benjivers/val Public Public: anyone can read this; the crew can change it.

# val

Five attackers with the spike, five defenders, abilities on cooldown. First to 13.

A top-down 5v5 played in a browser. One match is always running on the

server: open the page and you are given a seat in the round that is

happening, taken from a bot where it stands. When a match ends it shows the

result for a few seconds and starts a new one, so nobody ever arrives at a

frozen board.

## What is real

Everything that decides a round is computed on the server and only the

server:

- **Movement, shooting and hit detection.** The client sends intent — a

  direction, an angle, a held key — never a position. Damage is by hit

  location (how close the ray passes the target) with falloff and armour:

  a Vandal head shot kills through full armour at any range, a Phantom's

  does not past fifteen metres.

- **Line of sight.** A snapshot only carries the enemies that viewer can

  see. A wall of the map blocks the sight line, a smoke blocks it, a flash

  blinds by the angle you were facing, and a blinded player is sent no

  enemies at all. A dead player watches through their living team mates'

  eyes rather than through walls, so dying is not a wallhack to call out.

  No spawn can see the other spawn: mid is staggered on purpose. A patched

  client learns nothing a plain one does not.

- **The spike.** 100s round, 4s plant, 45s fuse, 7s defuse with a

  checkpoint at 3.5s — a defender killed past half way leaves the defuse

  half done for the next one.

- **Credits.** 800 to start, 9,000 cap, +200 a kill, +300 to the team on a

  plant, loss bonus 1,900 / 2,400 / 2,900. A buy you cannot afford is

  refused server-side.

- **Bots** fill every empty seat and use their kit: smokes on the way in,

  flashes before the entry, a recon dart, a molly on the planted spike.

Agents: Ember, Veil, Sable, Mender, Rook — two basics bought with credits

(charges last the round), a free signature on a cooldown, and an ultimate

paid for with ult points from kills, plants and the two orbs on the map.

Guns: Classic, Ghost, Sheriff, Spectre, Phantom, Vandal, Operator.

## What is not

- One map, one match at a time, ten seats. There is no matchmaking, no

  ranking and no account: your seat belongs to a session cookie.

- No overtime — first to 13 ends it at 12–12 too.

- Sight is a full circle rather than a view cone; top-down has no vertical,

  so the hit location comes from how precisely the shot passes the target.

- Assists are counted as a field but never awarded.

- The live match lives in memory and is gone if the process restarts; only

  finished match results are written to SQLite under `FORGE_APP_DATA`.

## Playing

WASD move, the mouse aims, click fires, **R** reloads, **F** plants and

defuses (hold it), **C / Q / E / X** cast, **B** opens the buy. On a phone

the left thumb walks and the right thumb aims and fires.

```sh

PORT=8080 FORGE_APP_DATA=./data bun run src/server.ts   # run it here

bun test                                                # the check every pull runs

VAL_URL=http://127.0.0.1:8080 bun run src/tty.ts        # the terminal interface

```

The terminal plays the same match over the same socket: it draws the grid,

the scoreboard and the round, and takes a seat. The exact command that

reaches it is in `FORGE_APP_SSH` when the app runs, and the page prints it.

The forge sets `PORT`, `FORGE_APP_DATA`, `FORGE_APP_ENV`, `FORGE_APP_URL`,

`FORGE_APP_SSH` and `FORGE_APP_COMMIT` when it starts the app; `forge.json`

says how.

## Shape

`src/map.ts` the grid and its geometry · `src/weapons.ts` the damage table ·

`src/economy.ts` credits · `src/abilities.ts` the agent kits ·

`src/match.ts` the round loop (`tick(state, dt)` is the whole game and takes

no clock) · `src/bots.ts` the seats nobody is in · `src/arena.ts` the one

live match and its sockets · `src/server.ts` the door · `static/val.js` the

browser. The rules are pure functions and the tests play whole matches

headlessly.