duel

The rules of the Hedgerow Assizes, in one place: the ground plan of the walled garden, the frame data of the four commitments, the measure each one works at, the triangle that decides what a contact means, how far a post drives the property line, and the roster of neighbours with the fencing each one keeps. Every duel component reads its numbers from here, so the whole match is tuned in one file.

Consumed by Fencer, FencerAI, DuelMatch, DuelHud, DuelFx, garden and the main scene's entrypoint.

The measure

Each action carries a band, not a range: reach is the furthest the blade crosses and minReach the nearest — inside that, the panel is smothered and the attack is crowded out. advance is the ground the commitment itself takes, so every attack steps in and a defender cannot simply walk backwards out of the sport. A commitment that reached nobody runs its recovery from a debt, and that debt is the whole punishment for committing at the wrong distance.

Action	windup	active	recover	reach	minReach	advance	whiff	parried
thrust	0.22	0.10	0.42	2.55	1.55	0.35	0.35	0.45
sweep	0.34	0.20	0.58	2.15	0.00	0.25	0.55	0.65
lunge	0.30	0.16	0.95	3.05	1.75	1.30 †	1.00	1.20
parry	0.05	0.34	0.40	—	—	—	0.30	—

† The lunge is marked recoil: whatever of its advance it managed to cover it gives back over its own recovery, travelling backwards and unable to answer anything while it does. It buys reach; it never buys position.

The triangle

parry turns a thrust and a lunge aside and earns a riposte; a sweep crashes through a held guard; a thrust arrives inside a sweep's long wind-up. A riposte cannot be turned at all.

The guard answers from its first frame. resolveTouch treats a parry in windup exactly as it treats one in active, because a guard that only worked once it had finished rising could be beaten by an attack thrown from further out than the wind-up is long — which made a correct read lose to a committed attack, the one outcome the triangle exists to prevent.

What a post is worth

A post is not a fixed step. Three properties of the ground decide how far the line moves, and between them they are what gives a bout its length:

POST_STEP	1.15	fresh mown lawn in the middle of a garden
POST_ROOTED	0.60	the last feet before a hedge are old rooted ground, and give up to this much of the step
POST_RECLAIM	0.35	lawn you already conceded holds somebody else's posts; they come out before the line passes back
POST_CHURN	0.05	each post already driven breaks the ground a little further, to POST_CHURN_MAX

postDrive(line, dir, posts, driven) is the whole rule. Rooted ground stops a garden being annexed by a short run of luck; conceded ground stops two even fencers walking the line back and forth all afternoon. Chosen against a simulation of the rule over 600 bouts a configuration, with the riposte rate and touch cadence taken from played logs: a median bout of about 20 touches, 80 % of bouts between 45 s and 120 s.

The roster, and how each one fences

NEIGHBOURS is the roster — index, key, skill and style. STYLES is the fencing attached to each key, and it is what makes three opponents rather than one opponent at three settings:

	hold	think	patience	adapt	boundary
pettifer	+0.55	1.45	2.4	0.6	0.0
wickham	0.00	0.90	1.0	2.2	0.15
ashcombe	−0.35	0.75	0.6	1.1	1.0

hold moves the measure held at rest; think the pause between commitments; patience how long an opponent who has offered nothing is indulged before the touch is simply fetched; adapt how heavily a repeated stroke steers the answer and how much faster the eye settles on one it has seen; boundary how far the defence of one's own ground stiffens the fencing as the line comes back toward one's own hedge. w* are the standing appetites for each commitment.

style(key) falls back to wickham's for an unknown name rather than erroring.

Surface

• ACTIONS — the table above.
• isAttack(name), reachOf(name, isRiposte), windupOf(name, isRiposte), advanceSpeed(name), whiffOf(name), parriedOf(name).
• resolveTouch(attack, defAction, defPhase, isRiposte) — "touch" | "parried" | "nothing".
• measureFault(name, gap, isRiposte) — "short" | "crowded" | nil.
• postDrive(line, dir, posts, driven) — metres one touch moves the boundary.
• resetX(line, side) / clampX(x, line, side, foeX) — where a fencer stands, and how far it may travel: bounded by the opponent, not by the line.
• winner(line) — "player" | "rival" | nil for the boundary's position.
• NEIGHBOURS, neighbour(index), neighbourIndexOf(key), neighbourNearestSkill(skill), STYLES, style(key).
• LAWN_HALF, LINE_LIMIT, POST_STEP, POST_ROOTED, POST_RECLAIM, POST_CHURN, POST_CHURN_MAX, RIPOSTE_POSTS, STANCE, WALK_SPEED, RETREAT_FACTOR, MIN_GAP, LEASH, RIPOSTE_WINDOW, RIPOSTE_QUICK, RIPOSTE_REACH, CLASH_PUSHBACK, HIT_STUN, SALUTE_TIME, TOUCH_PAUSE, SIDE, COLOR.