Arenas inherit from a new arena_base.tscn instead of restating ~40 shared
lines each; only sky/ambient/glow/tint/decoration vary, exposed via new
Arena exports since nested Environment properties aren't overridable
through scene inheritance. Bot construction and score-keeping move onto
GameMode, shared by match and spectate modes while preserving their
differing GameSettings-override behavior and the HUD's score-row
duck-typing. HUD instruments share a HudInstrument base for the
smoothing-weight calc and angle-lerp helper. Also dedupes
MAIN_MENU_SCENE_PATH into ScenePaths and documents why DIFFICULTIES
tiers share one checkpoint.
Enable glow/bloom, color adjustments, and MSAA+FXAA across all three
arenas so emissive ship/station accents actually bleed light and edges
read cleanly. Expose the player-facing knobs (anti-aliasing mode, glow
intensity, brightness) through a new Settings screen off the main menu,
persisted via a VideoSettings autoload that scales each arena's own
tuned Environment values on load rather than overwriting them.
Introduce arena_02 (Nebula) and arena_03 (Asteroid Field) alongside
arena_01, listed in a new ArenaRegistry (scripts/arena_registry.gd) as
the single source of truth for available arenas. Free Play lets the
player pick an arena from the main menu; Match/Spectate each pick one
at random per session; Training keeps its own fixed arena_01.
Nebula gets an RL-style visual treatment: a near-invisible glass
boundary material shared by all arenas, a baked equirect nebula sky
texture, a drifting-dust particle system, and a Blender-modeled
station/debris/planet decoration set. GameMode gains a
_get_arena_scene_path() hook so modes can instantiate their arena in
code instead of hardcoding it in the scene.
Replace the raw checkpoint dropdown with curated Easy/Medium/Hard presets
that drive GameSettings' bot model/reaction_ticks/action_noise overrides.
Move raw-checkpoint testing and Spectate mode into a dev-only section
hidden via OS.is_debug_build() so they disappear from release exports.
Josh Creek