INSECTICIDE / DEADWOOD FRONT
Current playable direction / 16 October 2026 / build 11

START
Double-click Play Insecticide.cmd. Choose class opens six cards grouped by
archetype, with equipment, role, trade-offs and a model preview. Select your
colony, keep the class, then use Play / Host to start a battle.
Set RED and BLUE colony sizes (0-12, default 6) on the hosting page; combat bots fill
each colony to its size. Joining humans replace bots; leaving humans free
slots for bots. Humans can always field six per colony. Esc opens the menu;
Choose class lets you deploy a different class or colony (respawning you).
The separate Server browser lists local-network matches automatically and
also accepts a host IP address. It is a LAN/direct-IP browser, not a global
internet directory. Flight training lives on the hosting page.
The three archetypes each have two playable classes:
Ants: Soldier Ant / Termite.
Vespids: Murder Bee / Executioner Wasp.
Beetles: Bombardier Beetle / Elephant Beetle.
Hornet and Regent remain shelved.
Fighters have no floating nametags. Red versus blue blankets identify teams;
Vespids wear matching headbands, scarves and capes. Drone hulls and flags match.

PROFILE AND MATCH RESULTS
My profile sets your display name and shows lifetime kills, deaths, captures,
completed matches, wins and time played. The placeholder account is stored
only on this device in Godot's user data folder as profile.json. It requires
no login and is not an authenticated online account. Stats save during play;
only finished matches count toward matches and wins. Training does not count.
Reconnecting with the same local profile keeps your current match record.
When your body dies, a private recap shows the killer's name, class, colony
and weapon, including headshot kills or self-inflicted deaths. Losing an
aircraft with a surviving operator does not count as a body death.
The scoreboard appears only after a flag capture ends the match. It lists
both colonies, including bots and departed players, with points, kills,
deaths, headshot kills, captures and returns. Each colony is ranked by
points: 10 per kill, +5 per headshot kill, 50 per capture, 20 per return. The host can start the next round;
everyone can return to the menu, reopen completed results or leave.

CONTROLS
WASD move; mouse aim; left mouse fire; 1/2/3 primary/secondary/melee.
F quick melee (hold for Termite chainsaw); R reload; Space jump; Shift sprint;
Ctrl ground slide; Z toggle prone for every class.
Bombardier Beetle: T toggles the head torch.
Elephant Beetle: right mouse toggles the primary scope; mouse wheel selects
2x/4x/8x magnification.
Termite: E places one satchel; E again detonates once its three-second arm completes.
Murder Bee: E deploy drone. While piloting, WASD thrust, Space climb, Ctrl descend,
Shift brake. Left mouse or E detonates. Esc releases the mouse.
Executioner Wasp: E deploys a stabilized bomber. Mouse turns the camera; WASD
moves horizontally even while looking down. Space climbs, Ctrl descends;
release the controls to brake into a hover, Shift brakes harder. Left mouse
drops one of three bombs; T toggles thermal. R toggles return assistance;
WASD, Space, Ctrl or Shift immediately takes control again. E docks within
3 m of your operator below 4 m/s for a four-second reload.
Ground jumps are lower (6.4 m/s launch); walking retains the 20% reduction.

PRONE / ALL CLASSES
Z goes prone; press it again to request standing. Every class crawls at 3.2 m/s.
Your collision envelope becomes a compact 0.70 m tall capsule, with the same
width whichever way you look, so you can turn and change stance in narrow
tunnels. A stand request automatically crouches at 1.15 m where possible and
finishes standing at 1.8 m as soon as the roof clears; there is no need to keep
pressing Z. Press Z again to cancel that request and remain prone.
Ground movement follows small floor lips and slopes without jumping. Solid
walls and low roofs still block movement; step assistance cannot bridge gaps.
You cannot sprint or jump while prone or crouched; aim, fire and reload remain
available. Elephant Beetle
gains its strongest accuracy and recoil reduction after remaining still and
prone for 0.65 s; moving or rising loses the brace. Bots use the same crawl,
clearance and floor traversal rules, including newly excavated low routes.

