compw00ter — Main Game Loop (Foundational)

Date: 2026-06-21 Status: Drafting — core interplay agreed; numbers/tuning flagged as open.

The foundational co-op loop. Deliberately simple: 2 abilities per hero, four need-meters, meter-driven traits, HP-model incidents. Richer layers (boss incidents, the hero counter-web, the actual team mini-games) are noted as deferred.

The core truth (read this first)

It's a LAN party. The whole point is everyone being at their rigs, playing together. The w00t measures exactly that: is the LAN actually happening right now? Nothing hurts it more than it being game time with empty chairs. Every other system — draining meters, traits, incidents, bosses — exists to drag people away from their seats at the worst moment. The game is keeping the squad in play, all weekend, against all of it.

One sentence

Keep enough of each team in play through every scheduled activity (which fills the w00t) while four draining needs, your own traits, and a rising tide of incidents all try to pull people off their rigs — from Thursday night to Sunday morning.

The two halves (one economy)

  INPUT BALANCING (manage yourself)                  KEEP THE SQUAD IN PLAY (the w00t engine)
  ┌─────────────────────────────────────┐            ┌──────────────────────────────────────┐
  │  4 meters drain over time            │            │  SCHEDULE: hourly activities (~9am→)  │
  │  refill at a SOURCE (move there)     │            │   at the rigs / events; need a QUORUM │
  │  over/under-shoot a meter →          │            │   of each team IN PLAY                │
  │   TRAIT FIRES → meter resets, and    │            │  in play at game time → W00T FILLS    │
  │   it PULLS YOU OFF YOUR RIG &        ├──pulls────▶│   empty chairs at game time → W00T     │
  │   spawns an INCIDENT                  │  players   │   DRAINS (the worst thing)           │
  │  (empty meter → abilities removed)    │   away     │  incidents also pull players / break  │
  └─────────────────────────────────────┘            │   the rigs → clear them, get bums back │
                         ╲                             └──────────────────────────────────────┘
                          ╲          W00T STATUS (one meter, no passive regen)               ╱
                           ╲     filled by attendance, drained by empty chairs & incidents  ╱
                            ▼      CLOCK: Thu night → Sun morning. Zero w00t → collapse.    ▼

Your self-management failures become empty chairs — sustain, traits, incidents and attendance are one economy, not separate systems.

The schedule (the heartbeat)

The weekend runs on a timetable, which gives the game its rhythm of pressure and relief:

• Activity hours (9am–2am, ~17/day): each in-game hour is one round ≈ 30 real seconds — a ~10s game window (the in-game 20-min game; bums in seats fill the w00t) then a ~20s interlude with a visible countdown to the next game. ("20-min game / 40-min interlude" are in-game minutes; in real time a whole gaming hour is 30s.)
• Per-room requirements: each game names how many players are needed in which rooms — each team's gaming room, or an event spot like the w00t quiz. Quorum is checked per room.
• The interlude is the work window: refill meters, fight fires, and get into position before the countdown hits zero. The game window is the attendance crunch.
• Quorum → w00t (hybrid): during the 20-minute game, each room needs a minimum quorum of its required players or that game flops and the w00t drains; once quorum is met, every extra bum in a seat fills it faster (a payload-cart with a minimum crew).
• The recurring squeeze: as the countdown runs out, some heroes are incapacitated (empty meter / mid-trait) and can't make it, and others are pinned fighting a fire at a location (the internet's down in the IT den) instead of at their rig. Every single game forces the call: patch the fire, or get to my seat?
• Night (2am–9am): a single 60-second phase — no games. Everyone sleeps in beds (Sleep refills) and the team talks strategy. Seven in-game hours blitz past in a minute because nothing's happening; the macro "relief beat" between days.
• Real-time length & mapping: day runs ~2 in-game minutes per real second; night fast-forwards (7 hrs in 60s). A full weekend ≈ Thu night + Fri (~17) + Sat (~17) + Sun morning ≈ ~40 rounds + 3 nights ≈ ~22 minutes of real play. Ends Sunday ~9am: survive to the wake-up = win. (All these numbers are tunable.)
• Two teams: the group splits into two teams for the games (where the original "PvP" lives). The meta goal is co-op — both teams share the w00t and must both stay staffed.
• Foundational scope: we don't simulate the actual match — we only track who's in each room; the w00t responds to attendance. Real team mini-games are a deferred layer.

Activity types (two, foundational)

An activity is defined by four knobs: where players must be, who/how many (quorum), w00t value, and when it's scheduled.

• Team Match (default — most gaming hours) — each team in its own rigs room; quorum per team. The bread-and-butter round: the two teams scramble independently to keep their own room staffed.

