multiplayer-next.md was a 1662-line mix of standing architecture spec
and task-completion tracking, most of which was dense per-task DONE
evidence for finished Phases 0-6. Split it:
- MULTIPLAYER_SPEC.md (new): the locked architecture decisions, wire
format, server-side input handling, prediction/reconciliation,
latency/frame-rate budget, and match lifecycle state machine -
standing design reference, not task-tracked.
- multiplayer-next.md (trimmed 1662 -> ~370 lines): only outstanding
work remains - §0 status, §7 Phase 7/8 task tables condensed to
"what's left" per task, §8-11 reference material (refactoring notes,
gotchas, testing, flagged items). Phases 0-6 collapsed to a pointer
at git history instead of ~500 lines of DONE evidence.
Also:
- Repointed every `multiplayer-next.md §N` code comment (N 1-6) across
Game/scripts, Game/tools and Game/tests to MULTIPLAYER_SPEC.md, since
those sections moved. Task-number references (`task N.N`, §7-11)
correctly still point at multiplayer-next.md.
- Updated CLAUDE.md's doc index and docs/TECH_STACK.md's spec-section
citations to match.
- TODO.md: added a "what's left to actually finish multiplayer
(human-actionable)" checklist pulled from multiplayer-next.md §0 and
docs/MATCHMAKING.md - things that need a person (hardware, a design
decision, a Steam App ID, hands on a controller), not more agent code.
multiplayer-todo.md and multiplayer-next.md tracked overlapping
information in two places. Fold everything into multiplayer-next.md
(architecture decisions, wire format, task breakdown with checkboxes,
gotchas list, testing notes) and delete multiplayer-todo.md. Section
numbers are unchanged, so existing code comments citing them by
section/task number still resolve; update every such reference to
point at the new filename.
A second adversarial review of the previous fix commit found two of its
nine fixes silently defeated each other: the seq-range guard (fix for a
MEDIUM epoch-mismatch finding) capped the exact variable the ring-overflow
resync (fix for the original CRITICAL finding) depends on, making the
resync unreachable in production and recreating permanent input death at
a lower failure threshold, reachable via ordinary server tick loss alone.
- CRITICAL: rebind the seq-range guard to InputJitterBuffer's own
highest_ingested_seq (now public) instead of the consumer-side
last_applied_seq, so it tracks the client's send epoch rather than a
value that can lag arbitrarily far behind during a stall.
- HIGH: InputLeadController's release logic still ANDed the old
`lead > LEAD_MIN` gate onto the new depth-driven condition, so a
backlog the controller never caused still couldn't drain. Split into
two independent decisions: the seq-duplicate action follows real
depth alone; lead's own bookkeeping separately never drops below its
floor.
- MEDIUM: widen the CI driver's movement/stalled sampling margin
(run_seconds - 2.0, was - 0.5) and assert the peer is still in
multiplayer.get_peers() at sample time, since the old margin let the
check pass on residual starvation grace after a bot had already
disconnected.
- LOW: measure horizontal-only displacement in the human smoke test's
movement check — the old 3D-distance bar was beatable by pure
gravity settling with fully dead input.
- LOW: fix a real "clean stderr" violation (match_net.gd broadcasting
a departure notice to a peer whose ENet channels are already torn
down, including a second peer disconnecting in the same poll batch)
by deferring the notification to the next idle frame.
- Wire the server's per-slot stalled bit into the client debug overlay
for real — a prior commit message claimed this already reached the
overlay when only the CI gate actually read it.
Re-verified end-to-end against the real production RPC path (not just
unit tests in isolation, which is how the composition bug got past the
first round): a 2-bot CI match with a 1.5s host SIGSTOP freeze injected
mid-run, well past the 0.6s threshold the review reproduced the bug at,
now recovers cleanly on repeated runs with zero stderr noise.
Lands tasks 1.0-1.8 of multiplayer-todo.md: the pure-function test runner,
net_codec (wire format quantizers/pack-unpack), NetworkManager (ENet
transport, manual polling, min-RTT clock sync), MatchNet (handshake,
protocol/tick-rate gating, roster with team+ready state), lobby.tscn (team
columns, switch team, ready toggle), server_boot.tscn (headless dedicated
server with structured logging and an overrun watchdog), and main_menu.gd's
Host/Join-by-IP UI (connecting overlay, cancel, bounded failure path).
Followed by an adversarial review (Opus subagent) that found and fixed two
real bugs - an unvalidated player_name broadcast that let one client's
oversized name head-of-line-block the reliable channel for everyone, and a
server-side roster leak across a host/re-host cycle - plus three gaps in
the test suite itself where a claim of "verified" wasn't actually backed
by what the test checked. All five two-process smoke tests plus the
pure-function suite are green with the strengthened assertions in place.
Josh Creek