LETHALITY
Gunfire, muzzle flashes and grenade trails leave the weapon's barrel;
spent cases leave its ejection port. The crosshair selects your aim point,
but your barrel also needs a clear path: looking over cover does not let you
shoot through it. This applies while standing, crouching or crawling.
Time to kill is short. Rifle 38, SMG 19 falling to 11, sidearm 52, melee
80. Bullets that strike the head (above 1.45 m on a standing body or an
exposed Vespid operator) deal 2.2x damage and show HEADSHOT: two rifle
headshots or three body hits drop a Soldier Ant. Murder Bee drones die to any
single hit; Executioner bombers have a separate 90 HP hull.
Body hits throw heavier insect ichor spray. Blast kills tear the body apart:
head, legs, abdomen, torn cloth and viscera tumble away, then settle within
four seconds. Corpses show exposed ribs, torn chitin and dark spatter. Every
dead body and severed piece is fully grayscale, including blankets and team
markings; living fighters keep their red/blue colours.
Bots have 25% more aim error when shooting deployed drones. Their accuracy
against grounded operators and other infantry is unchanged.

HEAD TORCHES (BOMBARDIER BEETLE ONLY)
Bombardier Beetles carry a head torch; T toggles it and it lights where they
look (22 m).
Others see its lens and a faint beam. A torch shone straight into your eyes
flares and floods your view white; the afterimage takes a second or two to
clear. Bombardier Beetle bots carry torches lit. The other five classes have none.
Torches reveal you; turn yours off to hide in the dark.

SOLDIER ANT / ANTS ARCHETYPE / 110 HP
AK-47 with knife bayonet, flare pistol and shovel. Sprint (Shift) into an enemy
directly ahead with the AK out and you impale them automatically: 200 damage
kills any class, the body hangs on the blade, then drops. Walking will not
trigger it; there is a 1.2 s recovery. Tunnel engineering as before.
FLARE PISTOL (2): one flare, 15 s reload that carries on while the pistol is
stowed: switch back to the rifle and it is ready 15 s after the shot. The flare arcs, sticks where it
lands and burns red for 12 s, lighting about 13 m around it. Your colony
sees burning friendly flares through walls and smoke as red points that are
bold within 15 m and fade and shrink with distance, to a faint pinprick
beyond about 140 m; enemies
see a flare only where it is in plain sight. A direct hit scorches for 30.
Use it to mark a fight, a tunnel mouth or an enemy position. Soldier Ant bots
send one at a distant enemy now and then.
Aim at earth with 3 or F to dig a rounded pocket; make sufficient headroom
before entering a tunnel. Shovels also breach walls. Soldier Ant shovels and
Termite satchels excavate soil; other attacks leave soil intact. Bullets cannot
remove soil or stone, but can splinter wooden buildings.

TERMITE / ANTS ARCHETYPE / 110 HP
A six-shell pump shotgun, sidearm and a heavy chainsaw. The shotgun fires
eight pellets: 20 damage each within 7 m, falling to 6 at 32 m, with a 40 m
maximum reach. A close centered hit is devastating; scattered pellets and
falloff make long shots weak. Pump cadence is 0.95 s and reload takes 3.2 s.
Select 3 and hold left
mouse, or hold F, to chew continuously: 38 damage every 0.14 s in close range.
The saw cuts timber, glass and masonry while threatening nearby enemies;
it cannot dig soil or cut indestructible steel. Its motor warns defenders.
Press E near a surface to place one satchel. It takes three seconds to arm;
press E again to detonate. The blast reaches 450 damage over a 10 m radius,
breaches buildings and excavates a 4 m soil pocket. Cover and distance still
reduce fighter damage; stay clear of your own charge. Only one satchel may
be deployed per Termite, with an eight-second rearm after detonation. Termite
satchels are the sole exception to the rule that explosions leave soil intact.

MURDER BEE / VESPIDS ARCHETYPE / 105 HP OPERATOR, ONE-HIT DRONE
Walk to a covered launch site and press E with ground beneath you and clear
space overhead. Your body remains there and can be attacked. You pilot an
expendable drone; your operator keeps a normal weapon HUD while grounded.
Neutral input hovers. Mouse aim directs thrust and turns preserve momentum;
Shift braking trades speed for a tighter turn. Cruise speed is 34 m/s, with
faster descents. There is no wingbeat rhythm, wing heat or fibre-optic cable.

