Operating manual

1. Steer before you fire

   The ball docks to the paddle centre while the field reads READY. Position first — the launch vector is always the fixed 45° diagonal, so your paddle placement sets the entire opening angle.

2. Hit with the edges

   Contact is mapped from the paddle's centre: dead centre returns the ball vertically, the tips throw it out to ±65°. Corners are how you clear the outer brick columns.

3. Bank, don't mash

   Side contact with a brick flips dx, top/bottom flips dy. Only the deepest single overlap is resolved per substep, so the ball never tunnels or freezes inside a cluster.

4. Speed climbs

   Every brick nudges the magnitude upward inside the 3.4 → 4.0 px/frame envelope. The direction is renormalised after each bounce, so speed never sneaks up on the vertical axis.

5. Three lives, then waves

   Clear all 32 bricks for 320 points and the cabinet offers the next wave with a deeper grid. Drop the ball three times and the run is scored and archived as your best.

Technical readout

Field

400 × 600 canvas, dpr-scaled

Grid

8 cols × 4 rows · 50 × 20 px

Brick origin

x = col×50 · y = row×20 + 70

Paddle

60 × 10 at y=580 · clamp 0–340

Paddle return

±65° from hit offset

Ball

r = 3 · start (200, 570)

Launch vector

(2, −2.8) normalised · 3.44 px/f

Speed envelope

3.40 → 4.00 px/frame

Integration

accumulator 16.67 ms · 2 substeps

Collision

circle–AABB, penetration axis

Scoring

+10 / brick · max 320 / wave

Brick layer

pre-baked glow, redrawn on hit only