• Nightly Communal Event (special — one each in-game evening, at a known slot) — everyone crams into one shared room (not at their rigs); whole-group quorum; big w00t swing (large boost if you herd everyone in on time, big drain if you don't). A planned tentpole the surrounding rounds revolve around: pre-clear fires so you can all pile in. While it runs, nobody's at the rigs or firefighting, so anything you left burning piles up — and herding the whole group (with people impaired or pulled) is the challenge. The hour's activity is the communal instead of a match. Each night has its own:

  • Thursday — the Board Game (a chill opener)
  • Friday — the Festival of Unusualness (mid-weekend, themed on the weird)
  • Saturday — the w00t Quiz (the peak-night communal)

  Mechanically they share the communal model (shared room, whole-group quorum, big swing); per-event twists (e.g. the Festival leaning on the Unusualness meter) can be layered later.

"In play" status

A player is in play when they're at the activity's place during its hour and not pulled away. You're not in play if you're: on a smoke break, doing elaborate food prep, pulled out by a Martin, stargazing, asleep/napping, refilling a meter elsewhere, or impaired (abilities removed). Keeping enough people in play is the whole job.

A pull self-resolves after a set time (you're never permanently stuck), and a wrangler can end it early to get you back before the countdown.

The w00t status

A single global meter, starts full. It measures whether the LAN is happening.

• FILLS during a scheduled activity for every point above quorum that's in play — the more bums in seats, the faster it climbs. This is the primary w00t engine.
• DRAINS when it's an activity hour and the team is below quorum (empty chairs), and from unattended incidents (see below). No passive regeneration.
• Downtime neither fills nor heavily drains it — it's the recovery window.
• Zero → the LAN collapses → game over.

The four meters (per hero)

Every hero carries all four. They drain over time; you refill at a source, which costs movement (and pulls you out of play while you do it — the core tension).

• Comfortable = the middle band. You sip, you don't chug.
• Empty (any meter) → impaired = abilities removed. A bottomed-out meter strips that hero's abilities until they top it back up — and they're not in play while sorting it.
• Refilling is itself a pull off your rig, so even good self-management costs attendance. The art is topping up during downtime / between activities, not mid-game.
• Drain rates and band thresholds: TBD (tuning).

Traits ↔ meters (both extremes)

• Each hero's trait is bound to a meter + which end is dangerous (HIGH overindulge or LOW deprivation). HIGH e.g. b0n1 Malware Drop (Unusualness), Zazbob Cider Rage (Booze); LOW e.g. Zazbob/Sarah narcolepsy & naps (Sleep).
• Crossing the threshold → trait fires → it pulls the hero out of play and/or spawns or worsens an incident.
• The triggering meter then resets to baseline — a built-in cool-off (overindulge purges toward empty; a deprivation collapse resolves itself: pass out → you've slept → Sleep refills). A trait can't immediately re-fire.
• Foundational scope: traits are meter-driven only. Event-driven triggers (Eradicus's Perfectionist Meltdown, Cider Rage from someone stealing your cider, Franz amplifying The Martin) are deferred.

Incidents

• Spawn from the clock (ambient weekend chaos, scaling up) and from fired traits.
• Two anchorings: location (router dies in the IT den) or player-centred (b0n1's malware emanates from b0n1; a boss targeting a player).
• Their main harm is attendance, in two tiers:
  • Blockers (internet down, power cut) — disable a whole game until fixed. Full attendance is worthless if the rig's dead, and a hero must leave their seat to fix it (a sacrifice play). Makes infrastructure heroes (Eradicus/b0n1) clutch, and creates the "the internet died right before the game!" panic.
  • Pullers (smoke break, food prep, a Martin, a nap) — remove individuals from play.
  • Both still use the HP / soft-counter / escalation model; the difference is what their harm does to the activity. Some may also bleed the w00t a little directly.
• Resolution = HP/damage model (tower-defense/RPG): each incident has an HP pool; matching ability use chips it down; cleared at 0. Severity sets HP, bleed, and pull strength; the ability's power is its damage. Scales to bosses (big HP, many heroes) with no new system.
• Soft counter (Pokémon-style): any ability damages any incident, a type match deals a big bonus (~3×). Specialists are efficient; anyone can chip in.
• Escalates if ignored (Pandemic-style): an unattended incident's harm grows gradually — cheap to kill early, snowballs if parked. Triage is a real skill.
• Spawn pacing — "AI Director, lite": within activity hours, spawns come in waves (build-up → peak → relief); a simple director eases off when the w00t is critically low and pushes when you're cruising. The schedule's downtime gives the macro relief.
• Foundational scope: small/standard incidents. Big / boss incidents (The Wife, The Martin) are large HP needing coordinated heroes — deferred as a tuning of the same model.

Abilities

• 2 per hero, each on a key with a cooldown, used in range of the target. Three functional flavours (a hero's two can mix):

  1. Fire-fighters (kill location incidents) — chip down a location/blocker incident in place (Eradicus Fix The Internet → Tech; Zazbob Smoke Break Veto → Smoke Break). Restores the rig so the game can run.
  2. Wranglers (cleanse pulls) — target a pulled/incapacitated teammate and clear what's holding them (wake the napper, end the smoke break, snap them out of a Martin) so they're free to return (Mr Bond, Taz, Franz, Sarah).
  3. Sustain providers — refill other heroes' meters fast/bulk: Feed Everyone (Food), Dispense Edibles (Unusualness).

