Virtual Breakout -- Releases

14 September 2026current

V1.08 2.0 MB

MD5 dad51c8a5eb23499639286f595f771fc

V1.04 went public on 7 September 2026. This is everything that has happened since — a level editor, a high score table, new music, rebuilt physics, and every defect found on the way, each with the measurement that closed it where one exists.

Counted from this project's own commit history · 2026-09-09 to 2026-09-14

245commits since V1.04

6working days

30test cartridges flashed

61entries in these notes

8conclusions retracted

20 fixes · 18 additions · 23 improvements

fixa defect that shipped in a public build. newdid not exist before. changeworked already, and was made better.

01End of run

What happens after a run ends was rebuilt around one idea: show the result first, and let the next run start clean.

changeChanged the game-over screen so that your score arrives first, in large digits, with the gap to the next record right under it.
newThe wreck of your ship drifts from the depth where it exploded, and the screen names the sector you reached.
newA high score table: five places, arcade style, with its own screen in the menu and factory scores from 2500 down to 500.
newName entry for a run that makes the table: a double-height alphabet, no timer, and only START signs — nothing is confirmed by accident.
fixFixed an issue where a second run could start with the previous run's score.
fixFixed an issue where the key press that closed one screen also closed the next one.
changeChanged game over, score table and pause so that they share one margin, with a clear row under the big digits.

02Ball, ship and collision

The physics were rewritten so that the rule you see is the rule the game applies.

changeChanged ball physics so that its position is tracked to the pixel, and every collision reads that same pixel.
fixFixed an issue where the ship returned balls it was not touching.4 px of gap, about ten times per run → 0
fixFixed an issue where a ball striking the seam between two bricks broke only one of them.
changeChanged the back shelf so that it uses one scale for everything: the far ball is 12 px.
newThe side save: the hull is solid over its whole height, so a ball caught from the side comes back — flat, and far.
newThe aiming mark shows where the ball will hit, and it reads the same rule as the ball.
changeChanged transitions so that the ship freezes during guardian intros, tallies and its own explosion.
changeChanged the serve so that a fixed prompt comes first, then blinks; A serves only once it is shown.
changeChanged WIDE HULL so that it is 72 px at the front and its collision box matches the drawing.
newLaser cannons drawn on both hulls, normal and wide, front and back.

03Reading the playfield

newPipes and elbows: indestructible passages. The ball, your shots and bomb blasts go through them.
fixFixed an issue where a laser shot or a bomb blast could break a pipe and leave a cut square in its place.
fixFixed an issue where shots fired on the back shelf were drawn in front of the front bricks.0 of 40 frames over 3 recorded runs
fixFixed an issue where a capsule falling on the back shelf was drawn in front of the front bricks.
fixFixed an issue where horizontal stripes crossed the planet behind the ALPHA sectors.one sky with 7 stripes → 0, over 101 checked
fixFixed an issue where the brick grid sat to the left of the screen.up to 20 px off centre → 0
fixFixed an issue where the indestructible brick could look like an ordinary one.
changeChanged the explosive charge so that it no longer pulses.

04The guardians

newA sector door is shown after every guardian.
fixFixed an issue where a guardian on the back shelf could be hit outside its drawing.
newThe Colossus raises its shield on the back shelf.
fixFixed an issue where the sensor beam no longer appeared in guardian fights.
changeChanged the guardian screens so that the BEAM NEAR / BEAM FAR caption is gone.
fixFixed an issue where a campaign started after BOSS RUSH did not begin at sector 1.

05Power-ups

Capsules now follow Arkanoid's rule, and they were redrawn to read like it.

changeChanged power-ups so that they have no countdown: a power lasts until you lose the ball, clear the sector or start a new run.
changeChanged LASER and WIDE HULL so that they stack.
changeChanged bonus bricks so that each shelf, front and back, has one, and its capsule is caught on that shelf.
changeChanged the capsule into a rolling pill with a bold letter — L or E — turning over eight frames, longer on the front shelf.
fixFixed an issue where a second capsule vanished while another was still falling. It now waits its turn.
fixFixed an issue where a capsule could appear or be caught during a transition.

