# Revere's Ride: Lantern Run, design notes The GameLab sequel to RevereBike (`../reverebike/`). The 8-bit game stays where it is; this one reuses its music and sound, its physics feel (gallop, turbo, heat, health, lean-to-land) and its fifteen stages, and rebuilds everything else as a 3D game drawn to look like an oil painting. ## Look - **Backdrops** are panoramas painted on the easel (claude-paint) from one Lua script per stage, 4800 x 1200, in a Delft camaieu with a few accent hues per stage. Sources: `source/paint/` (kit.lua is the shared recipe kit; pano.py writes the per-stage scripts). They are drawn on a full-screen quad behind the scene with a wide "lens" and a yaw that scrolls with the rider, so the painting reads as far away. - **Models** are lit in value bands with a brush-stroke texture, cool shadows and warm lights, a rim, and emissive windows and flames picked out by a region code baked into UV.x in Blender (0 solid, 1 window, 2 flame, 3 leaf, 4 metal, 5 sway, 6 water, 7 snow). Leaves and sway regions move in the wind. - **Post**: Kuwahara (radius by quality) then bloom, then a finish pass: grade, linen weave, vignette, gold burst edge, radial motion streak, flash and letterbox. ## Models (Blender, `source/blender/`) - `build_horse.py`: the polyperfect horse rig, scale fixed, takes retargeted through armature space, mane cards, tail strands and tack added, Jump/Land/Skid authored. Clips: Idle, Walk, Gallop, Jump, Land, Skid, Rear, Fall. Coat colors are per-horse uniforms on region codes (coat, mane, dark, hoof, tack, pad, eye, metal, horn), so one GLB serves all six horses, the looks and the unicorn. - `build_people.py`: two Synty-rig packs recolored into the cast. Thirteen clips authored with an analytic two-bone IK: Ride, Crouch, Back, Lantern, Shout, HatTip, Wave, Thrown, Stand, March, Run, Aim, Cheer. - `build_kit.py`: 87 stage pieces (houses, churches, walls, ramps, boats, ice, locomotive, saucers, dinosaurs, candy, the rainbow arch...), 69k triangles in one GLB with kit.json. - GLBs are packed with gltf-transform and meshopt (`tools/pack-glb.mjs`). ## Play - Excitebike physics in metres, three lanes (3.2 m apart). Courses are a small script language in `src/data.js` read by `src/course.js`. - New verbs: **Call** (rouse a house, ring a bell, or fire a Lantern Burst when Spirit is full), lane changes, hops and tucks. - Crew: every roused house sends a minuteman to ride with you (two with Sybil). - Rivals: patrols ahead, chasers behind. Passing on turbo or burst is a takedown. - Events: volleys, broadsides, flares and asteroids are telegraphed into lanes on the HUD first. - Set pieces: falling bridges, cannon launches, ice floes, a train race, floats, saucers, vortices, long-necked dinosaurs, the rainbow arch. - Progress: three stars per stage (finish, par, objective), medals, coins, horse XP (10 levels), saddler upgrades and looks, six riders with perks and unlocks, thirteen colony lanterns that open Rainbow Road, five golden horseshoes for the Golden saddle. Old RevereBike coins and horse XP carry over once from the same browser. ## Beat VFX `tools/beats.py` maps every RevereBike track offline into `assets/audio/beats.json`: tempo and phase, a kick envelope, and the accents (peak-picked onsets tagged low or high). `src/rhythm.js` reads the playing `