  The clean symmetry: the two incident anchorings map onto the two counter-verbs — location incidents are killed in place by fire-fighters; player-centred (puller) incidents are cleansed off the person by wranglers. Providers keep everyone fuelled so they don't become pullers in the first place.

Team dynamics — loose coupling

Parallel play, not a drilled squad: ten people surviving in the same house, cooperation a force-multiplier, not a requirement.

• Everyone can self-sustain — every meter has a self-serve fallback (barrel, bed, ham, stash); no hero is ever hard-blocked by another being asleep or impaired.
• Anyone can fight any fire (soft counter); specialists are just more efficient.
• Providers/wranglers make the team better, not functional — never gatekeepers.
• Why: robust to a chaotic, semi-drunk LAN; nobody is ever stuck with nothing to do.

Feedback & telegraphing — fair failures

• As a meter nears its danger line, an escalating warning shows — to the player and nearby teammates (b0n1 visibly twitches, an icon floats over his head) — with a short grace window to correct before the trait fires.
• Keeps failure fair ("I saw it coming") and creates optional social saves (a mate runs you food or talks you down) — teamwork without forcing it.
• Incidents announce themselves (type, place, that they're escalating) so triage is an informed choice.

Space

• A two-floor house connected by stairs, free movement (WASD). Rigs, the barrel, beds, the kitchen, the IT den, the event spots are placed spatially — you can't be everywhere, so every refill and every fire trades against being in play. (Exact floorplan = its own deferred spec step.)

Worked example — one game cycle (Saturday afternoon)

The whole loop in one hour, to pressure-test it:

• Interlude, 6:00 on the countdown. Next game needs 4 of each team's 5 in their gaming room. People scatter to refill: Zazbob's Sleep is low (new dad), b0n1 keeps topping Unusualness at j1mb0's stash to stay sharp — his warning icon is already flickering.
• 5:00 — a BLOCKER hits: the internet dies in the IT den (an HP pool). Eradicus sprints there and starts hammering Fix The Internet. Until it's clear, Team A literally cannot play.
• 1:00 — two pulls land. b0n1 grabs one edible too many → Malware Drop trips: a player-centred security incident spawns on him and he's pulled out; his Unusualness resets. Zazbob's Sleep hits empty → narcolepsy → he's napping, abilities gone.
• 0:00 — game starts. Team A has 3 of 4 in the room → below quorum → w00t DRAINS. Panic.
  • Mr Bond (wrangler) runs to Zazbob, cleanses the nap; Zazbob sprints back → quorum restored → w00t flips to filling.
  • Eradicus clears the internet just in time — the rigs are live.
  • The Doctor soft-counters b0n1's security incident (Eradicus was busy) → b0n1 freed, rejoins → now 5 in the room → w00t fills faster.
• Game ends: quorum held most of the 20 minutes → net w00t gain this hour — but only just, and everyone's meters are now drained from the scramble, so the next interlude is tighter. As Saturday night approaches, spawns ramp and the cushion shrinks.

Every beat above is a system we defined — and the fun is in the patch-the-fire-or-get-to-my-seat calls under the countdown. The model holds.

Win / lose / score

• Win: survive to Sunday morning with w00t > 0.
• Lose: w00t hits zero → the LAN collapses.
• Score / progress: how far through the weekend you got (each in-game morning is a milestone) plus w00t remaining — built for beating last year's run at the annual event.

Roles that emerge (the roster already fits)

• Fire-fighters: Eradicus, b0n1 (Tech/security), Zazbob (Smoke/Supply), Taz (Chaos).
• Wranglers / medics (cleanse): Franzlicious (the reassuring mental-health medic — cures the too-high), Mr Bond, Sarah, Pebblefeline (sobers up the drugged).
• Providers (sustain): Tim & Pebblefeline (Food), j1mb0 (Unusualness) — essential and walking liabilities (their meter-extreme traits). The mate you depend on is the one most likely to blow up.

Open / tuning questions

1. Attendance → w00t tuning: model chosen (hybrid — quorum + scaling); remaining = quorum %, fill/drain rates, per-room player counts, the 20/40 real-time mapping.
2. Numbers: meter drain rates, band thresholds, incident HP/bleed/pull, weekend length, spawn curve. (Playtest tuning.)
3. Activity variety: how many distinct activity types in the foundational build (just "be at your rig" + the w00t quiz, or more?).
4. Data-model impact: the Hero Builder models traits as free "vice states"; this loop wants traits as (meter, direction, threshold) and abilities tagged by flavour. Builder schema needs a small evolution — spec note only; no builder change yet.