- Replace dot tracers with elongated glowing bolts (trail band + core streak + head bloom)
and a directional muzzle flare in both the range and main-game contexts.
- Add enemy impact reads: core flash, directional sparks along the travel vector,
cyan arc ripple on shield hits vs orange shards on hull hits, white craft hit-flash,
and a polished damage-number pop.
- Add player shield-sphere strike effect: full-sphere outline + bright arc centered on
the laser's incoming bearing, radial ripple, spark burst, and a shield-collapse cue
when shields break to hull.
- Add subtle world-camera shake on player hits, enemy kills, and shield-break while
keeping the HUD/combat bar perfectly still via the fx-ui camera split.
- Expose new visual knobs (bolt size/trail, muzzle, arc span, shake intensity) in
data/combat.json; fix Fx.update destroying ships on tintFlash expiry.
- Replace vertical gauges with draining hull/shield/energy orbs
(hull with overlapping shield on the left, energy on the right).
- Share the main game's CombatBar in the combat range and add
range energy tracking with optional regen.
- Make gauge hit flashes shape-aware: circle orbs get a soft bloom,
rects keep the legacy white pulse.
- Update combat data and assets for the new orb-strip storyboard.
A shared readability layer (js/combat/CombatHud.js) for both combat
contexts — the training range and the main game's ?combat:
- Target/lock indicator: rotating brackets on the current target (the
auto-fire target — one rule, one target, js/combat/Combat.js#pickTarget).
- Threat cues: pulsing markers above each live hostile.
- Off-screen arrows: edge arrows toward hostiles outside the camera
(zoom-aware via a context-supplied worldToScreen).
- Kill feed: newest-first fading entries, top-right.
- Gauge flash: the combat bar's shields/hull gauge flashes on the hit
it took (CombatBar.gaugeRect feeds the shared CombatHud.flash).
Pure rules stay in Combat.js (pickTarget, feedPush, offscreenArrow),
covered by dev/combat.test.mjs. The main game re-anchors the pack
around the ship once its start position settles (CombatSystem
.resyncAroundShip + a short settle window in GameScene), so the demo
pack sits in auto-fire range instead of kilometers off.
All combat rules tests pass (0 failures); CDP-verified in both
/combat and index.html?combat.
Brian Fertig
Brian Fertig