Aurora / Platinum Release Notes

Date: June 11, 2026

Release track: 1.4.1 production quality release

Source promotion path: accepted hosted /beta 1.4.1-beta.1 review packet -> hosted /production 1.4.1

Summary

1.4.1 promotes the accepted beta-review work into the production family. It is a production quality release: player-visible Aurora challenge-stage quality, sign-in usability, audio/theme clarity, public-safe audio balance, and release/security hardening, without claiming a new minor product family.

What Changed

• Accepted Stage 3 / Challenge 1 runtime keepers for groups 2, 3, 4, and 5.

Stage 3 group 1 remains blocked under current group-level controls and is preserved as future architecture work rather than retuned by hand.

• Aurora foreground audio now has stronger foreground-vs-pulse balance and a

clearer public/private audio lane contract. Private Galaga reference clips remain localhost/private-only and are not bundled into public artifacts.

• Theme sets now group audio, graphics, sprite rendering, starfield, and Arcade

Music playlist choices so Aurora and Galaxy Guardians settings are easier to understand across release lanes.

• Public account/sign-in surfaces were repaired through beta review, including

the text-entry interaction that had blocked beta sign-in.

• The production settings surface no longer presents ordinary settings as

developer tooling.

• Security review evidence and release gates were refreshed for the production

quality line, with zero tracked production issues in the structured security review.

Production Boundaries

• Public score submission remains disabled/guarded until server-validated score

writes are implemented and reviewed.

• Stage 7 runtime candidate generation remains paused. The Stage 7 RED, trial,

batch, compiler, and proof work remains useful process infrastructure, not a production runtime keeper.

• Galaxy Guardians remains a production-visible preview application. Its deeper

gameplay/conformance work remains owned by the iMac lane.

• Local/private reference audio provisioning remains a development review-lane

requirement and must not leak into public artifacts.

Verification Read

The production packet is backed by:

• accepted hosted /beta manual smoke review
• production security review with zero tracked issues
• production account/sign-in smoke expectations
• public-safe audio/theme checks
• foreground-vs-pulse audio balance gate
• release conformance, economics, and documentation readiness evidence

Next Work

After 1.4.1 ships, the next Aurora quality path should return to targeted player-visible work: either the Stage 3 group 1 architecture pass for lane/type-specific phrase controls or reference-path backing, or a short manual audio review if foreground cue masking reappears in hosted lanes.

Date: June 11, 2026

Release track: first deliberate 1.4.1 quality-release candidate

Source promotion path: merged main -> hosted /dev 1.4.1.1 -> hosted /beta 1.4.1-beta.1

Summary

1.4.1-beta.1 names the accumulated post-1.4.0 follow-through as a real quality-release candidate instead of a build-only refresh of the shipped public family. Hosted /production remains stable on 1.4.0 until this candidate is reviewed and explicitly promoted.

This quality line is intentionally focused: it carries player-visible Aurora quality improvements, beta sign-in repair, audio/theme clarity, security-review refreshes, and stronger release gates without claiming a new minor product family.

What This Beta Candidate Carries

• The accepted Stage 3 / Challenge 1 fast-lane runtime keepers for groups 2, 3,

4, and 5, with group 1 preserved as blocked under current group-level controls.

• Aurora audio/event-feedback lane repair and foreground-vs-pulse balance

guardrails, with private reference clips still blocked from public-safe artifacts.

• Theme-set clarity across Aurora and Galaxy Guardians so audio, graphics,

sprite rendering, starfield, and Arcade Music playlist choices move together.

• Normal beta pilot sign-in controls while test-pilot metadata remains stripped

and public score writes remain disabled pending server-side validation.

• Refreshed security-release evidence, currently showing zero tracked beta and

production issues in the structured security review.

• Stronger publish preflights for audio/theme defaults, beta account behavior,

security/auth/replay storage, documentation freshness, and code-review packet consistency.

Review Intent

Review this beta candidate for:

• whether the Stage 3 challenge-stage changes read as a real player-facing

improvement without disturbing accepted keepers

• whether beta sign-in, theme selection, audio balance, and public-safe audio

boundaries are clear in the hosted build

• whether the release/security gates are strict enough to protect a later

production promotion

• whether this should become the next production quality release as 1.4.1

Known Boundaries

• This is not a production push. Hosted /production remains on 1.4.0.
• Public score writes remain disabled until the server-validated score path is

implemented and reviewed.

• Stage 7 runtime candidate generation remains paused.
• Stage 3 group 1 remains blocked until lane/type-specific phrase controls or

reference-path backing are available.

Next Decision

If 1.4.1-beta.1 is accepted, the next production conversation should be about promoting a real 1.4.1 quality release, not republishing 1.4.0 with a newer build number.