06Menu and title screen

The largest addition of this release lives here: the level editor.

newLEVEL EDITOR: four series of up to twelve stages, built on both shelves with five tools — one-hit and two-hit bricks, steel, bombs and pipes.
newEditing tools: undo and redo over eight gestures, a mirror mode, a live background picker, and a preview of the tool on the target cell.
newTest a stage on the spot with endless lives, return to the exact cell, and play a whole series as a run of its own.
newSeries operations: duplicate, copy one of the game's sectors, delete, practice from a stage, rename, erase all.
newYour series are saved on the cartridge, with a checksum that falls back to the factory set instead of loading damaged data.
changeChanged the editor so that nothing is refused: the last gesture wins, and a piece that cannot sit on a cell moves to the nearest one that allows it.
changeChanged the menu so that playing comes first: seven entries, from CAMPAIGN to GALLERY, with HIGH SCORES and LEVEL EDITOR added.
fixFixed an issue where the menu's second screen pointed the ship at an empty row and left the list's icons on screen.
fixFixed an issue where the best score and the bottom line of the title screen flickered.dark frames 18/30 → 0/15
fixFixed an issue where the title sun was clipped.
fixFixed an issue where a screen could lose control of its inputs before its fade to black.

07Audio, and a new opening screen

newAn opening logo, AI CRAFTED: a knot of three snakes in depth, announced by a single voice. It leaves on its own.
newThree title themes that rotate each time the title comes back.
newFour new tracks: two title variations, a high score theme (AFTERGLOW) and a theme for your own stages (NEON ARP). The jukebox holds thirteen.
newA sound of its own when you gain a life.
changeChanged the title theme's bass so that it can be heard on the console speaker.
changeChanged game sounds so that they always sit above the loudest in-game music.four effects 6/15 → 7/15
changeChanged music playback so that only one track is loaded at a time.12 resident sounds removed
fixFixed an issue where the opening theme kept looping after testing a stage from the editor.

08Under the hood

What keeps the fixes above from coming back.

changeMeasured the brick cap before building the editor on it: 24 or 28 visible bricks stop the console, 21 do not.
changeThe release test battery was itself repaired: two of its stations had been red, or silent, on healthy builds since V1.04.
changeThe publishing script now archives the previous current ROM from the live registry and refuses to publish if any version would disappear.without it, V1.04 would have been overwritten
changeThe manual's asset check now proves identity by regenerating the file, not by comparing dates.5 assets wrongly called stale
changeThe manual and this site were rebuilt from this exact ROM: every capture carries the fingerprint of the build it came from.

09Where this was wrong

In this release, 8 conclusions had to be taken back — most of them by the tools meant to catch mistakes:

The release battery reported the boot screen red for a week. The build was fine: the check was judging the engine's own splash page as if it were the game.
The long sessions meant to watch the ball cross the pipes never left that splash page on a release build. Their 22 frames of circuit board were read as near; once the demo did run, the ship's hull was read as the word far.
A laser shot was declared unable to break a pipe on a test where the laser never fired.
The planet stripes were first blamed on the moon backdrops. They were clean; the stripes were in another asset.
A capsule rotation the player had approved was replaced by a wobble, without saying so.
The plan to fix the mix would have lowered the title theme — undoing a bass the player had asked to hear.
Five assets were declared stale on their dates. Regenerated, they were identical to the byte.
The first publication of this very release was one step from overwriting V1.04.

A check that has never been seen failing is not a check.

10Known issues

Open, and each one named rather than hidden:

Crossing the pipes cannot be watched automatically: the demo hides the plane banner. It is checked on the console.
Catching a back-shelf capsule at the back, two bonuses in a row, a bomb blast on the bonus brick and the Scavenger's capsule were not observed in the emulator: the ball is lost before a scripted test can reach them. They are on the console checklist.
Winning a test stage and winning a whole series in the editor were not observed in the emulator for the same reason.
The Colossus' back-shelf shield was not seen rising in a 20-second recorded fight. It is checked on the console.
Each guardian having its own pattern and animation is designed, and scheduled after this release.

The rule this project runs on is unchanged: an item closes when it is fixed, when it is proven not to exist, or when it is explicitly refused.

7 September 2026previous

V1.04

Download V1.04

MD5 9b4473a09ad191c8a8af10344fdc9442

The first ROM went public on 31 August 2026. V1.04 gathered everything that happened to it in its first week — every defect found and every change made, in the order a player meets them, each with the measurement that closed it where one exists.

Counted from this project's own commit history · 2026-09-03 to 2026-09-14

489commits since launch

11days

11builds flashed to a cartridge

71entries on this page

2independent external audits

11conclusions retracted

fixa defect that shipped in the launch build. newdid not exist before. changeworked already, and was made better.

