Fallout: Colorado Vault 69 [v2] By Terte

V0.2

## v2 (build `vault69(32).html`) – since Release build v1

• Engine file: 9,201 -> 11,295 lines. 77 new functions/constants, none removed.
• Situations: 64 -> 67.

### New: difficulty
Third block on the intake form, **PROCESSING CONDITION**, picked before you sign.

• | Mode | Blame | Morale | Fed | Rest |
• |—|—|—|—|—|
• | Optimistic | 35 | 80 | 85 | 90 |
• | Normal | 55 | 65 | 70 | 80 |
• | Busted | 72 | 45 | 50 | 60 |
• Busted starts above `warmBlockedAbove`, so nobody moves toward you until you
• bring blame down. Normal is unchanged from v1.

New: an ending that isn’t a collapse

• `held` – day 90+, blame <=52, two people warm on you, stocks holding, under the
• flag limit. The rota goes up with your name in the same hand as everybody
• else’s. v1 had five endings and all five were losses.

### Balance

• The root problem was that **death flags were permanent**: seven kinds, three
• kills you, no defence. Every run was a countdown, which is why all difficulties
• died the same way.
• Death flags now fade – oldest clears after 24 days if blame is under 58 and
• you have been turning up.
• Blame decay 0.35 -> 0.55/day; floor falls faster with days served and warm
• relationships; a week of hitting your duty takes 0.6/day off.
• Hunger drain 2.9 -> 2.2/hour. At 2.9 it was 70/day against three sittings
• worth 24 each – exactly break-even, so one missed meal parked you at zero,
• where morale bleeds every hour.
• Morale recovery no longer cancelled by low stores (it was an `else` on the
• low-food check, so thin stores made recovery impossible, not just harder).
• Wages 6 -> 9 per shift.
• `reviewed` ending now also requires blame > 54, so keeping the room off your
• back keeps you off the sheet.
• Measured over 600 headless playthroughs: skilled play now reaches day 110 and
• gets `held` about 40% of the time; careless play still ends around day 39.
• In v1 both ended identically.

New: room art and standees

• Nine room backdrops wired to `SCENES.room`, shown on entry.
• Corridor and upper landing swap art on `stairClear` / recreation built.
• 13 of 23 cast have full-body standees composited into the room.
• At most three shown, chosen deterministically from who is actually present –
• never random, so nobody shuffles position mid-scene. Whoever a scene is about
• stands nearer and brighter.
• Click a woman to talk to her. Routes through the same `talkActions()` entry as
• the menu, so cost and gating are identical.
• Click the door in the picture to leave. Per-room hotspots, routed through the
• normal move action, so locks and curfew still apply.

New: vendor menu

• The shelf was a blind force-buy of the cheapest item. It is now a real list –
• one row per peg with price and stock left, unaffordable items shown greyed with
• what you are short by. Reachable from the corridor when the keeper is standing
• in it. In v1, measured, an affordable item was on offer 10 times in 60 runs.

Audio

• Ten synthesised effects added: `doorclose`, `bolt`, `locker`, `paper`, `mug`,
• `knock`, `striplight`, `tannoy`, `tooldrop`, `vent`.
• All eleven previously Opus-only files now have AAC fallbacks – `vaultdoor` and
• the rest were silent in Safari.

Bug fixes

• Scenes were being overwritten.** `spendTime()` could fire a random
• situation on top of an open one, so roughly one talk in five silently became
• someone else’s scene. All `S.pending` assignment now goes through one guarded
• function.
• Scene sounds never played.** `onOpen` was only called from
• `openSituation()`; three other paths set `S.pending` directly and skipped it.
• The vault door sealing was silent in every run since it was written.
• Dialogue retyped itself.** The typewriter re-ran the whole conversation
• from character zero on every choice. Only new text animates now.
• The intake form could be walked out of.** With the form open the full
• action list was live – you could leave the room, eat and start conversations
• while the rest of the intro queue sat parked and your sheet stayed blank.
• Mods could not be disabled.** `mods.json` overrode a pack’s own
• `enabled: false`; toggles only apply on reload, which the panel never said.
• Fixed, stated, and a reload button added.
• The 18+ notice replayed every launch.** Now shown once.
• Standee clicks hit the wrong woman.** Image elements are rectangles with
• transparent margins that overlap; separate non-overlapping hotspots now take
• the clicks.
• talkActions()` silently capped at 8 people, so anyone past that in a busy
• room could not be talked to. Cap moved to the display only.

UI

• STOCKS panel collapses; shows a `2 low` badge when folded and something is
• under its crit line. Stops it shoving the map down the column.

Packaging

• Room art 21.7 MB -> 3.2 MB (JPEG q85, 4:4:4 chroma to protect yellow-on-navy
• text). Standees palette-quantised, 60 KB each.
• CONCEPT ART VAULT 69/` working folder dropped from the release; assets live
• under `art/` and are actually referenced.