Date: May 20, 2026

Release track: current public 1.4.0 production family

Primary experience:

• Aurora Galactica production

Standard documentation:

• White paper
• Project guide
• Application guide
• Platinum guide
• Conformance dashboard
• Release dashboard
• Release notes
• Public project page

What's New

• Aurora's public 1.4.0 line now comes with a much stronger explanation of what the project is, how it is being built, and how quality is being measured.
• The production family now exposes a live white paper and a maintained PDF so users can read the project story in a more complete, presentation-ready format.
• Galaxy Guardians is still a preview, but it now reads much more clearly as a real second game effort on Platinum instead of a vague side experiment.
• The conformance story is sharper and more visible, with deeper challenge-stage, sprite, motion, cadence, and release-evidence work carried into the public documentation set.
• The release process itself is more trustworthy: promotions now lean harder on reviewer packets, freshness gates, public-sync verification, and durable evidence rather than intuition alone.

Summary

This update reflects the work completed across roughly the last two weeks of the 1.4.0 production family. It is not a brand-new version family in the sense of changing the public semantic version, but it is a meaningful public follow-through release for the people who are watching the project closely.

The result is a stronger public production surface for three kinds of users:

• players who want a cleaner, more trustworthy live experience
• technically curious readers who want to understand how the game is being built
• project followers who want the public docs, the release posture, and the real

work in the repo to tell the same story

Two-Week Update: Games

Aurora Galactica

• Challenge-stage work deepened materially. The project added new challenge-stage

reference captures, deeper challenge conformance analysis, timing probes, path extraction fixes, novelty scoring, and later wave identity work.

• Alien motion and cadence work became more measured. The recent passes added

target frame cadence metrics, motion-correspondence scoring, formation readability guardrails, sprite-motion analysis, and stronger visual target comparison artifacts.

• Audio and event conformance continued to mature. The team extended audio

evidence, stability gating, event-gap analysis, runtime trial decisions, and promotion-precheck discipline so candidate improvements are less likely to be accepted on feel alone.

• Stage-pressure and later-stage authenticity work moved forward with more

explicit scoring around level arc, stage signatures, opportunity windows, and risk/reward routes rather than only early-stage polish.

Galaxy Guardians

• Galaxy Guardians became easier to take seriously as a second game effort.

The recent work added a clearer opening-slice baseline, tighter rack motion, stage-assessment framing, game-owned identity expectations, and a stronger resume/next-step posture inside the repo.

• The project also clarified what Guardians is not yet. It is a playable preview

with a growing conformance program, not a finished second shipped cabinet. That honesty is part of the release value.

Two-Week Update: Platform And Release Process

• Platinum's release surfaces are cleaner and more trustworthy. The project

strengthened review gates, release-lane checks, lineage validation, freshness rules, and public-sync verification so the release story is more rigorous.

• The code-review packet is now treated as real release evidence, not just an

internal convenience. Multiple recent merges refreshed and carried reviewer state forward explicitly.

• Release conformance reporting was tightened substantially. The project added

stronger release-conformance dashboards, documentation freshness checks, economics refreshes, and visible provenance linking from release artifacts back to repo-owned source material.

• The public Aurora page and hosted surfaces now do a better job of expressing

the actual current release posture instead of leaving stale lane copy in place.

Two-Week Update: Project And Research Work

• The project now has a living hosted white paper plus a maintained PDF workflow.

That gives the work a clearer outward-facing explanation while still leaving space for technical depth elsewhere in the docs.

• Reviewer mentality is now more explicit as part of the project method. The

white-paper workflow, PDF checks, source-integrity checks, release-review packet updates, and public-sync verification all reinforce that rapid progress still needs visible quality discipline.

• Archive and provenance work continued in parallel with game work. The team

added intake ledgers for old-machine materials, preserved recovered source media into canonical repo-owned lanes, and documented a historical Neo-Galaga accession path rather than letting reference material remain loose.

• Related-work and methodology work also improved. The white paper now has a

stronger structure for citations, related-work notes, reviewer checklists, and project-history framing.

Two-Week Update: Documentation And Public Surfaces

• The hosted documentation set became much more useful. New or improved surfaces

include the white paper, white-paper PDF, conformance dashboards, release dashboards, better project-guide readability, stronger evidence panels, and more durable source-document linkage.

• Documentation now does a better job of separating layers: the Platinum platform,

Aurora as the primary shipped game, Galaxy Guardians as the preview sibling, and the surrounding conformance/release methodology.

• Evidence is more visible and more navigable. The project added visual review

clips, sprite target artifacts, challenge-stage deep dives, expansion panels, illustration planning, and clearer hosted paths to the supporting material.

• The top-level public navigation is better aligned with the project story. The

Aurora public page now exposes the white paper directly and carries current release-sync metadata.

Why This Matters

The most important thing about this production follow-through is not a single gameplay tweak. It is that the project is becoming more legible without becoming less ambitious.

Aurora keeps moving toward a better classic-arcade homage. Galaxy Guardians is becoming a more credible second validation target. Platinum is behaving more clearly as a reusable multi-game host. And the documentation now gives interested users a real way to inspect what the project is doing, why the team believes in the approach, and where the remaining gaps still are.

What Remains Next

• Aurora still has meaningful authenticity work ahead in later-stage depth,

challenge identity, audio/event feel, and the overall rhythm of long play.