01End of run

The summary screen drew the loudest complaint after launch, and it got a version of its own.

fixFixed an issue where the summary panel stuttered as it arrived. It was travelling in depth; the ramp was removed outright rather than slowed.travel 5 px → 0 px
fixFixed an issue where the score could overflow its counter.
fixFixed an issue where the high score was inferred from state that could be stale, instead of being proven. It is also now taken on winning, not on any end of run.
fixFixed an issue where the combo threshold was set to a value the game could never reach.
fixFixed an issue where the safe stopped keeping your record, because the routine meant to repair it destroyed it.
fixFixed an issue where the end-of-run verdict was written directly over the scenery.
fixFixed an issue where the summary promised more than it awarded.
changeChanged the frame so that it is sized to what it encloses, widening with the number of digits in the total.
changeChanged the total to large digits, and made it count up rather than appear, so that the number is the thing you look at.cost: 0 additional tiles
changeChanged the wait after a lost ball so that the run resumes sooner.2.4 s → 1.8 s
changeChanged the summary so that it waits for your hand, including after a lost life.
changeChanged the floor and the stars to dim while the summary is up, so that it is read against something quiet.
newFour distinct sounds on the summary, so that the threshold can be heard as well as seen.

02Ball, ship and collision

A written collision contract, a probe that measures it, and then every place in the code that disagreed with it.

fixFixed an issue where « a brick is hit » existed as three separate copies in the code, which had already drifted apart.
fixFixed an issue where the struck face did not decide which axis reversed. A side hit had never reversed horizontal travel before this version.
fixFixed an issue where a movement step could end inside a brick.a counter now proves none does
fixFixed an issue where a diagonal could cut a corner and pass through it.
fixFixed an issue where bricks the ball had not actually touched could break.
fixFixed an issue where the ship did not catch what it appeared to be catching.
fixFixed an issue where the serve did not always leave from the same notch.
fixFixed an issue where a back-shelf brick was not drawn at the width of its own cell. There is now one formula for a brick's position, and a lock that checks every brick sits on its cell.
changeChanged the bounce so that it is read on the cells the ball swept, rather than on an overlap measured at the end of the step.
changeChanged the ball to carry an outline — and not a black one — so that it stays readable crossing a bright wall.
changeChanged the ship so that it runs when the ball is far away.
changeChanged the serve angles so that 45° is reachable again, and the ship's nudge has a visible effect.

03Reading the playfield

fixFixed an issue where a TNT chain detonated the wrong cell.1 in 7 landed where it should
fixFixed an issue where the unbreakable brick was the tonal twin of an ordinary one on the back shelf. It now carries a clear ring and four rivets, keeps bright edges on both shelves, and has lost the diagonal gash that made it look already damaged.
fixFixed an issue where the sector name was wrong, and off-centre.
changeChanged a charge's neighbours to carry a slash — half of the bomb's X — so that the relationship reads without comparing two bricks side by side. Sectors 5 and 11 are where you will meet it.distinctness 4.3 % → 8.6 %
changeChanged the TNT chain so that it can be seen as it runs.
changeChanged sprite size so that it states which shelf a thing is on — including the things that shoot at you.
changeChanged the back-shelf exit so that it rises, and added a world gate that suspends the playfield instead of leaving it live underneath.

04The guardians

fixFixed an issue where BOSS RUSH froze on opponents 2 and 3. Bisection placed the cause before the campaign that found it — it was on the cartridge people were already playing.distinct frames 6/95 → 94/95, two runs either side
fixFixed an issue where BOSS RUSH entered the playfield twice.
fixFixed an issue where the guardians' cadence was inverted, so that a fight became easier the longer it lasted.
fixFixed an issue where boss rush did not end the way a boss rush should.
fixFixed an issue where the ball was left wherever it happened to be when a guardian arrived, instead of returning to the ship.
changeChanged the guardian's introduction so that it can be watched — and skipped.
changeDocumented the four guardians as one written grammar and one truth table, one source per case, so that what each does and at what range cannot drift again.

05Losing

Two ways of dying that disagreed with each other on eight separate points.

fixFixed an issue where dying to guardian fire, rather than to the ball, produced a silent end screen: no jingle, music still running, and no closing line.
fixFixed an issue where guardian projectiles already in flight kept flying after you died.
fixFixed an issue where GAME OVER was written and then erased in the same frame.
fixFixed an issue where the game-over background was red.
fixFixed an issue where the end of a run did not wait for the player, and its verdict could land on an explosion still playing.
fixFixed an issue where « losing a life » and « scoring a point » each had more than one site in the code.
changeChanged the end screen so that it is centred and states how far you got.
changeChanged every continue prompt so that one key does it, and that key is A.

