page (now-skirmisher in round 3).

Learned in round 2

• In the sim a walking sidestep can't leave a heavy body's sweep inside the locked beat (lock 0.35-0.5 and sweep cos 0.5-0.8 all tried); a dash gets out at any frame. Making a walk-out possible would mean a faster sideways step while a swing is locked on you, or a longer locked beat.
• mythicMasters.state().fighters[n].swing is tracking, locked or null: cue a shot on a locked swing with it.
• The BEFORE shots must come from main with no edits in the tree: burst-shots.ts serves the working tree through Vite, so a mid-run edit leaks into BEFORE.