• Galaxy Guardians still needs more gameplay depth and maturity before it should

be described as a fully developed second released game.

• The white paper should continue to improve as a public explanation of the

project, especially as more related work, archival history, and measured conformance observations are folded in.

• The release process is stronger now, but it should keep treating review,

evidence freshness, and public-surface honesty as first-class responsibilities.

Date: 2026-05-19

This is the forward-review release note for the current post-1.4.0 hosted-dev candidate work. It is not a production-promotion note. Release authority for beta and production remains on imacm1 / iMacM1.

What Changed

• Corrected the Reference Pixel Lab sprite-scale regression that made the

player ship and alien sprites visibly wrong at gameplay scale.

• Added a formation-readability harness that measures settled rack spacing and

active entry overlap in both normal Aurora rendering and Reference Pixel Lab mode.

• Widened Aurora's regular 40-enemy rack spacing so larger, more authentic

pixel silhouettes have positive visual air between rows and columns.

• Staggered later-stage formation arrivals so higher-stage racks no longer

release nearly the full squadron into the same early window.

• Preserved stage-1 opening overlap as an explicit warning rather than hiding

it. The current rack passes, but stage-1 opening choreography still needs a reference-timed path scorer before it should be called conformant.

• Updated the project documentation to explain the measured distinction between

static sprite likeness, live runtime sprite scale, formation readability, temporal sprite motion, and stage-entry choreography.

Conformance Process Learning

The important learning is that sprite conformance is not one number. A game can have a better-looking isolated sprite and still fail the player if scale, formation density, animation cadence, or entry choreography are wrong in motion. The current process now treats these as separate evidence surfaces:

Impact

The user-visible goal is less bunching and fewer "sprites shifting in and out of existence" moments after the move toward more authentic pixel sprites. The engineering goal is stronger regression protection so future visual work cannot accidentally improve a crop while hurting the live board.

This also directly improves future-game ingestion. Galaxy Guardians and later games should start with the same separation: target crop, runtime crop, gameplay scale, formation/rack readability, temporal animation, and entry-path grammar. That keeps the first playable version from becoming only a subjective visual approximation.

Carry-Forward For Ingestion Automation

This pass upgrades the ingestion process, not only Aurora's current visuals. The repeatable pattern for the second game and later games is now:

1. Ingest reference media into named target objects, poses, cue families, and

stage windows.

1. Capture what the browser actually renders or plays through harnesses instead

of relying on source definitions alone.

1. Compare target evidence, runtime evidence, scale/readability, temporal

motion, and event meaning as separate scores.

1. Preserve warning-level debt when a metric exposes a real gap but a safe

automatic fix is not yet known.

1. Promote the shared harness pattern only when it can help another game

without moving game-specific truth into Platinum.

For Galaxy Guardians, the immediate reuse is concrete: apply the same target/runtime/scale/readability/motion split to flagship, escort, scout, player-interceptor, rack entry, dive/escort paths, and single-shot audio before the next public claim says the game is more than a preview.

Known Gaps

• Stage-1 opening entry overlap is still recorded as advisory choreography debt.
• Active sprite motion remains incompletely scored until temporal harness

windows exist for flap cadence, dive rotation, capture/rescue, carried-fighter and dual-fighter transitions.

• Challenge-stage movement and alien novelty remain the larger human-visible

Galaga conformance gap after the sprite scale/readability regression is contained.

• Audio cue improvement is still a separate high-value bundle; the process work

here reinforces that cue matching must be measured at full event-contract level, not only by isolated clip similarity.

Verification

• npm run build
• npm run harness:check:formation-readability

The formation-readability artifact is persisted at:

• reference-artifacts/analyses/formation-readability/latest.json

Next Recommendations

1. Build a reference-timed stage-1 opening path scorer from target video windows.
2. Add temporal sprite-motion windows for flap, dive, capture, rescue, and

boss-damage states.

1. Promote formation-readability into the release conformance dashboard once it

has two or three stable historical runs.

1. Apply the same target/runtime/scale/readability/motion split to Galaxy

Guardians before calling its next playable slice first-class.

1. Add a cross-game ingestion maturity row that shows which evidence families

are source-only, runtime-captured, scored, dashboard-visible, and release-gated.

1. Keep documentation and release notes generated from durable artifacts rather

than editing public HTML directly.

Date: 2026-05-14

Summary

1.4.0 is now live on hosted /production.

This is the first deliberate public 1.4.0 family for Aurora / Platinum. It promotes the reviewed beta candidate into the public line and turns the recent multi-game, conformance, persona, replay, and documentation work into the new production baseline.

What This Release Adds

• Aurora Galactica remains the primary shipped playable game on Platinum, now

with the refreshed player-two persona mode, watch-mode persona behavior, commentator callout support, replay/trophy surface follow-through, and the current release/documentation discipline.

• Galaxy Guardians remains a preview-first sibling game, but it now carries a

stronger first-class playable/conformance posture inside the shipped public family instead of living only as an experimental side path.

