Files
OpenFrontIO/tests
828d7b1d96 feat(client): spiral nuke trail cosmetic effect (#4630)
## Summary

Adds a **spiral** `nukeTrail` effect type — a 3D vortex of glowing helix
strands projected onto the map, trailing behind nukes whose owner has
the cosmetic equipped.

Catalog attributes (`spiral_tail` shape):

| attribute | meaning |
| --- | --- |
| `colors` | palette, wrapped once around the vortex circumference |
| `radius` | helix amplitude in tiles |
| `strands` | helix strand count (renderer clamps to 8) |
| `rotationSpeed` | vortex spin, radians/sec |

## How it works

The per-tile trail texture holds persistent state; the vortex is a
transient animation that follows a path — so it renders as **ribbon
geometry**, not tile stamps.

**Path recording** (`SpiralTrails`): each live spiral-owner nuke gets an
append-only centerline polyline — ~2 samples per tile of travel carrying
position, a smoothed perpendicular (blended across tick segments so
curved paths don't kink), and cumulative distance. Params are pushed
once per player by `WebGLFrameBuilder` when the cosmetics catalog
resolves; a ribbon is dropped the moment its unit disappears, matching
stamped-trail cleanup.

**Rendering** (`SpiralRibbonPass`): one triangle-strip VBO per nuke (2
verts per sample, streamed append-only via `bufferSubData`, grown by
doubling); the vertex shader swings each sample sideways by the helix
offset and evaluates the head-cone convergence as a function of
`uHeadDist − d`, so uploaded vertices are immutable — the cone feeding
the strands into the missile needs no rewriting as the nuke flies. One
draw per strand reuses the same strip with a different phase offset
(`uPhase0`).

The glow look is a bloom-style split:

- **halo** — wide quadratic falloff, rendered premultiplied into a
quarter-resolution buffer (`mapOverlay.spiralResolutionScale = 0.25`,
~16× cheaper fragments) and composited **additively** over the scene, so
it reads as emitted light and the bilinear upsample keeps it soft;
- **core** — sharp full-resolution ribbons on top, with a white-hot
center on segments facing the viewer (neon-tube look).

Shading spins the helix angle with time: a `cos` depth cue brightens
facing segments and darkens receding ones, and the palette cross-fades
around the circumference.

The spiral nuke still stamps its plain centerline through the unchanged
`TrailManager` — `trail.frag` styleId 2 draws it flat in the first color
as the missile's spine, so alt view, death cleanup, and trail overlap
behave identically to non-cosmetic nukes. Ribbons draw above the plain
trails, below the missiles, and are skipped in alt view.

**Perf**: both ribbon stages are skipped entirely (CPU-side, before any
GL work) while no spiral nuke is in flight — games without the cosmetic,
and frames without a spiral nuke, pay nothing new. Vertex uploads stream
only newly appended samples; the halo's fragment cost is capped by the
quarter-res buffer. MIRV warheads are explicitly excluded from ribbons
(one MIRV splits into 350 of them).

**Store preview**: `TrailSwatch` mirrors the bloom split in SVG — a
screen-blended blurred halo, a crisp colored core, and a white-hot
center line — with a phase-offset per-strand fade matching the in-game
depth-shaded spin.

Note: requires the `spiral_tail` catalog entry on the API side to be
purchasable/selectable; without it nothing changes visually and the
schema tolerates its absence.

## Testing

- New `tests/SpiralTrails.test.ts`: ribbon gating by owner/unit type,
sample spacing + monotonic distances, strand clamp + pitch-derived
twist, death cleanup mutating the live array, params staying fixed for
in-flight ribbons
- New `tests/TrailManager.test.ts`: baseline stamping behavior (plain
boat trails, nuke-bit stamping up to lastPos, death cleanup with overlap
repaint)
- `tests/CosmeticSchemas.test.ts`: spiral attribute parsing incl. the
exact catalog shape, required-field/positivity rejections
- Full suite green; `tsc` and lint clean
- Verified visually: a standalone WebGL harness drove the real ribbon
shaders (glow split, palette colors, spin, cone convergence), and a real
solo game boots with zero GL errors

🤖 Generated with [Claude Code](https://claude.com/claude-code)

---------

Co-authored-by: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-17 17:51:31 -07:00
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