DUELS
Two operators open one link and play the same seed at the same time. Everything you get wrong lands in their lanes, and everything you get right does too. The interference is symmetric. The nerve is not.
I · THE EXCHANGE
Your run is the other operator's weather.
When you tear
YOUR MISS ◢ THEIR PROBLEM
A null drops into their lanes two seconds later. Catching it costs them integrity. Your worst moments arrive on their side as something they have to actively refuse.
When you bank
YOUR BANK ◢ THEIR PROBLEM
Three signals appear in their lanes. Not a gift — signals they must now catch, because a missed signal tears. Playing well makes their chart denser.
That second rule is the one that changes how the game is played. In a solo run, banking is the safe act. In a duel, banking is also an attack, which means the safe act has a cost attached to it and the cost lands on somebody else. Operators who have never duelled tend to discover this by banking at ×8, sending a wall of signals, and watching the opponent convert them into a lead.
Interference arrives on a two-second delay, deliberately. Instant interference would be indistinguishable from lag and would make the whole thing feel arbitrary. Two seconds is long enough to see it coming and short enough that it still hurts.
II · HOW IT IS DECIDED
In order. The first rule that applies, ends it.
- Forfeit. Disconnect and you lose. There is no reconnect window, because a duel where one side can pause is not a duel.
- Survival. Otherwise the operator who lasted more ticks wins. Not the higher score — the one still running. A duel is about who melts down first.
- Score. If both survived the same length, the higher verified bank wins.
- Draw. If those are equal too, it is a draw and recorded as one.
Survival above score is the whole design argument. Score rewards greed; survival rewards judgement under interference. A duel decided on score would be won by whoever gambled hardest, and gambling hardest is already what the solo boards reward.
III · NEITHER CLIENT DECIDES ANYTHING
The same anti-cheat as the solo boards, with one extra problem to solve.
A duel lives in a Durable Object that relays interference between the two browsers and then, when both runs end, replays both of them — from the shared seed, each operator's input log, and the injections it scheduled itself. Reported scores decide nothing.
The extra problem: interference has to land on the same tick in the live run and in the replay, or the replay diverges and the result is meaningless. So each client reports the tick it applied an injection at, and the server accepts it only within half a second of the tick it scheduled. Outside that window the duel voids.
That is the deliberate shape of it. The only lever a modified client keeps is the ability to make a duel not count — never to make it a win. Given a choice between a system that can be cheated into victory and one that can be cheated into nothing, the second is the correct trade.
| What | Where it is decided |
|---|---|
| The chart both operators read | Shared seed · identical for both, deterministic |
| Which lane interference lands in | Server · from the player-action random stream, so it never perturbs the chart |
| Whether an injection counted | Server · within half a second of the scheduled tick, else void |
| Both final scores | Server · full replay from the input logs |
| The winner | Server · forfeit, then survival, then score |
IV · RECENT DUELS
Finished duels, newest first, as the server resolved them.
- Reading the record…