• The hosted conformance and project documentation surfaces now expose clearer

per-game and side-by-side entry points so Aurora and Guardians can be reviewed together from one public release story.

• The release pipeline now carries the code-review packet plus review-learning

ledger forward as durable release evidence rather than ephemeral review-only state.

Production Posture

The important public contract after this release is:

• hosted /production now carries 1.4.0
• hosted /beta remains the staging lane for the next reviewed candidate cycle
• hosted /dev remains the forward-review lane
• root public pages and hosted docs now match the shipped 1.4.0 posture

What Remains Next

Shipping 1.4.0 does not mean the work is complete.

The next deliberate follow-through should focus on:

• stronger Aurora conformance lifts in audio, stage pressure, and long-surface

feel

• continued Galaxy Guardians advancement toward a more complete first-class

playable game

• keeping Platinum clean as the reusable multi-game host rather than letting

application-specific behavior leak back into the shared shell

Date: May 14, 2026

Release track: first deliberate 1.4.0 beta candidate

Source promotion path: merged main -> hosted /dev 1.4.0.1 -> hosted /beta 1.4.0-beta.1

Summary

1.4.0-beta.1 is the first deliberate post-1.3.0 minor-family candidate. It keeps hosted /production stable on the refreshed public 1.3.0 line while moving hosted /dev and hosted /beta onto a coherent next-family review line.

This candidate matters because it stops stretching the 1.3.0 story past its natural boundary. The bundle now being reviewed is no longer just a same-family refresh. It carries a fuller Galaxy Guardians playable/conformance tranche, side-by-side game conformance entry points, broader release-note and dashboard history, and a clearer multi-game product story for Platinum.

What This Beta Candidate Carries

• The first deliberate 1.4.0 lane identity:
  • hosted /dev: 1.4.0.1
  • hosted /beta: 1.4.0-beta.1
  • hosted /production: remains 1.3.0
• A cleaner release story that preserves the distinction between the public

shipped line and the next candidate family.

• The merged Galaxy Guardians work that makes the second cabinet more useful as

a real platform-validation target instead of only a shell proof.

• Hosted conformance entry points that make Aurora, Galaxy Guardians, and the

compare view directly shareable from the documentation surfaces.

• Backfilled release history and readable hosted release-note navigation so the

dashboard timeline can link to maintained detailed notes.

Galaxy Guardians In This Candidate

The most important product-level change in this family is the stronger Galaxy Guardians posture.

The candidate now includes:

• game-owned score, replay, and pilot-history identity instead of silently

borrowing Aurora surfaces

• one-level completion and loss-result framing so the game behaves more like a

minimally complete playable experience

• longer-surface and persona-oriented conformance planning rather than a

one-wave-only preview posture

• the recent visual, audio, motion-pressure, and stage-surface passes now

merged into the candidate line

• direct documentation and dashboard compare links so Guardians can be judged

beside Aurora instead of hidden behind a generic shared dashboard

This still does not claim that Galaxy Guardians is a finished second shipped game. It does mean the candidate family now treats it as a serious playable preview and conformance program rather than a thin cabinet placeholder.

Release And Documentation Improvements

• The release dashboard now frames the active family honestly as 1.4.0

candidate work while keeping 1.3.0 as the stable public baseline.

• Hosted release-note navigation now has broader history coverage and a

maintained source-doc path for milestone links.

• The hosted project guide and public project page now surface direct Aurora

and Guardians conformance links plus a compare entry point.

• Layered version domains remain explicit across the integrated bundle, the

Platinum platform, Aurora, and Galaxy Guardians.

Review Intent

This beta candidate should be reviewed for:

• whether the 1.4.0 story is cleaner and more honest than continuing to

stretch 1.3.0

• whether Galaxy Guardians is now materially more useful as a second real game

surface for platform validation

• whether the current documentation and dashboard set explains the multi-game

product story clearly enough for the next public move

• whether the remaining gaps are now production blockers or simply the next

deliberate investment queue

Known Remaining Questions

• Galaxy Guardians still needs deeper level-by-level feel, fairness, and late

stage survivability tuning before it should be described as fully mature.

• Aurora still has high-value authenticity work in audio/event feedback, visual

grounding, and later-stage arcade depth.

• Production remains intentionally on 1.3.0 until the 1.4.0 candidate is

accepted strongly enough to justify a real public move.

Next Decision

If 1.4.0-beta.1 is accepted, the next production conversation should be about whether this family deserves a real 1.4.0 public promotion, not whether it can be squeezed back into a same-story 1.3.x label.

Date: May 12, 2026

Release track: production refresh inside the public 1.3.0 family

Source promotion path: accepted 1.3.0.1 hosted-dev review bundle -> hosted /beta -> hosted /production

Summary

This release keeps the public SemVer family at 1.3.0 while promoting the accepted 1.3.0.1 hosted-dev review bundle into the live hosted /beta and hosted /production lanes.

