game.ui — Lanternwake's screens

The title card, the instruction form, the in-game HUD, the pause sheet and the two end cards — plus the speak contract that keeps a spoken line alive when its audio does not arrive.

Everything is laid out for 1080 x 1440, portrait. Compositions stack down the frame: no bar across the top, no row of buttons across the foot, no two-column card.

Files

What another slice can do with it

Nothing here needs to be required. Everything below is on the Core bus.

Put a line on the screen — the contract

Core.emit("speak", "vane_arrival", "Every door in this village is standing open.")

The sound slice plays the voice for the key; this slice prints the text, picks the speaker from the key's first word (vane_* → Dr. Vane, thackeray_* → Rev. Thackeray, register_*, ledger_*, letter_*, note_*), and holds it long enough to read. A line whose generation failed is still delivered, in full, in type.

Core.state.subtitle is adopted too, so a line staging writes directly is not lost between the two routes.

Put a prompt under the reticle

Core.emit("prompt", "Read the parish register", "E")   -- show it
Core.emit("prompt", "")                                 -- clear it

Correct the key legend on the instruction form

Rules owns the bindings, so rules owns what the form says about them:

Core.emit("controls", { { "Walk", "W A S D" }, { "Lantern", "F" } })

Write the end cards' closing line

Core.emit("endText", "won",    "…what the mystery slice decided actually happened.")
Core.emit("endText", "caught", "…and how the parish recorded her.")

Everything else is automatic

sigilSolved, clueFound, cryptOpen, vicarSpotted, vicarLost, playerCaught and lanternToggled are all listened for and struck on screen as announcements; phaseChanged decides which screen is up.

Which screen is up

The instruction form and the pause sheet are overlays this slice raises itself, from the title card's Instructions, the HUD's pause mark, and Esc.

Core.state.uiScreen is the one Core field this slice writes.

Phase requests

Rules owns phase. A button here asks for a transition on the bus — uiBegin, uiAbandon, uiRestart — and gives rules a short grace period to answer. If nothing answers, this slice makes the move itself rather than leave a control that does nothing; it logs when it does. Handle those three events in rules and the fallback never runs.

Looking at a screen

Edit mode never ticks update, so this is how any screen is put on the glass to be photographed:

require("game.ui").preview("title")
require("game.ui").preview("hud", { fear = 0.7, sigils = 2, subtitle = "…" })
require("game.ui").preview("endw")
require("game.ui").preview(nil)     -- back to whatever the phase says

preview takes title · howto · hud · pause · endc · endw, and any snapshot field can be overridden for the shot. require("game.ui").debug() reports the live surface, the registered screens and the last validation.

Two things about the renderer these screens are built around

• A size value strictly between 0 and 1 is a FRACTION of the parent, not a pixel count. A 0.96 px hairline becomes a bar 96% of the parent's height. Every computed weight in art.luau is clamped above 1 for that reason.
• A wrapping label inside a centre-aligned column hugs its content and wraps to one word a line. Paragraphs go inside a column(width, …), which sets alignItems = "stretch", and the width lives on the container.