BALLRENA Playtest PT4: Compendium, Stability & True Pause (2026-08-23)

Hello testers!

PT4 is now live. This update focuses on three areas: a rebuilt main menu and the new COMPENDIUM, a project-wide stability pass, and an ESC pause that truly freezes the game. Combat feedback and the developer console have also received major upgrades.

Update Highlights

• New COMPENDIUM: Units, Items, Cards, and Cores now have their own fully accessible archive channels.
• 29 issues cleared: Major fixes cover progression, fusion accounting, speed leakage, and full-board purchases.
• True ESC pause: Shop time, input, and background motion now freeze completely and resume from the exact same state.

■ Main Menu & Compendium

• Rebuilt main menu: A fixed Continue / New Game / Compendium / Settings / Quit layout, a new right-side rail, adaptive label sizing, and a device-power-on entrance sequence.
• Better Continue information: The CONTINUE row now shows Difficulty · Core · Node progress at a glance.
• Persistent version display: The current version now appears in the lower-left corner of the main menu.
• COMPENDIUM is live: The archive-terminal grid includes Units, Items, Cards, and Cores. Newly unlocked entries receive a NEW marker, and clicking a tile now keeps focus stable instead of being interrupted by hover.

■ Stability & Correctness

This project-wide bug audit resolved 29 issues, including:

• Fixed the Last Sun softlock: Bosses can no longer become permanently unkillable after the upgrade pool is exhausted.
• Fixed completion-accounting races: Abnormal exits no longer lose difficulty unlock progress or create zombie progression and incorrect rewards.
• Fixed fusion overflow accounting: Fusion above the tier cap now consumes free XP first and preserves paid XP, producing fairer sell values for affected items.
• Fixed speed leakage: Finishing combat at ×2 / ×3 no longer carries combat speed into the shop or menus.
• Fixed full-board forge purchases: Buying a forge component with a full deployment board no longer produces the “money gone, item gone” failure.

■ ESC & Pause Rework

• Core selection: ESC now returns correctly from the core selection screen.
• True shop pause: Time fully freezes, hover and hotkeys are blocked, and background drift, breathing outlines, and shelf animation stop on the current frame.
• Seamless resume: RESUME continues every system from the frozen state.
• Correct menu layering: The ESC menu now stays above all overlays, and nested Settings screens open and close correctly.

■ Combat Feedback

• New Arc Splitter VFX: A cyan beam fan now appears at the contact point on hit, synchronized with the damage number on the same frame.
• Speed-synchronized timed effects: Imprison glitch, Embers, Gravity Well, Stasis, and other timed visuals now match their real mechanical lifetime and end immediately when control is released.
• PULSAR shockwave fix: Hitting zero-attack units such as Decoy Beacons now triggers the shockwave correctly.
• Clearer cores on the build board: Cores now use full-object outlines and fill treatment through the same visual pipeline as the Laser Fighter.

■ Tester Tool: Developer Console

How to Enable and Use It

Reproducing Bugs with seed and dumpbuild

If a problem involves random results or your current build, run these commands in the same run where the issue occurs:

Important: seed reproduces discrete random results such as cards, shops, and enemy selection, but does not guarantee frame-identical ball physics. dumpbuild restores the build, not a complete battle recording. Console commands modify the current run, so please use them in a testing run or testing save.

System & Inspection Commands — no command on required

• help / help <command> — Show every command, or detailed usage for one command.
• clear — Clear the console display.
• command on|off — Unlock or lock state-changing commands for the current session.
• state — Show money, node, board instance IDs, core, and HP summary.
• tally — Read-only dump of the three Compendium telemetry tables.
• items / items <keyword> — List item IDs, names, and prices, optionally filtered by keyword.
• mobs — List every enemy ID.
• cards <x y|s<i>|#id> — Show attached traits and the available card pool for an item. Board coordinates start at bottom-left (0,0); s<i> addresses standby slots and #id addresses an instance ID.
• seed — Show the current run seed, node, and difficulty.

Combat Commands — command on required

• spawnmob <id> <tier> <count> — Spawn enemies; the last two arguments are optional, tier is 1–5, count is capped at 50, and the result is limited to the current scene.
• weaken — Reduce every living enemy to 10 HP.
• clearmobs — Remove all enemies without running the normal death pipeline.
• hp +n|-n — Add or remove player HP, clamped between 1 and max HP; cannot kill directly.
• setatk <n> — Set player attack for the current scene.
• sethaste <n> — Set player haste; cooldowns already in progress are not recalculated retroactively.
• setmaxhp <n> — Set max HP and clamp current HP to the new cap; existing snapshots are not retroactively updated.
• god / god on|off — Toggle full damage immunity. No argument toggles the current state; scene changes reset it.
• enemyscale <hp> <dmg> — Set enemy HP and damage multipliers. Damage changes immediately; HP applies only to newly spawned enemies.
• killall — Kill every enemy through the normal lethal/death pipeline.
• hurt <n> — Damage the player through the normal damage pipeline; has no effect while god is active.

Build Commands — command on required

• money <n>|+n|-n — Set, add, or subtract money. Subtraction counts toward spend-based ledgers such as spend-to-shield.
• equip <itemId> — Grant a T1 item and auto-place it on the board.
• give <itemId> <tier> <x y|s> — Grant an item; the last two arguments are optional and set tier, board coordinates, or standby placement.
• unequip <id> — Remove an item by instance ID; use state or cards to find IDs.
• removeitem <x y|s<i>|#id> — Remove an item by board position, standby slot, or instance ID.
• upgrade <id> / upgrade <id> unit|tier — Add unit XP or raise the item by one tier. Shop tier-ups correctly open the card-pick overlay.
• card add|rm <x y|s<i>|#id> <cardId> — Add or remove an item trait. Mechanical effects update immediately; re-enter combat when validating numerical effects.
• pickcard <0|1|2> — Select the first, second, or third card in the current upgrade choice.
• pickreroll — Reroll the current upgrade choices.
• clearbuild — Clear the entire current build, including standby.
• corepick list|add <id>|rm <id> — List, add, or remove core-growth traits; changes take effect next battle.
• dumpbuild — Print replayable commands for the current build and save persistentDataPath/dev_build_dump.cfg.
• exec <filename> — Run a command script from persistentDataPath. Lines beginning with # are comments; nested exec calls are blocked.

Rule Override Commands — command on required

• standbyslots <0..5>|off — Override standby capacity on the next shop entry; off clears the override.
• arena base|alley|chamfer|portal|auto — Choose the next battle arena layout; auto restores automatic selection.
• traits / traits set <id,…> / traits clear — Inspect, set, or clear global combat-trait overrides; changes apply next battle.
• difficulty / difficulty <0..10> — Inspect or rewrite run difficulty. Related global traits and SCRAP update from the next battle.

■ Current Known Issues

• BGM continues during pause. The current “true pause” scope covers visuals and game logic.
• If ESC is pressed on the exact frame an item is purchased, the balance-number bounce may finish its final animation for up to 0.2 seconds.
• HEAVY / TETHER core slots may currently display raw numbers instead of their correct icons. A fix is already planned.

Please keep sharing feedback and bugs in the discussion boards. Every report goes into our tuning and fix pipeline.

Have fun!

— vampireblackcat