That matters because the fourth-segment 1.3.0.1 line is a hosted-dev review signal, not the public package version. Public production still presents itself as 1.3.0+build..., but it now carries the stronger conformance/documentation bundle that was previously isolated to hosted /dev.

The public effect is a more trustworthy Aurora / Platinum release: stronger player-facing documentation, clearer provenance, a better measured conformance story, improved runtime ship-loss audio feedback, and a release package that explains not just what changed, but why the team believes it.

Retrospective versioning note:

• this production push remained in the public 1.3.0 family
• going forward, a production bundle with this much game-quality improvement,

conformance lift, and ingestion/release-surface optimization should normally ship as at least a new PATCH release

• same-version production reuse should be reserved for production-failure

repair rather than treated as the normal way to carry substantial value

What Players And Reviewers Get

• A production line that is better documented in public, not only better

described in engineering chat.

• A measured calibrated ship-loss cue lift that preserves a fuller arcade-like

death phrase while keeping cue alignment guardrails intact.

• Better protection around inter-level, final-loss, and game-over audio starts

so browser runtime capture no longer silently drops critical cue moments.

• A public project page, project guide, release dashboard, and conformance

dashboard that now explain persistent artifact provenance, score movement, and resource economics as first-class parts of the product story.

• Clearer layered release identity across the integrated release, the Platinum

host, Aurora, and Galaxy Guardians.

Main Production Improvements

1. Conformance Story Is Public-Facing Now

The public project surfaces now describe the real conformance effort rather than only presenting a thin product shell.

That includes:

• provenance-backed generated documentation
• release-facing conformance dashboards
• resource-economics reporting
• application artifact scoring
• runtime static sprite-capture scoring
• a clearer explanation of score meaning, confidence, and next investments

This means a future reader can inspect what the project believes, what evidence it is using, and what still remains weak without needing repository archaeology or prior chat context.

2. Audio/Event Feedback Improved With Measurement

The accepted runtime audio lift in this refresh is the calibrated layered playerHit ship-loss phrase.

Why it shipped:

• cue alignment remained green
• semantic event scoring stayed strong
• focused candidate gates held
• browser-reference comparison improved
• the player-facing moment became more arcade-complete than the prior shipped

line

This does not claim the audio problem is solved. It does mean the public line now carries a real measured improvement rather than only pipeline/process work.

3. Documentation Provenance Is Enforced

Generated public pages now explicitly explain that they are assembled from persistent repository artifacts and maintained source docs.

The provenance source is captured in documentation-provenance.json and rendered into the public project page and project guide. Release freshness checks now fail if that source map or those rendered sections disappear.

That is important for a project whose long-term promise depends on repeatable ingestion, evidence-backed conformance work, and durable release reasoning.

4. Layered Release Identity Is Stronger

This refresh continues the move away from one flattened version story.

The release now more clearly distinguishes:

• integrated bundle identity
• Platinum platform identity
• game-owned release identity
• build identity
• hosted-dev review-line identity

Aurora remains the primary shipped game. Galaxy Guardians remains a preview application, but its pack-owned identity and release metadata are now kept more honestly aligned with the production-capable preview runtime.

Current Quality Read

Current maintained Aurora read for this refreshed public family:

Important interpretation:

• 10/10 means maxed at current scorer resolution, not perfect arcade

imitation

• a better scorer may lower a number while improving truthfulness
• the project should keep treating confidence, resolution, and cost as part of

the release story, not as invisible background metadata

Release Evidence

This refreshed production line is supported by:

• current conformance dashboard source and generated hosted dashboard
• documentation freshness checks
• provenance-backed public project pages and guides
• application artifact scoring and runtime sprite-capture scoring
• accepted beta promotion on the release-authority machine
• production publish verification plus public project-page sync verification

The release is therefore not just "the code seems okay." It is a documented, verified promotion with a public explanation of evidence and remaining gaps.

Accepted Gaps

This production refresh intentionally does not claim completion on:

• audio identity beyond the improved ship-loss phrase
• challenge-stage arrival authenticity and novelty depth
• full temporal sprite-motion scoring
• richer later-level pressure and reward texture
• fully mature second-game conformance for Galaxy Guardians

Those are next-cycle targets, not hidden regressions.

Next Direction

Now that the refreshed 1.3.0 public family is live, the next coherent pickup is 1.4.0.

That next family should emphasize:

• audio/event feedback beyond cue correctness
• alien entry variation and challenge-stage novelty
• level arc and encounter shape
• boss/formation grammar precision
• visual reference grounding
• cleaner Platinum/application seams
• ingestion-backed progress for Galaxy Guardians and future games

Release Message

Short external framing:

Aurora / Platinum 1.3.0 has been refreshed with stronger public documentation, a better measured conformance story, clearer artifact provenance, and a real audio/event-feedback lift while keeping the product honest about what still needs work for the 1.4.0 arcade-depth cycle.

Date: May 11, 2026

Release track: hosted-dev review increment

Authority posture: MacBook may prepare, commit, push, merge, and publish hosted /dev; hosted /beta and /production remain authority-gated on imacm1 / iMacM1 unless release authority is explicitly transferred.

