The eyes look down, the die stops the reel, and a punch is a fist

A day of Eric watching the clips as a newcomer would.

The camera can pitch: FirstPerson takes a `pitch` that shears the
horizon up the pane (walls center on it, the eye stays half a wall
high), so the ground at the pane's foot comes within half a cell. The
director uses it for deeds at your own feet — a conjuration on your
square, a treasure taken up, the pit you fell down — instead of the
cutaway that stepped outside your body.

Everything shows through a warp. The floor pass now runs between the
cast and the wall draw, so a column that bent through a mouth maps its
ground through the warp's rigid motion and wears the far room's decals
— the pit past the wormhole included — under the same violet haze as
its walls.

A wizard down a pit is public (inPit on the player view), drawn sunk to
the floor line in first person and dimmed on the board. A body sharing
your square, which had no depth to draw at, stands right in front of
you. A pit leap glides like a shove instead of cutting. And the
director's blocked-sight test no longer counts a warp BEYOND the
target as a block, nor stands a cutaway camera inside another wizard's
square — the pair that put Wanderer's face across the whole pane.

The reel stops for a die: a card over the held world names who rolls
and for what, tumbles the faces on the reel's own clock, lands the
roll, and only then plays the outcome; the beat, the fx, the glides
and the camera all wait it out. A punch by you drives a fist into the
scene; one at you comes at the camera; both land with a comic POW.

film-clips rolls until the reel's last move rather than a fixed count,
and the gate settles longer on a step whose caption rolls a die. All
thirty goldens re-blessed.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5.1 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Jm2auWk6RP71CjaAb4FMoG

deploy/film-clips.mjs

@@ -21,7 +21,6 @@ const [outDir, ...only] = process.argv.slice(2);
 if (!outDir) { console.error("usage: film-clips.mjs <out-dir> [scene ...]"); process.exit(1); }
 const PORT = 8809;
 const FPS = 25;
-const STEP_MS = 1500;   // the reel's own pace at 1x
 const TAIL_MS = 2500;   // hold on the last move
 const EPOCH = new Date("2026-01-01T00:00:00Z").getTime();
 
@@ -82,15 +81,25 @@ try {
       const clip = { x: Math.round(box.x), y: Math.round(box.y), width: Math.round(box.width), height: Math.round(box.height) };
       // Roll: the reel's play button is the ▶ before the step button.
       await page.locator("button", { hasText: "▶" }).first().click();
-      const total = (count - 1) * STEP_MS + TAIL_MS;
-      const nFrames = Math.ceil(total / (1000 / FPS));
-      const posterAt = ((sp.beats?.[0] ?? 1) * STEP_MS + 1200) / (1000 / FPS);
-      for (let f = 0; f < nFrames; f++) {
+      // Roll until the reel reaches its last move (steps a die decides
+      // run longer than the beat), then hold the tail. The poster is
+      // the first pinned beat, settled.
+      const posterBeat = sp.beats?.[0] ?? 1;
+      let f = 0, tail = -1, posterIn = -1, total = 0;
+      const MAX_FRAMES = FPS * 240; // a reel that never ends is a bug, not a feature
+      while (tail !== 0 && f < MAX_FRAMES) {
         const png = await page.screenshot({ clip });
         writeFileSync(join(frames, `${String(f).padStart(5, "0")}.png`), png);
-        if (view === "fpv" && f === Math.round(posterAt)) writeFileSync(join(frames, "poster.png"), png);
+        const at = Number((await page.locator(".replay-count").textContent()).match(/move (\d+)/)[1]);
+        if (view === "fpv" && posterIn < 0 && at === posterBeat + 1) posterIn = Math.round(1200 / (1000 / FPS));
+        if (posterIn === 0) writeFileSync(join(frames, "poster.png"), png);
+        if (posterIn >= 0) posterIn--;
+        if (tail < 0 && at === count) tail = Math.round(TAIL_MS / (1000 / FPS));
+        if (tail > 0) tail--;
         await page.clock.runFor(1000 / FPS);
+        f++; total += 1000 / FPS;
       }
+      const nFrames = f;
       await ctx.close();
       execFileSync("ffmpeg", ["-loglevel", "error", "-y", "-framerate", String(FPS),
         "-i", join(frames, "%05d.png"), "-vf", "pad=ceil(iw/2)*2:ceil(ih/2)*2", // h264 wants even sides

deploy/verify-scenes.mjs

@@ -121,7 +121,10 @@ try {
       for (const beat of beats) {
         for (; at < beat; at++) {
           await page.locator("button", { hasText: "▶" }).last().click();
-          await page.clock.runFor(at === beat - 1 ? 2600 : 600);
+          // A step the die decides holds the world for the roll's
+          // interlude before anything moves: wait it out on top.
+          const die = (await page.locator(".replay-caption").textContent()).includes("\u{1F3B2}");
+          await page.clock.runFor((at === beat - 1 ? 2600 : 600) + (die ? 2400 : 0));
         }
         const box = await page.locator(".replay").boundingBox();
         const name = `${sp.name}-s${beat}-${view}.png`;