The wireless link reaches 90 m. Grain starts beyond 9 m and grows with
distance. The central drone OSD shows battery, signal, range, velocity,
altitude, vertical speed, heading and a gyro horizon. Battery lasts 20 seconds
hovering; fast travel, climbs and weak signal consume more (up to three
times faster at the edge of range). Empty battery detonates. One second
outside signal range loses the link: the drone drops dead WITHOUT exploding
and the rearm takes 24 s instead of 8 s. Returning inside range within that
second restores the link. Arena boundaries and the
160 m ceiling still apply. Drones may fly 70 m beyond the walls over the
industrial outskirts; its factories and stacks are solid. On the 360 m map
the link cannot cover base to base: operators must advance to strike deep,
exposing their grounded bodies.

Any solid impact, shooting the drone down, operator death, left click or E
triggers one explosion. E aborts by destroying the drone, not returning it.
The blast has a 5.6 m damage radius and up to 300 damage, reduced by distance
and cover. Stone cover protects from the blast.
A 1.4-second third-person view shows the explosion and elimination count,
then control returns to a surviving operator. Redeployment takes eight seconds.
Your own blast can kill your operator; gain separation before detonating.
The drone carries no gun. The operator has the Vespid SMG, sidearm and stinger.

EXECUTIONER WASP / VESPIDS ARCHETYPE / 105 HP OPERATOR, 90 HP BOMBER
The exposed operator carries a 30-round SMG, sidearm and stinger (the Murder
Bee carries the same SMG). The SMG fires every 0.095 s, reloads in 2 s, and
deals 19 damage within 12 m, falling to 11 at 48 m, with 65 m reach. Movement
opens its spread.
E launches a larger reusable bomber with three gravity bombs, a 120-second
nominal battery and a 300 m link. Cruise is 22 m/s; weak signal and strenuous flight still consume
more battery. The visible rack and HUD track remaining bombs. Left mouse drops
one bomb at a time, with a 0.8 s interval; climb for a long downward approach.
T toggles thermal while piloting: visible fighters, operators and drones show
heat through smoke and darkness, while solid cover blocks the thermal sight.
The stabilized controls separate horizontal movement, camera pitch and altitude;
releasing input stops and holds. The camera stays level when the hull banks.
R assists the return by climbing at least 18 m above the operator, cruising
home and descending. Near home it skips the climb. It brakes at obstructions
and displays RETURN BLOCKED; take control to steer around roofs or walls.
Empty racks do not refill in flight. While you fly, your grounded body is
marked through walls and smoke (only you see it). Fly back within 4 m of it,
at any speed, and E docks the aircraft: bombs, hull and battery are replenished
at once and it can launch again immediately.
Gentle contacts up to 5 m/s survive; harder impacts damage the hull according
to speed into the surface. Depleting the hull, exhausted battery, lost link or
operator death loses the bomber and imposes a 25-second replacement cooldown. A lost bomber does
not perform a Murder Bee suicide explosion. Its bombs damage buildings but
never soil. Carried flags cannot travel by drone.

BOMBARDIER BEETLE / BEETLES ARCHETYPE / 150 HP, BULLET-RESISTANT CARAPACE
Bullets (rifle, SMG, sidearm, revolver) deal only 65% to a Bombardier Beetle,
headshots included: about seven rifle body hits or three headshots.
Melee, bayonets and explosions hit Bombardier Beetles in full.
A single-shot grenade launcher fires at 24 m/s with 18 m/s² gravity and a
four-second fuse; rounds detonate on collision or fuse expiry. Aim above your
target: the crosshair's 10/20/30 m ladder shows trajectory drop for the current
pitch and field of view. Each shot automatically starts a 3.4-second reload.
Substantial weapon kick and a heavy launch report make shots deliberate.
Damage reaches 230 at the core, falling over a 6.8 m radius.
Firing into nearby cover is dangerous to the shooter. Select 2 for a heavy
double-action-only six-shot revolver: 85 damage within 10 m, falling to 65 at
60 m, 2.7-second reload. Left click fires every shot through the same long,
heavy pull (0.58 s cadence), as accurate as the other guns. Select 3 or F for a stock strike. Regenerate 12 HP/s after five seconds
without taking damage. The shield has been removed.