Summary

1.3.0.1 is the first post-1.3.0 review increment. It keeps production and beta stable on the shipped 1.3.0 family while using hosted /dev to review a coherent conformance bundle: refreshed dashboards and public docs, conformance economics, application artifact scoring, runtime sprite-capture scoring, and a measured audio/event-feedback lift. The latest documentation pass also adds persona distribution evidence so gameplay evaluation is explained with repeated seeded runs rather than a single representative playthrough.

This is not a production promotion. It is the package to review before asking the release-authority machine to publish the next hosted /beta candidate.

Player-Visible Improvements

• Ship-loss feedback is more arcade-complete: the calibrated layered

playerHit cue preserves a fuller death phrase while maintaining cue alignment, semantic event scoring, and overall quality guardrails.

• Inter-level and final-loss audio reliability is better protected: critical

reference cues now have runtime-recovery coverage so transition, loss, game-over, and next-start cues actually begin in the browser runtime.

• Start/wait-mode and boss-first-hit presentation have been cleaned up enough

that the current review bundle reads more coherent than the shipped baseline, while larger visual-authenticity work remains queued.

• The conformance dashboard and public project documentation now expose more of

the real development story: what improved, what remains weak, what it cost, and what should be attacked next.

Conformance And Evidence

Current maintained Aurora read:

Important interpretation: a 10/10 metric means maxed at current scorer resolution, not perfect arcade imitation. Confidence and resolution are part of the release story because a better scorer may lower a score while improving the truthfulness of the project.

Platform And Harness Improvements

• Audio candidate work now leaves behind reusable cue-contract, focused

candidate, promotion-precheck, runtime-recapture, and event-gap artifacts.

• Composite/layered audio cue scoring can evaluate scheduled onset/body/tail

windows instead of only the loudest active island.

• Runtime sprite conformance can capture isolated live canvas crops and score

those visible pixels separately from documentation/catalog proxy scores.

• Application artifact conformance now aggregates game-artifact surfaces beyond

aliens: sprites, sprite motion planning, audio cues, audio alignment, backgrounds, frame/popups/icons, fonts/text, level shape, and boss/formation choreography.

• Persona performance distribution promotes 30 seeded full-run games per

generic Platinum persona into a maintained summary and chart covering score, stage reached, time alive, losses, and challenge hit rate.

• Conformance economics tracks local CPU/browser spend, GPU-equivalent

Codex/OpenAI/API effort, artifact growth, and cost-per-score movement.

Documentation Refresh

The release documentation now treats the conformance project as a first-class product effort rather than an internal note. The key maintained surfaces are:

• PROJECT_STATE_AND_CONFORMANCE_PROGRAM.md
• CONFORMANCE_METRICS_OVERVIEW.md
• RELEASE_CONFORMANCE_DASHBOARD.md
• CONFORMANCE_ECONOMICS.md
• GAME_CONFORMANCE_CATALOG.md
• AUDIO_CONFORMANCE_LAB.md
• STRATEGIC_BETA_REVIEW.md
• hosted project guide, application guide, conformance dashboard, release

dashboard, public project page, and documentation-provenance.json

The hosted public project page and project guide now render a documentation provenance section from documentation-provenance.json, and publish preflight checks fail if that source map or generated section disappears. Current scores, costs, release posture, game status, and artifact claims should therefore be changed in their persistent source artifacts first, then rebuilt into the visible pages.

Documentation suggestions carried forward:

• Add timeline charts that show conformance score movement beside CPU,

browser, GPU-equivalent model, and artifact-volume spend.

• Add release-story charts that separate gameplay-facing gains from

measurement-facing gains.

• Add confidence/resolution timelines so a score drop caused by a better

scorer is visibly different from a gameplay regression.

• Add more drill-down from the public project page into game-specific alien,

audio, stage, persona, sprite, and artifact-conformance tables.

• Keep persona evidence generic at the Platinum level, with each game mapping

those personas into its own controller, scenarios, and release blockers.

• Add direct beta handoff checklists to make authority-gated release movement

easier to verify from any machine.

Known Gaps

• Audio remains the weakest high-value category. stagePulse needs a better

pressure-bed strategy, and the residual playerHit tail gap should be refined with calibrated browser-reference evidence.

• Challenging stages still need stronger Galaga-like arrival, movement,

specialty-alien introduction, and bonus-opportunity novelty.

• Static sprite scoring is useful but incomplete; sprite identity includes

flapping, pulsing, dive rotation, capture/rescue, carried-fighter, and dual-fighter transitions that need temporal harness windows.

• Visual explosion and boss damage feedback are improved but still not fully

reference-authentic.

• GPU-equivalent accounting is now conceptually represented, but Codex/model

effort still depends on deliberate manual ledger entries and usage snapshots.

