Sniper
A shooting range seen through a scope. Everybody gets their own copy of the same ten plates, drawn from the seed, and the first to knock all ten down wins the stage. The scope sways, the bolt takes time whether you hit or miss, and holding your breath steadies the picture for three seconds.
The range
- Ten targets, drawn from the seed the match was made with, standing in three bands across a hillside: gongs near, paper bulls in the middle, small plates far away.
- A far plate is smaller on the screen and harder to hold, which is the whole difference between the bands. Nothing else about them differs.
- Everybody shoots the same range. It is not a shared range: you each get your own copy, so nobody can take a plate you were lining up.
- One of the middle targets is a swinger. It turns edge on for a second and change, shows its face for a little longer, and a shot at its edge does nothing at all.
- The plates are public. They are on your page before the stage starts, and the bot is looking at the same ten.
Shooting
- Nothing starts until every shooter has pressed Ready. Three seconds at the ready position after that, then the stage begins, and nothing you press before it counts.
- The arrow keys, or A, W, S and D, pan the scope. On a phone the pad under the disc does the same. The scope has weight: it takes a moment to get going and it drifts on after you let go.
- Space fires. On a phone, the fire button does.
- Every shot works the bolt, and the rifle will not fire again for nearly a second. A miss costs exactly what a hit costs, which is what makes a rushed shot expensive.
- The scope sways, and the longer you have been moving it the worse the sway gets. Hold it still for a moment and it settles.
- Hold your breath, with Shift or the breath button, and the sway stops dead for three seconds. Then it costs you: the scope is at its worst for the next two and a half seconds and there is nothing you can do to cut that short.
- The sway is the same for everybody on the same tick. It is drawn from the seed, never from what you are pressing, so it can be learned rather than merely suffered.
How a stage ends
- A stage ends when everybody has cleared their range, or ten seconds after the first shooter clears, whichever comes first.
- That ten seconds is the whole game at the end: if somebody clears while you have two plates left, you have ten seconds to knock them down and take second rather than last.
- Shooters are placed by the time they cleared. Equal times share a place, as they do in a race.
- Points are seats in the match, less your place, plus one: at four shooters a win is four points and last is one.
- A stage still running after five minutes is stopped where it stands, and anybody who has not cleared is placed by how many plates they had left. A stage that is being shot never gets near it.
The match
- Three stages, each on a fresh range from the same seed. The points are added up and the most wins.
- Level on points is a draw. There is no shoot-off.
- Three stages rather than one so that a bad first range is not the match, and so that somebody who finds the rhythm on the second can still take it.
- A player who resigns is out of the match and the others play the stages that are left.
- Everybody is shooting at once, so the site's move deadline of five minutes is only a dead man's switch: if nothing happens at all for that long the match is abandoned and nobody is rated.
- A shooter who drops out is covered by the bot within half a second and gets the scope back the moment they return. Somebody away for more than half the stages forfeits their seat; somebody whose phone dropped for a few seconds keeps their result.
Worth knowing before you start
- Sniper needs a live connection. If your browser or network cannot open one the page says so rather than offering a stage that cannot be timed.
- Your own page runs the same simulation the server is running, from the same range and your own presses, so the scope answers the frame you moved it in rather than a frame and a half later.
- If your connection hiccups the server is right and your page slides the reticle across to where the server has it, rather than jumping it.
- You cannot see through anybody else's scope. The only thing you are told about a rival is how many plates they have left, which is all a spotter would tell you.
- The bot shoots at one of three strengths, drawn per match from the seed. The weakest one is slow to find the next plate and pulls its shots; the strongest picks the nearest plate and waits for the scope to settle.
- A stage is stored as the presses that made it, so a finished match can be replayed and checked from its log.
Nobody can reach into anybody else's range, which is what lets your own page run the stage rather than guess at it: your stage is decided entirely by the range and your own presses, and both are already on your page. The server runs the same thing fifty times a second and is the clock, so a fast connection cannot buy a faster stage and a slow one cannot lose you a shot you actually took.
Sniper terms
- A plate
- A steel target. It falls over and rings when you hit it. Ten of them is a range, and knocking all ten down is a clear.
- A bull
- A paper target in the middle band. It punches rather than falling, and counts the same as a plate.
- The swinger
- The one target that turns. Edge on it cannot be hit at all, so it is a plate you have to wait for rather than aim at.
- The bolt
- The time the rifle takes after every shot, hit or miss. Nearly a second, and it is why accuracy is quicker than speed.
- The sway
- The scope's drift. It grows the longer you have been panning and settles when you hold still. Everybody on the same tick has the same sway.
- A breath
- Three seconds of a perfectly still scope, then two and a half seconds of the worst sway there is. Nothing cuts either short.
- A stage
- One range, shot by everybody at once. Three of them is a match, and each is scored on its own.
- The grace
- The ten seconds everybody else has after the first shooter clears. It is what makes a stage a race rather than a set of solo runs.