ELEPHANT BEETLE / BEETLES ARCHETYPE / 150 HP, BULLET-RESISTANT CARAPACE
A single-shot elephant gun launches an explosive grenade at 140 m/s, almost
six times the Bombardier launcher's speed. The round has gravity and travel
time, detonates on impact (or after three seconds), and deals up to 310 blast
damage in a 4.5 m radius with distance falloff and cover protection. It has no
bullet headshot multiplier or carapace reduction. Nearby impacts can kill the
shooter. It breaches buildings but never excavates soil or destroys steel.
Every shot starts a six-second reload and leaves a massive tracer along its
flight; a layered heavy report reveals the firing position. Right mouse toggles
its scope; mouse wheel cycles 2x, 4x and 8x. You stay scoped, at the same
zoom, through the reload; the reload ring shows in the scope. The heavy rifle takes time to
follow a turn and settle after reversing direction; there is no periodic scope
sway. Its actual bore, crosshair and shot follow that inertia. You can shoot
standing, but the recoil and spread are severe. Go prone and remain still for
0.65 s to brace: aim catches up faster, spread tightens and recoil drops
substantially. Moving or standing removes the brace.
The always-on red laser reveals the primary's aim to BOTH teams, including
during reload; switching weapons hides it. It stops at solid cover or fighters.
An aimed scope also flashes a narrow frontal lens glare, including while
reloading in the scope. Neither effect shines
through walls. The dedicated heavy report carries up to 260 m and decays into
a metallic rumble. A heavy six-shot revolver covers the long reload;
3 or F strikes with the stock. Carapace, regeneration and revolver handling
match Bombardier Beetle. Elephant Beetle has no head torch.

MAGAZINES
AK: 30 rounds, 0.15 s between shots, 1.85 s reload.
Termite shotgun: six shells, eight pellets per shell, 0.95 s cadence, 3.2 s reload.
Vespid SMG (Murder Bee and Executioner Wasp): 30 rounds, 0.095 s cadence, 2 s reload.
Grenade launcher: one round, 3.4 s reload.
Elephant gun: one high-velocity explosive grenade, 6 s reload.
Sidearm: 12 rounds, 52 damage, 0.26 s between shots, 1.1 s reload.
The final shot starts reloading automatically. A radial progress ring around
the crosshair shows the reload. R reloads early; switching weapons cancels
reloads without refilling.
Reserve ammunition is unlimited. Melee does not consume ammunition.
The host validates shots, ammunition, reloads, health, scores and destruction.

COVER, EXPLOSIONS AND ATMOSPHERE
Each CTF base also has two large town houses (14.4 x 12 m, two or three
storeys) beside the flag yard: stone and timber facades with windows, three
rooms and a hall per storey linked by doorways, and an enclosed steel
switchback staircase with steel landings that no weapon can destroy. Room
walls are part timber (shoot through) and part stone. Bots fight on their
ground floors; upper floors are for players.
Buildings have one, two or three storeys, mixed material walls and usable upper
floors reached by steel ramps. Metal framing can never be destroyed. Stone
resists bullets and only suffers small blast/shovel breaches; wooden panels
can be shot apart and glass panes shatter. Explosions breach timber much more
widely than masonry. Surface/collision rebuilds run on two workers and commit
together locally, with later edits preserved while earlier work is in flight.
Ordinary explosions only damage buildings: soil and tunnels remain intact.
Termite satchels explicitly also excavate soil: a cone-sided crater 4 m in
radius and about 2.4 m deep, with 31-degree walls you can walk out of. Neither
the saw nor a blast can destroy steel; Soldier Ant shovels remain the precise
tool for extended tunnel engineering.

Blast damage samples five points around a target, so a wall or doorway offers
partial or full protection. Cover is evaluated before the explosion breaches
it. Wooden cover transmits a little damage. Concussion reaches beyond lethal
splash: a brief camera kick, muffled sound and restrained ringing recover
quickly, with no input lock. Explosions throw soil, splinters or masonry,
followed by dense textured soot/dust that conceal targets for 5.5–8.5 seconds;
lighter wisps outlast the main cloud. Damage confirmations use original sounds
inspired by Quake-style feedback: larger damage has a deeper, stronger cue and
lethal hits have a distinct finish. Simultaneous splash hits combine into one cue.

Rounds that pass within about 3 m of your head crack and whiz from the side
they pass, louder the closer they come. A bomb falling to land within about
18 m of you whistles as it drops, timed to end at impact.
Gunshots and explosions have spatial distance, wall muffling and echoes that
respond to nearby enclosure. Incoming drones have continuous layered motors,
with pitch and load changes and audible approaches. Audio uses locally
packaged CC0 recordings and prepared layers; credits/licences are in audio/.
Mixing and effects use fixed pools and an output limiter.

