Chapter 10
The Master Script
The whole of a run of Alpha v8.4, step by step from the page loading to the end of the universe and the start of the next, each step in plain words with the code that does it.
Chapter 10
The Master Script
This chapter is the game in order. Chapters 1 to 9 take the game law by law; this one takes it moment by moment, the way a player meets it: the page opens, the player paints a pinpoint and presses Start, the Pulsecore fills and breaks open in its two novas, the universe lives through its harmonics to its final well, returns to the Source, and either seeds a child or decays into nothing. Every numbered step is one thing the game does, said plainly first, with the code that does it under each stage.
The code is Alpha v8.4, live at /game/. It is quoted from public/game-v8.4/, and the page itself from game/v8.4/index.php. Quoted lines are trimmed with … where a line carries drawing or bookkeeping that does not change the step; nothing is reworded. Where a step stands on a law of Binary Pulse Theory, the law is named and the Part of this book that treats it is given.
Two words are used throughout. A flip is one pass of the cell rule, one Rhythm: every pulsing cell turns 0 → 1 or 1 → 0. A Tempo is two flips, the whole pulse 0 → 1 → 0, and the laws count Tempos. The game's own counter, pulseCounter, counts flips.