FYTR9

A fast, single-player panoramic rescue shooter — pilot the experimental FYTR-9 craft around a continuously looping neon planet, destroy hostile aircraft, and rescue Settlers from abduction before they're carried away.

Status: pre-alpha. The complete arcade loop is playable — five waves of Snatchers that shoot back, lives and respawns, Pulse Bombs, risky hyperspace, three difficulty presets, and instant retry. The full enemy roster and the planet-collapse cycle are next. Built with Godot 4.7 in GDScript, targeting Web, Windows, macOS, and Linux.

▶ Play it in your browser — no install needed (desktop browser + keyboard or gamepad).

The authoritative implementation plan is fytr9-plan-v4.md.

What's playable right now

The Milestone 3 complete arcade loop — a full five-wave run:

• Ten Settlers walk the terrain of a seamless looping world (three screens wide — crossing the "seam" is invisible by design).
• Waves 1–5 escalate from 4 to 8 Snatchers, which hunt the nearest Settler by shortest wrapped route — and now fire aimed shots at you every two seconds. Terrain and collisions are lethal (Cadet keeps a forgiving terrain rebound).
• Lives: 3 ships on Pilot/Ace, 5 on Cadet; extra ship (+1 bomb) at 10,000 points, then every 50,000, capped at 5. Death releases any carried Settler; respawn comes with a cleared safety zone and 1.5 s of grace.
• Pulse Bomb (E / K): wipes every enemy and hostile shot on screen. Run-level stock — dying does not refill it.
• Hyperspace (Q / L): teleports you somewhere safe... usually. 10% of jumps destroy the ship on Pilot, 15% on Ace, never on Cadet.
• Rescue loop unchanged: shoot the carrier, catch the falling Settler, deliver it to the surface. The scanner and directional edge arrows cover the whole ring.
• Three difficulty presets (pick with left/right on the title screen) with separate high-score tables, shown on the HUD.
• Clear wave 5 → SECTOR CLEARED; lose every ship or every Settler → GAME OVER. Either way: instant retry on fire, pause on ESC/P.

Quick start

Easiest: play the current build in your browser.

To run from source instead:

1. Install Godot 4.7 stable (macOS: brew install --cask godot; other platforms: godotengine.org).
2. Clone and run:

git clone https://github.com/charles-hood/fytr9.git
cd fytr9
godot --path project

3. On the title screen, press fire (Space / J / gamepad south) to launch the flight lab.

Controls (defaults, keyboard or gamepad)

Action	Keyboard	Gamepad
Move	WASD or arrows	Left stick or D-pad
Fire (Arc Lance)	Space or J	South button or right trigger
Pulse Bomb	E or K	West button or left trigger
Hyperspace	Q or L	North button or right shoulder
Pause	Escape or P	Start
Quit to title (while paused)	Q or L	North button or right shoulder
Debug overlay	F3	—

Pre-alpha playtest notes — what feedback helps most

• Danger: Snatchers now shoot back and terrain kills. Does Pilot feel fair — deaths readable, respawns safe, invulnerability window enough?
• Difficulty spread: is Cadet genuinely gentle and Ace genuinely mean (enemy speed, bomb stock, hyperspace risk, catch radius)?
• Pulse Bomb & hyperspace: does the bomb feel worth hoarding? Is hyperspace a tempting gamble or a death trap?
• Wave arc: waves 1–5 ramp 4→8 Snatchers with up to 2 simultaneous abductions late. Where does it tip from calm to frantic?
• Arc Lance: does firing while chasing feel punchy or sluggish? (Known watch item: shots travel at only 2× ship speed.)
• Rescue clarity: when a Settler is taken off-screen, do the banner, scanner, and edge arrow get you there in time?
• Seam: fly one direction for ~10 s — you'll lap the world. Any visible pop, stutter, or double-hit anywhere?
• Camera: the view leads your movement direction — too much, too little?

All tuning values live in project/resources/balance/*.tres — nothing is hard-coded.

Development status

Milestone	Scope	Status
0 — Repository & foundation	Project, input, tests, docs, licenses	✅ done
1 — Flight laboratory	Ring world, flight model, Arc Lance, terrain, camera, debug	✅ done (feel check in progress)
2 — Rescue vertical slice	Settlers, Snatcher, catch/carry/return, scanner, first wave	✅ done
3 — Complete arcade loop	Lives, Pulse Bomb, hyperspace, waves 1–5, difficulty presets	✅ done
4 — Full roster & planet cycle	Ravager, Mine Layer, Brood Pod, Splinter, Interceptor, planet collapse/restoration	⬅ next
5 — Presentation, saves, accessibility	Menus, saves, options, art & SFX pass	pending
6 — Balance & release candidate	Playtests, tuning, exports, license audit	pending

Next up (Milestone 4 — full enemy roster and planet cycle)

1. Ravager (spawns when a Snatcher escapes — the mutation is already tracked), Mine Layer, Brood Pod, Splinter, and the Interceptor anti-stall.
2. Finite encounter budgets and the post-wave-5 endless difficulty curve (encounter_rng deterministic seeding is already in place).
3. PLANET_COLLAPSE and the five-extinction-wave cycle per plan §4.6, replacing the M3 all-Settlers-lost game over.
4. Performance caps and profile-driven pooling only if measurements demand it.

Engine (pinned)

• Godot 4.7.stable.official.5b4e0cb0f (Homebrew cask godot 4.7)
• Renderer: Compatibility (gl_compatibility); GDScript only
• Logical resolution: 1280×720, 16:9
• Export templates: download the matching 4.7.stable templates before Milestone 6 (Editor → Manage Export Templates). An editor/template version mismatch is a silent-failure trap.

Repository layout

• project/ — the Godot project (open this directory in the editor)
• project/docs/DECISIONS.md — recorded implementation decisions
• project/docs/BACKLOG.md — post-v1 ideas (never built in v1)
• project/resources/balance/ — all tuning values, as Godot resources
• project/licenses/ — asset manifest and third-party notices
• run_checks.sh — full test suite plus a headless boot smoke test

Tests and verified CLI commands

Verified against this exact build's godot --help output (per plan §12): --headless, --path, --script, --quit-after <int>, --check-only, and --import are all present in 4.7.stable.official.5b4e0cb0f.

./run_checks.sh                # everything: import, tests, boot smoke
godot --headless --path project --script res://tests/test_runner.gd   # tests only
godot --headless --path project --quit-after 3                        # boot smoke

Current suite: 20 suites, 2115 checks — ring math, terrain continuity, RNG stream isolation, flight envelope, Settler state machine and reservations, Snatcher lifecycle and aimed fire, scanner mapping, scoring rules and reward thresholds, difficulty presets, high-score tables, Pulse Bomb, hyperspace safety (including a saturated-field fallback), encounter-schedule determinism against player movement, death/respawn/invulnerability, simultaneous-event resolution, and full five-wave runs simulated through the real session scene.

License

Code is MIT (see LICENSE). Asset licensing is tracked in project/licenses/ and project/CREDITS.md.