GameLoop

The rules of First Light: Vagant, on the mount_loop entity. It is the only writer of fl.state; every other slice reads that table or subscribes through fl.on.

It owns the dawn clock, the lantern and its oil, the relight, the jasey going on and off and getting soaked and dried, the vagant's walking and wading speed, and the win/lose machine. It owns vagant.inputMap — the world's one control scheme, carrying keyboard, gamepad and touch on every control — and therefore the on-screen touch buttons the night is played with.

Public fields

• inputMap: assetRef(inputMap) — the scheme to run. Defaults to vagant.
• autoStart: bool — start the night without waiting for a title card to be taken. Off by default: the loop sits in title until something calls fl.beginRound(), which is what the screens slice's title card does.

The one scheme

The engine's CharacterController (on the vagant's body) and third_person_follow (on the CameraRig) each activate an input map of their own, defaulting to @builtin::inputMaps.default. Left alone that map is live beside this game's: two movement sticks, five touch buttons that do nothing, and hood fighting the default look for the right mouse button.

So at the frame the local player is ready, this component walks the avatar and camera-rig subtrees and points every component carrying an inputMap field at vagant.inputMap. That field is read once, when a controller arms, and none of them watch it afterwards — so the gameplay clock is held for ONE frame and let go, which is the hook they already register (CameraRig.driveWhileRunning) to hand their controls back and take them again, re-reading the field on the way in. It has to be a real frame: holding and releasing inside one call re-arms them on the map they already had.

Two things then still draw the engine's own buttons on a phone, and both are cleared once every controller is re-armed: whatever still holds @builtin::inputMaps.default at the scheme layer is released, and the compatibility action registry the touch overlay also draws from is displaced with an empty one. After that the overlay carries exactly this game's five buttons — Relight, Hood, Run, Climb, Pause — plus the movement stick and the look-drag zone.

Driving the night from another slice

screens and staging call these rather than writing fl.state:

• fl.beginRound() — a title card was taken; run the staged opening.
• fl.openingDone() — the opening beat has finished; hand the fen over. If nothing calls it, the night starts anyway after fl.TUNE.OPENING_MAX_SECONDS, so a missing cutscene can never strand a player on a dead screen.
• fl.setMenu(open) — a card went up or came down. Holds the clock and the vagant while it is up.
• fl.restart() — an end card was taken; walk out onto the fen again.

Phases

title → opening → play → won | lost, with paused sitting beside play. Every change fires phase(new, old).

Lamps

The fen slice dresses the seven anchors and hands each one over with fl.registerLamp. If nothing has by fl.TUNE.LAMP_REGISTER_GRACE seconds into the night, this registers the bare scene anchors instead and gives each a stand-in warm light when it is relit — a night is always winnable. A fen that shipped registers first and none of that runs.

Water

fl.waterDepthAt(x, z) answers how deep the vagant is standing. The fen slice hands the probe over with fl.provideWater(fn); until it does the answer is dry ground, which is a walkable fen rather than a broken one. Past TUNE.WET_DEPTH the wig soaks; past TUNE.WADE_DEPTH the walk drops to TUNE.WADE_SPEED and running is refused; past TUNE.DOUSE_DEPTH the lantern goes out.

Lifecycle

• awake() — resolves the scheme, registers the loop driver on fl, subscribes to caught and hunt, and enters title.
• update(dt) — the night, one frame at a time. Play mode only.
• editorUpdate(dt) — hands the scheme back whenever the gameplay clock is held, so the pointer belongs to the editor's camera while authoring.
• onDestroy() — releases the scheme and every subscription.

Usage

entity("mount_loop").component.get("GameLoop")   -- the mount the scene carries
fl.beginRound()                                  -- start a night