06Menu and title screen

fixFixed a crash on the title screen.
fixFixed an issue where a setting you chose did not survive a run.
fixFixed an issue where a setting applied to the previous run rather than the one you were launching.
fixFixed an issue where PRESS A appeared on three of the five menu entries.
fixFixed an issue where arrows promised movement at a level where nothing moved.
changeChanged the menu to a black ground with one decision per page instead of a list, so that each screen asks a single question.
changeChanged the difficulty setting to lives, and made it cost something: rank, threshold and bubbles now all follow one scale.
changeChanged the title screen so that it says one thing.
newThe title grid lights up from the vanishing point and sweeps toward the horizon.
new« The intention is human » is spoken on every arrival at the title screen.

07Audio, and a new opening screen

Answering a criticism made at launch, rather than ignoring it.

newA studio-logo screen before everything else: an ouroboros drawn as a hazard triangle, CAUTION · AI SLOPE, and a spoken reply.
newSpeech on the Virtual Boy — two lines, in two different voices.
fixFixed an issue where the voice was telephone quality, because the PCM rate had been left at the engine default.8 kHz → 16.7 kHz
fixFixed an issue where the voice was run through a distorter where it needed a compressor. Ring modulation was switched off entirely, and the result improved on every measure taken.
fixFixed an issue where the 6-bit noise floor sat above the speech, so that the silences were not silent.
fixFixed an issue where the mix was paying for bass the console's speaker cannot reproduce.high-pass at 100 Hz
fixFixed an issue where the opening screen's glow pulsed the panel's shadow rather than its lit levels.
fixFixed an issue where the title voice would not play at all, because it could not run on a 10 ms timer.
changeChanged the opening screen's exit delay so that it is derived from the length of the voice rather than guessed, and removed Read instruction booklet from the boot chain.

08Under the hood

Most of the commits behind this page are not in the lists above, and they are the reason those lists hold: locks, instruments and single-site rewrites — the work that stops a fixed defect from coming back.

changeA non-regression reference was frozen, and every recorded run now has to prove it is actually playing before it counts.the lock was proven in both directions after seven corrections
changeA stale rule inside a verification tool was rejecting everything it was shown.401 captures out of 401 barred
changeA recording session was taking one frame in eleven and reporting success. The batch it was meant to judge went out as NOT OBSERVED while the ROM was in fact healthy.
changeEvery written promise the game makes on screen was inventoried against what it does.found two false statements — only one was known
changeBuild time, measured in both directions on cold builds producing a byte-identical ROM. This is the development chain, not the game.35 min 11 s → 3 min 44 s (9.4×)

09Where this was wrong

A changelog that lists only victories is a marketing document. Over these days, 11 conclusions recorded in this project had to be taken back:

A diagnosis reversed itself once the sprites were examined magnified. A memory leak was announced — there was no leak, and the earlier conclusion was the error. A plan rested on a premise that was false, and the specification already said so. Two corrections had to be applied to a commit made the same day. A hypothesis was refuted by arithmetic before it cost a build.

And a change to the sound was flashed to the cartridge without replaying the sound measurement. The instrument existed — in a throwaway script, in a temporary folder, dead by the next morning.

An instrument that lives in a draft is not an instrument.

2 independent external audits were run against the code in this period. The second was commissioned specifically to find the class of defect the first could not see. Both found real defects, and both sets are in the lists above.

10Known issues

Open, tracked, and each carrying its own evidence:

The ball's exact collision box is deliberately held back until a verdict comes back from the console, rather than changed ahead of one.
The non-regression lock does not yet cover guardian fights. Two distinct causes, both identified.
Twelve batches from a campaign that was stopped mid-flight were converted into tracked follow-ups rather than quietly dropped.

The rule this project runs on: an item closes when it is fixed, when it is proven not to exist, or when it is explicitly refused. « We will live with it » is not one of the three.

31 August 2026previous

V1.0 1.0 MB

The launch build, kept available exactly as it went out. It has the defects listed above — that is what the lists are — but a link that was in circulation should not stop working because a newer build exists.

Download V1.0

MD5 8117cb372d0a9fdbafdfa3b4fa685ddd