Wednesday, November 11, 2026

Whole on every screen, and the two hundredth page

Candy Crawl's cleared maze no longer rounds up past the edge of the biggest phones; the Bestiary's Android cover takes its wear from the 1872 binding itself; the gamebook reaches 200 pages live after one page needed five readings; three screenshot flags come back to Floating Ink.

Halloween's Witch's Hat and Crescent on the largest iPhone, before and after the rule that keeps a cleared maze on the screen. The Great Pumpkin beside them did not move, and neither did anything on the smaller phone in the second row.
Halloween's Witch's Hat and Crescent on the largest iPhone, before and after the rule that keeps a cleared maze on the screen. The Great Pumpkin beside them did not move, and neither did anything on the smaller phone in the second row.

Candy Crawl · Mechanical Bestiary · Floating Ink

When you clear a maze in Candy Crawl the picture pulls back to show the shape you were inside, drawn at the whole-number scale nearest to what fits. On the biggest phones two Halloween shapes rounded up past the edge and lost a wall each side. The fix is general now: when rounding up would cut a shape by more than its outline, the scale steps down one, never below three. The Witch's Hat and the Crescent are whole, and sixteen screens were checked pixel for pixel to be sure nothing else moved. The cost is honest: six small Halloween shapes come out a quarter smaller on the smallest phones, whole instead of cropped, and that trade is still an open choice.

The Mechanical Bestiary's Android cover had its sixth round. The wear on the boards is now cut from the scan of the 1872 binding we measure against, under a mask of the board's own shape, the head edge of the pages shows at eleven degrees, and the gilt catches the light as the hinge turns through a few degrees. Beside the real book the cloth and the wear hold up; the label and the lettering are what still give it away.

The gamebook stands at 200 of 227 pages live. Six held pages passed overnight, each on one named line. One page took five readings across two nights. A door was added to give its puzzle somewhere to go, then had to be trimmed, because the page it led to is already live and never mentions the puzzle. A door may not promise what the next page does not keep.

Floating Ink's screenshot flags for the fan, the lifted print and the kept note came back to the 1.1 branch; the last set had shot three plain dishes.

One honest thing. The fix that promised more was the fix that failed. The page passed only when it promised exactly what the next page gives.

Sources and thanks

  • J. G. Wood, Insects at Home (Scribner, 1872), the NCSU Libraries scan on the Internet Archive, the binding the Bestiary's cover is measured against.
  • The first drafts and the checks had help from Artisanal Intelligence; every line here was read and chosen by a person.
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