Beta Handoff

If this hosted-dev review is accepted, the authority machine should:

1. pull origin/main
2. run npm run machine:bootstrap
3. run npm run machine:status
4. run npm run machine:doctor
5. confirm npm run release:show-authority
6. run npm run build
7. run npm run harness:check:documentation-freshness
8. run npm run publish:check:dev
9. inspect hosted /dev
10. publish hosted /beta only from the authority machine
11. run hosted beta verification and update the strategic beta review with the

final lane stamp and any accepted gaps

Next Plan

Short term:

• complete hosted-dev review and beta-request handoff
• keep source docs, dashboard, release note, and public surfaces aligned

Medium term:

• move audio from 7.3/10 toward 7.5+
• attack alien entry, challenge-stage novelty, level arc, and direct

path/slot reference precision

• add temporal sprite-motion scoring instead of relying on static crops

Longer term:

• shape 1.4.0 as the arcade-depth family
• keep Galaxy Guardians in ingestion-backed preview until its own conformance

package proves a real second game

• continue shifting repeatable assessment into local CPU/browser harnesses while

using Codex/model work to design better evaluators, code, and review loops

Aurora Galactica's 1.3.0 production release is now live on Platinum.

Suggested post text:

Aurora Galactica 1.3.0 is live on Platinum.

This is a meaningful release for the whole project, not just a small patch.

What is new in 1.3.0:

• stronger Aurora movement, trust, and shell polish across the current public

build

• clearer platform, build, and release identity across Platinum and its games
• the first public Galaxy Guardians sneak peek inside Platinum's Choose Game

flow

• cleaner release-lane discipline and pilot-account handling across dev, beta,

and production

Galaxy Guardians is the headline new arrival here. It is still a preview-first second-cabinet experience, not a fully shipped second game, but it now has a real public presence inside Platinum while Aurora remains the primary playable cabinet.

Check it out:

• live game:
  • Aurora Galactica on Platinum
• release dashboard:
  • Aurora release dashboard
• player guide:
  • Aurora player guide

What comes next:

• 1.4.0 arcade-depth and platform-contract follow-through
• deeper measured audio and movement fidelity work
• continued Galaxy Guardians evidence, identity, and runtime maturation

Aurora Galactica's latest production refresh is now live on Platinum:

• production label:
  • 1.2.3+build.532.sha.b959491

Suggested post text:

Aurora Galactica just received a strong 1.2.3 trust-and-pilot refresh on Platinum.

This push focuses on making the current line easier to trust and smoother to use:

• signed-in runs now keep pilot identity consistent through game over
• recent local and pilot-record score views are clearer and more reliable
• a last-life game-over runtime freeze is fixed
• dock, panel, build-stamp, and login surfaces are cleaner and more stable
• the multi-machine workflow and release discipline behind Aurora are much healthier

It is still the same core Aurora release family, but it is a noticeably stronger public build.

Check out:

• live game:
  • Aurora Galactica
• beta lane:
  • Aurora beta
• release dashboard:
  • Aurora release dashboard

What comes next:

• deeper movement fidelity against real Galaga footage
• stronger audio identity and atmosphere
• richer harness/reference analysis
• a Galaxians-style second-game proof on Platinum

Date: April 9, 2026

Release track: production patch

Summary

This 1.2.3 patch polished Aurora's score and attract surfaces without reopening broad gameplay rules or shell ownership.

The goal was to make the score story easier to read and easier to trust across recent builds.

What Changed

• wait-mode high-score boards now rotate in a clearer

validated-local-all sequence

• leaderboard rows gained build/date context
• a lightweight after-date filter was added so results are easier to inspect

against recent builds

Why It Mattered

This patch improved the credibility of the visible score surfaces.

That might look smaller than gameplay tuning work, but score presentation is a core part of the arcade contract. If players cannot read or trust the board cleanly, the release line feels less real no matter how good the game logic is.

What Came Next

The next 1.2.3 work widened from score-surface polish toward:

• pilot-surface trust fixes
• login and panel polish
• stronger release-lane discipline

Date: April 9, 2026

Release track: production patch

Summary

1.2.2 hardened Aurora against silent late-run runtime failures while also shipping Aurora-scoped configurable bonus-ship awards.

This was a stability-and-operations patch with a direct gameplay reward improvement layered on top.

What Changed

• trapped runtime loop exceptions instead of failing silently
• surfaced export guidance when a frame fault occurs
• fixed a restart-time async score-submit crash
• added a targeted late-run ship-loss soak gate to the release path
• shipped configurable first and recurring score-based bonus-ship awards for

Aurora

Why It Mattered

This patch made late-run failures more visible and more survivable both for players and for release review.

That mattered because the deeper the game went, the more expensive silent runtime faults became. Hardening the runtime also set a cleaner base for later fidelity and conformance work.

What Came Next

Once runtime stability improved, the next quality step moved to:

• clearer score and attract surfaces
• more trustworthy leaderboard framing
• better player-facing context around current builds

Date: April 7, 2026

Release track: production patch

Summary

1.2.1 was the first focused fast-follow patch after Platinum Release 1.

It fixed several player-visible trust issues while also clarifying the boundary between platform-owned shell framing and application-owned game framing.