Dreams of Deadworld (2000 AD) guides the horror-comic atmosphere: skeletal
insects, ragged cloth, polluted skies, ruined industry and exhausted soil.
The world is dark; fires, fireballs and muzzle flashes are the strong lights.
Small fires mark tunnel routes. Separator walls have no trees or bushes.
smoke and fireball assets are recorded under art/assets/ and art/textures/.
Sixty old corpses litter the battlefield. Player deaths leave remains that
persist through respawns and replicate to late joiners. Six fixed mesh batches
hold up to 256 match deaths; beyond that, only the oldest remains recycle.
Corpses have no physics bodies and settle after terrain changes. New matches
clear player remains and restore the original terrain.

BOTS AND MATCH RULES
Two colonies fight CTF on a 360 by 144 m map. A is Red's base, C is Blue's,
and B is central no man's land, dense with ruins: a three-storey keep at the
centre, three-storey towers, 33 buildings in B, connected alleys and doorways,
and walkable soil hills up to 6 m that ants can
dig into. Each team spawns inside a roofed hall at the far end of its base,
48 m behind its flag; three doorways face the flag. Full-width bare 7 m walls
at x = +-48 separate the stages; walking/jumping cannot cross them. Vespid
drones can fly over, while infantry use ramped tunnels or excavated underpasses.
Each wall has two starter tunnels. Find the low tunnel entrances and follow
the fires.

Steal the enemy flag, then bring it to your home flag to win. Your own flag
must be home. Friendly contact returns a dropped flag; unattended flags return
after 30 seconds. Death, disconnect and class/team changes drop a carried flag.
Cover blocks pickup; dropped flags settle when their supporting floor is
destroyed. Home standards stand on indestructible steel footings.
Drone pilots cannot pick up flags, and carriers cannot deploy a drone. First
capture wins; Esc opens the menu and the host can start a fresh round.

Bots use height-aware routes through starter and newly dug tunnels, doors,
body-clearance detours, narrow-passage separation and local breach replanning.
They check headroom and landing space before jumping out of shallow trenches;
failed route segments are temporarily avoided so they can choose another exit.
Soldier Ants can shovel a way out of deeper earth obstacles. Squads assign assault,
support, patrol, escort and flag-recovery roles, updating as the objective changes.
One assault soldier takes an outer route across B while the engineer leads the
direct push. Flank waypoints expire and reset after death or a new round.
Carriers return home while escorts cover the approach and rear. At most one bot
patrols a home approach when the team has enough soldiers to keep attacking.
Dense smoke blocks bot vision; bots briefly remember the last visible position
before resuming their objective. Shared sightings expire and do not track hidden
players through smoke. Grenade bots solve a low firing arc and draw their revolver
for close threats or while a long launcher reload can be interrupted.
Bots aim bullet weapons (rifle, SMG, shotgun, sidearm, revolver) noticeably
wider than a player would: about half their old body-hit rate at 12 m.
Advanced coordinated ant digging remains future work.
Friendly fire is off; self-inflicted blast damage is on. Respawn takes four
seconds. Kills do not score in CTF. Class changes redeploy at your team's spawn.

TRAINING AND GALLERY
FLIGHT TRAINING starts a Murder Bee drone course with eight gates. Home resets the
course and supplies a fresh drone. R remains reload. Best time lasts for the
session. MODEL GALLERY shows the shared procedural character/weapon assets;
1–6 focus a class, 0 shows all six grouped by archetype, F1/F2/F3 switch
primary/secondary/melee displays, drag rotates, Esc returns.
Opening the gallery leaves the current match.

KING OF THE HILL / ASHEN MOUND (2v2)
Choose it under Battle on the Play / Host page (the world rebuilds on start).
A compact 112 x 64 m arena: each colony spawns in a roofed hall in opposite
corners behind an L of ruins, with two more ruins in its open rear-flank
corner and a low ruin on the hill's edge lane, with two staggered exits and a blast screen
before the southern doorway; the hilltop cannot see into either spawn. Three big
two-storey town houses per colony (rooms, steel stairs) close the gaps on the
north flank, the rear-flank corner and the street between, so a dense ring of
blocks surrounds the open hill.
The point is a 5 m ring on a 3.4 m flat-topped soil hill in the centre, with
crest cover (a stone wall and an indestructible steel post per side) and
broken walls part-way up the slopes; low walls and a timber fence cover the
flanks. Everything is point-symmetric and both colonies walk 67 m to the point.
Each colony has a 2:00 clock that runs only while that colony alone stands on
the point; contested or empty, both clocks freeze. First clock to 0:00 wins.
Drones and bombers overhead do not hold it; a grounded Bee operator does.
While a colony's clock runs it respawns in 5.5 s and its challengers in 3 s.
Spawn shield (both maps): enemies cannot hurt you inside your own spawn hall,
or for 3 s after you step out (near the hall). Your first attack, drone launch
or satchel ends it; the HUD shows SPAWN SHIELD while it lasts.
Murder Bee drones reach the point from home, never the enemy spawn. Ants can
dig into the hill. Colonies default to two places each (bots fill).
Joining players load the host's battlefield automatically.

