asc_particles — ASCENSION: rising motes and valley mist

Controls the two particle systems: the warm motes that rise out of the dark valley and climb with the camera, and the haze banks that separate the ridge lines.

Owns

• motes — 600 additive particles, warm → magenta, created and destroyed here.
• mist — 120 alpha sprites, emitted once at build and never re-originated.
• MOTE_Y / MOTE_RATE — the curves that carry the motes up with the ascent.
• MAX_STEP and the only :update() call on either system.

Reads from the orchestrator

Nothing but ctx, t and dt. This aspect is fully independent — it neither consumes the sun signal nor the camera, which is why it runs last.

Boundaries

• Stepping a system twice in one frame doubles its effective rate. This module owns both handles and both steps; no other aspect may call :update on them.
• Renderer indirect budget: every particle is one instance and the cap is 4096, allocated by maxCount at creation. Raising maxCount here eats headroom every other part in the demo shares — over the cap, later draws silently vanish.
• dt is capped at MAX_STEP so a hitched frame cannot fling either system forward.
• The mist is static by construction (speed = 0, gravity = 0, lifetime = 1e9, emitted once), sitting at about y = 2.5 while the camera climbs from 7.5 to 106 straight past it.