How CoreDump was built

Declined to build it as written: a guideline-compliant engine with the official SRS kick tables and the named Marathon / Sprint / Ultra modes is a recreation of one specific existing game. Instead it offered an original falling-block game with the same depth: its own rotation system, its own names, an original look and sound, and one or two signature mechanics.

• Matrix: 40×10 grid (20 hidden buffer rows), collision, line clears, clean and messy garbage.
• Data packets + Vector Kick: the seven shapes with an original kick table (in place → lateral → downward tuck → upward climb → wide reach).
• Engine: seeded 7-bag, gravity curve up to 20G, 500 ms lock delay capped at 15 resets, hold, 1–6 queue, event bus for later systems.
• CoreDump vocabulary: BIT / BYTE / WORD / CORE DUMP for 1–4 lines, EXPLOIT spins, SYNC ×1.5 back-to-back, CHAIN combos, SYSTEM WIPE board clears.
• Input with DAS/ARR/SDF acting on keydown (no frame wait), circuit-chip block sprites, smooth piece tweening.
• Classic <script> files on a shared namespace so it runs from file://, and loads headless in Node for tests.

First browser check came out unstyled: the preview pane serves file:// pages as static snapshots. A tiny local Node server fixed the preview.

• Overclock: clears charge a meter; at 50%+ press Q to engage. Gravity drops to 0.35× and every clear becomes a Data Purge that deletes one garbage row per line, or doubles the score when there's no garbage.
• Thermal Throttle: fast locks, hard drops and clears add heat; letting a packet lock on its own vents it. At 70+ you're HOT (×1.25 score, faster charging). At 100 the core throttles: inputs lag 110 ms and auto-repeat slows 3× for 2 s.
• Gauges, callouts, an amber scan sweep while overclocked and a red glitch/tear effect while throttled.

Mode select, live goal readout, results screen with 12 stats and per-mode personal bests. Overclock purges count toward Dig Race.

• FX layer drawn past the board edges: rows shatter into coloured data bits, hard-drop light streaks, shockwave rings and trauma-based screen shake (off under reduced-motion).
• Synthesized SFX with Web Audio, no sample files: every move, lock, clear, exploit, purge, overheat alarm, win and loss.
• Adaptive music: an original 16-step track in A minor. Layers (hats → snare → arp → lead) and tempo (96 → 140 BPM) follow speed, stack height and heat. Overclock muffles it and slows it to 0.75×; Thermal Throttle chops it into stutters.

• SYSTEM CONFIG (O): DAS, ARR, SDF (up to ∞), queue 1–6, master/SFX/music volume, screen-shake toggle.
• Two keyboard and two gamepad slots for each of 13 actions; a binding moves rather than duplicates; Enter stays reserved.
• Gamepad on the standard mapping, with the left stick as a D-pad. It goes through the same input pipeline, so DAS and throttle apply equally.
• Footer key hints follow your bindings. Everything persists.

Asked which kind: local top 10, online via Firebase, or a shared artifact.

• Leaderboard over Firestore's REST API: no SDK, about 150 lines.
• Security rules: anyone can read and add; nothing can be edited or deleted; names [A-Z0-9 _-]{1,12}; ranked value must match the mode; plausibility floors (e.g. sprint ≥ 8 s).
• Results screen offers a handle entry when a run makes the top 10; GLOBAL BOARDS in the menu.

Wrote tools/bot.js: a headless player that runs the real engine with every system live, sending each action through the input module so Thermal Throttle's input lag applies to it too. Limits: one input per frame and at most 3 pieces/second, a top-human pace. Placement uses a published board-evaluation heuristic plus hold. Best of 5 attempts per mode:

Balance finding: holding back to stay HOT scored 68k in Score Attack; playing flat out and eating 25 throttles scored 265k. The throttle is too mild to deter speed. Bug found: goal modes could overshoot (201/200 lines) and be rejected; uploads now count lines up to the goal.

Found rgztechservices.com on the Cloudflare account, confirmed two candidate subdomains were unused, and asked which to use.

• Static-assets Worker with a custom domain. A build step copies only the game into dist/, so tooling, tests and config can never be published by accident.
• Security headers via _headers.
• Verified: HTTPS 200, private files 404, leaderboard loads on the live domain.

The layout was a fixed ~720×750 px. It now zooms to fill the window (0.5×–1.6×) and recalculates on resize; canvases render with extra resolution so they stay sharp when scaled up. Checked at 1892×889 (1.19×) and 1280×620 (0.82×) with no scrolling, then redeployed.

Added the GAME / BUILD LOG tabs and this page, built from the session itself: every prompt verbatim, a summary of each phase, and 18 screenshots taken along the way (click any to enlarge). Account emails, account IDs and unrelated project names are left out.

Proposed touch controls, versus against CLAUDE-AI, replays with a cheat-proof leaderboard, a tougher Thermal Throttle, a daily challenge, an exploit trainer, achievements, live 1v1, player profiles, an installable app, share cards and a stats page.

Asked where the leaderboard should live, since verification, profiles and live matches all need server code.

• The game now advances in fixed 60 Hz steps, and every input is recorded with the step it landed on. Mode + seed + handling + inputs fully describe a run: a sprint is about 3 KB.
• Fixed a subtle bug first: the queue preview and garbage holes drew from one random-number stream, so how often the screen redrew could change the game. They're separate now.
• The browser, the AI and the server all run the same simulation file, so a replay re-simulates identically anywhere. Tests prove it for every mode.

• One Worker on the same subdomain. A SQLite Durable Object stores the boards and re-plays every submitted run before accepting it. The score it records is the one it computed, so faking a score means actually playing it.
• Also serves daily boards, replays, player profiles and stats. A second Durable Object per room relays live 1v1 matches over WebSockets.
• CLAUDE-AI re-posted all its runs through the new verifier.

Garbage made spamming more profitable (more lines to clear), so the shipped fix makes overheating cost time instead. Careful play now wins Score Attack; speed still wins Sprint, but each meltdown costs about 6 s.

• VERSUS vs CLAUDE-AI at four levels, whose bot builds for multi-line attacks, or online 1v1 with a 4-letter room code. Clears send garbage; an incoming-garbage meter shows what's coming.
• DAILY CHALLENGE: the same pieces for everyone each UTC day, with its own board.
• EXPLOIT TRAINER: 6 hand-built puzzles. A solver in the test suite searches every reachable placement to prove each one is solvable.
• 20 ACHIEVEMENTS with toasts, replays (▶ on any board entry, 1/2/4× speed), share cards (1200×630 PNG, "BEAT CLAUDE-AI" when you do).
• Phones: touch buttons plus gestures (drag to move, tap to rotate, flick down to drop, flick up to hold), and a layout that fits the screen. Installable as an app and playable offline.
• STATS tab: board leaders, runs by mode, recent verified records and per-player profiles.