DEDICATED SERVER
Any build can run as a dedicated server: launch headless with --dedicated
(optional --map=ctf|koth, --port=N, --name=Text). It hosts with no fighter of
its own, opens 12 places, keeps no bots while empty and fills both colonies
with bots once someone joins, and starts the next round itself 25 s after a
round ends. Players join with the server's address in the direct-IP box; the
server needs UDP 27840 (game) and TCP 27843 (build check) open. A server
never serves updates, so players must already run the same build.
Linux install: the official Godot 4.7.2 Linux binary at /opt/insecticide/godot
plus the exported pack, run by tools/insecticide.service. Redeploy after a
change with tools/deploy-linux-server.ps1 -HostAddress <ip> -Key <ssh key>.
Measured: idle about 2% of one core; one player plus bots 16-19%; 0.3 GB
(hill) to 0.6 GB (CTF) of memory.

DOWNLOADS AND UPDATES
Players download the game from https://insecticide.vantane.com/download/
(Windows zip with Insecticide.exe; macOS zip, not notarized: right-click Open
the first time). Every copy checks /updates/latest.json when it starts: a
newer build is downloaded, its RSA signature checked against the key built
into the game, installed, and the game restarts into it while still on the
menu (during a match it loads the next start). The dedicated server checks
too, but only while nobody is playing, then restarts itself on the new build.
LAN host-to-client updates still work. --no-online-update skips the check.
Releasing (developer PC, needs .tools/update_signing.key):
  bump BUILD in scripts/version.gd, commit, then run
  tools/publish-release.ps1 -HostAddress 173.242.52.46 -Key <ssh key>
It exports and smoke-tests both packages, signs the update pack locally,
renders the download page and uploads it all (the feed last).

SERVER CONSOLE
https://insecticide.vantane.com (sign in as admin; the password is in
/root/insecticide-console-login.txt on the VPS). It shows the server state,
build, players, uptime, CPU and memory, the battle score, every fighter with
colony, class, health, K/D and ping, and a live log of joins, leaves, kills,
round results and admin actions. Controls: start the next round, restart the
server, switch battlefield (the server restarts on the new map), set places
per colony (bots fill them while someone plays), broadcast a message and
kick a player. The command line accepts: help, status, round, kick <id>,
bots <0-6>, say <text>, quit. The game listens for the console on
127.0.0.1:27850 only, with a token from /etc/insecticide/admin.token; the
console (tools/console, service insecticide-console) runs unprivileged
behind nginx with HTTPS, rate-limited sign-in and CSRF-checked actions.

MULTIPLAYER
For a same-PC test launch twice, HOST in one window, JOIN 127.0.0.1 in the other.
For LAN play copy the full folder including .tools/Godot. The menu scans the
network automatically: hosted matches appear under LAN SESSIONS with a JOIN
button. You can still join by the host's LAN IPv4 address. Ports: UDP 27840
(game), UDP 27841 (session scan), TCP 27843 (updates); up to 24 players.
Hosts announce their computer name to the local network.

AUTOMATIC UPDATES
Joining a host that runs a newer build downloads its game pack, verifies its
signature, restarts and rejoins automatically. Only packs signed with the
developer's key are accepted; anything else is refused. A host with an older
build must update first. The first install of build 1 (the first build with
the updater) must be copied manually; later content builds arrive on join.
Build 7's smoother physics requires a refreshed full copy once, including
the new project settings. In particular, replace an older Mac app with the
build 7 ZIP: a signed content pack loads too late to change its physics engine.
Developers: bump BUILD in scripts/version.gd for every release; a host run
from source with .tools/update_signing.key signs and serves its own build. A full colony redirects new
humans to the other colony. There is no matchmaking or relay. Internet play
requires suitable routing or a VPN; tests cover localhost ENet only.