What Changed

• dual-fighter runs now continue correctly after a single-ship loss
• challenge stages present as bonus stages without consuming normal stage

numbering

• end-of-run carry/capture visuals no longer leak under results
• startup and wait-mode copy follows a clearer platform-versus-application

ownership model

Why It Mattered

This patch made the newly framed Platinum/Aurora experience easier to trust.

It did not try to widen the product story. It cleaned up correctness and copy discipline so the first platform milestone felt less brittle in public use.

What Came Next

The next step after trust-fix cleanup was runtime hardening:

• protect against silent frame-loop failures
• make restart-time score-submit behavior safer
• improve release-time soak coverage

Date: April 7, 2026

Release track: minor public milestone

Summary

1.2.0 reframed Aurora Galactica as the first playable application on the Platinum platform.

This was more than a patch line. It established the platform-owned shell, picker flow, hosted lane structure, and the first meaningful separation between the platform and the game it hosts.

What Changed

• Platinum became the visible host identity
• Aurora became the first shipped application on Platinum
• hosted /dev, /beta, and /production were formalized as distinct lanes
• the hosted documentation and release ladder became part of the product model

Why It Mattered

This release created the architectural and release framing that later made multi-game work, second-cabinet preview work, and layered platform/application versioning possible.

Without 1.2.0, later release discipline would have remained much flatter and less honest about what the platform owns versus what a game owns.

What Came Next

After Platinum Release 1, the follow-up work focused on:

• fast trust fixes
• clearer platform/application boundaries
• runtime safety and late-run hardening

Date: April 2, 2026

Release track: production-failure hotfix

Summary

1.0.2 fixed the 1.0.1 production regression that repeatedly reset active lateral input during play.

The effect in the live game was severe: normal ship movement no longer felt stable. This was exactly the kind of release that justifies immediate public repair work.

What Changed

• restored normal lateral ship movement in production
• added stronger hotfix smoke coverage
• added hosted-lane input probes so obvious control failures are easier to

catch before promotion

Why It Mattered

This was a production-repair release in the clearest sense.

It did not broaden the product story. It repaired a live failure in the most important part of the arcade contract: moving the ship when the player asks it to move.

What Came Next

Once input reliability was restored, the release path could widen again toward:

• platform framing
• trust fixes
• runtime hardening
• larger public milestone packaging

Date: March 31, 2026

Release track: production hotfix

Summary

1.0.1 tightened the live input model and a few key feedback surfaces right after launch.

The main fix was replacing the fragile modifier-key left-handed path with always-available A/Z left and D/C right movement, plus a focus-loss reset so ships could not stay latched sideways when the browser lost focus.

What Changed

• simpler always-on alternate movement controls
• focus-loss input reset
• feedback delivery moved from FormSubmit to Web3Forms
• success confirmation stayed visible long enough to read

Why It Mattered

This release reduced avoidable control confusion in the live public line.

At this stage, small input or feedback problems were much more damaging than they might look in code because they shaped the first public impression of whether Aurora felt responsive and trustworthy.

What Came Next

The next urgent priority after this hotfix was fixing a worse regression:

• repeated active-input resets that broke normal ship movement in production

Date: March 31, 2026

Release track: post-launch production hotfix

Summary

This hotfix repaired an early production issue where signed-in runs could appear to save locally without inserting into the shared leaderboard.

It also added a hosted refresh reminder so players on stale browser tabs had a clear path to pick up live fixes instead of silently staying on an older build.

What Changed

• remote score submission moved into the main game-over path
• diagnostics were added around score-submit failures
• a refresh reminder and one-click action were added for stale hosted sessions

Why It Mattered

This was a trust repair release.

The first production line only worked if shared scores actually represented what players had just earned. Fixing submit reliability and stale-tab behavior protected the legitimacy of the live leaderboard during the earliest public days of the game.

What Came Next

After score-submit reliability was repaired, the next hotfix focus moved to:

• input clarity
• control reliability
• visible feedback polish

Date: March 30, 2026

Release track: first public production launch

Summary

1.0.0 was the first public Aurora Galactica launch.

It established the core public game promise:

• a polished four-stage arcade slice
• capture and rescue play
• dual-fighter runs
• signed-in pilot identity
• in-game replay viewing
• score and help surfaces inside the frame
• an actual beta-to-production release ladder

This was the moment Aurora stopped being only a local prototype and became a hosted public game with a real leaderboard, real pilot identity, and a real release process.

What Players Got

• the first stable public browser build
• official shared scoring
• player account and pilot framing
• replay visibility for completed runs
• the first production baseline for post-launch quality work

Why It Mattered

This release set the initial product contract for everything that followed.

Later work on trust, runtime hardening, fidelity, platform boundaries, second game experiments, and conformance only matters because this release created a real public line worth protecting and improving.

What Came Next

The immediate follow-up after launch was not a new feature family. It was stabilization:

• repair score-submit issues
• reduce stale-tab confusion
• fix live control and movement regressions quickly
• make the public release line trustworthy enough to tune further