DEVELOPMENT AND LIMITS
Read design/core-principles.txt and art/direction.txt before changing direction.
Open Godot.cmd opens the project; F5 runs it. Procedural art is interim.
Destruction uses local remeshing, not structural collapse. Movement remains
client-owned; no production anti-cheat or lag compensation is implemented.
GPU performance and subjective combat feel still need human playtesting.
Effects, sounds, corpses and active projectiles have bounded budgets.
Untouched terrain renders in spatial batches. A damaged tile releases only
its own original chunk visuals when the replacement surface/collision commits;
destruction and host replay retain their original physical precision.
Build 7 uses the built-in Jolt 3D physics engine at the same 60 Hz. Geometry,
tunnel clearance, active bots and effect budgets are preserved. Same-class
respawns reuse character/drone/weapon nodes while resetting gameplay state.
Controlled movement and live combat comparisons are in tests/RESULTS.txt;
performance still depends on the machine and combat workload.

Current checks:
  tests/movement_physics_profile.gd - deterministic 60 Hz respawn/movement costs.
  tests/respawn_presentation_test.gd - model reuse and complete loadout resets.
  tests/corpse_palette_test.gd - grayscale dead models, living colours and caches.
  tests/gore_feedback_test.gd - spray, dismemberment, debris budgets and cleanup.
  tests/bot_drone_accuracy_test.gd - slight aircraft-only aim penalty.
  tests/urban_weapons_test.gd - inertial aim, shotgun and SMG authority.
  tests/weapon_presentation_test.gd - laser clipping, glare, mesh/audio budgets.
  tests/bomber_flight_test.gd - position hold, braking and return obstacles.
  tests/bomber_pilot_test.gd - actual pilot inputs, stabilized view and hull.
  tests/urban_layout_test.gd - building density, doors, hills and connected routes.
  tests/terrain_render_batches_test.gd - batched geometry, glass and destruction.
  tests/posture_update_test.gd - unchanged poses avoid rebuilding collision.
  tests/urban_world_profile.gd - controlled street/aerial rendering comparison.
  tests/combat_performance.gd - repeatable rendered live 6v6 performance.
  tests/tunnel_traversal_test.gd - narrow turns, queued rise, steps and real dug tunnels.
  tests/class_integration_test.gd - all six kits, prone clearance and Elephant combat.
  tests/elephant_grenade_test.gd - high-velocity flight, blast, cover, soil and tracer limits.
  tests/subclasses-network.ps1 - new classes, prone and destruction over real ENet.
  tests/termite_test.gd - continuous cutting, satchels and the soil exception.
  tests/executioner_test.gd - bomber payload, recovery, loss and stale packets.
  tests/bot_subclasses_test.gd - saw, bomber, Elephant and low-tunnel bot decisions.
  tests/classes_render.gd - actual class menu, weapons, scope and bomber HUD.
  tests/ctf-network.ps1 - actual CTF host/client/replay integration.
  tests/ctf_rules_test.gd - capture, flag drops, rounds, reloads and arcs.
  tests/ctf_navigation_test.gd - physical tunnels and new dug routes.
  tests/squad_director_test.gd - assignments, sightings and objective transitions.
  tests/beetle_loadout_test.gd - one-shot launcher, revolver, recoil and models.
  tests/bot_weapon_policy_test.gd - reload decisions and safe grenade arcs.
  tests/bot_mobility_test.gd - physical crater jumps and deeper trench exits.
  tests/bot_ant_escape.gd - actual Soldier Ant shovel escape from a closed deep pit.
  tests/bot_objective_playthrough.gd - physical flag pickup and return.
  tests/terrain_latency_test.gd - measured cut/collision delay and materials.
  tests/grenade_feedback_test.gd - damage cues, sight and rendered obscurity.
  tests/bee_wireless_test.gd - drone controls, battery, signal and lifecycle.
  tests/lethality_test.gd - damage, headshots, one-hit drones, bayonet, gore.
  tests/torch_glare_test.gd - torch sync, blinding geometry and afterimage.
  tests/updater_test.gd - signed packs, tamper refusal, LAN download/install.
  tests/bot_drone_wall_test.gd - live 6v6: bot drones avoid separator walls.
Older war/rocket tests use historical map coordinates and weapon capacities.

