Neon Cue v1.12.0 — Cue Atelier, take-back & sharper physics

What's new

Cues

• Four new cues: Ash Linen, Bank Ivory, Helix Carbon and Aurora Crystal. There are now 12 in total.
• Every cue has its own character:
  • a draw curve: soft cues stay gentle for touch shots, heavy cues reach full speed sooner for breaking;
  • a one-line trait;
  • its own strike sound.
• New Feather touch perk: soft strokes stay almost perfectly straight.
• Cue Atelier: dress any cue you own with marks on the forearm, wrap or sleeve, plus a trim, wrap, sheen, butt ornament and your signature. It is cosmetic only; the stroke does not change.

Play

• Take back a shot with Backspace or Ctrl+Z, up to eight of your shots.
• Practice mode: right-click a ball to pick it up and place it anywhere.
• F11 switches to fullscreen.
• The cue now follows the mouse pointer exactly. Drag back to draw the cue, then release to shoot; ease forward to cancel.

Physics and AI

• The cushion nose now sits above the ball's equator, so follow and draw change the rebound. Rubber gives back less at higher speeds.
• Combination shots resolve correctly: the ball at the pocket falls and the striker stays out.
• Fast balls can no longer pass through each other.
• The AI, the aim assist and the guide aim at a point that clears the pocket jaws.
• The AI levels have been rebalanced. Amateur now plays safeties, banks and combos; Master searches safeties more widely.

Reliability

• If the game crashes, the details are saved to %AppData%\NeonCue\crash.log.
• New automatic checks on every build: take-back, exact aiming, and cue drawing at every angle.

How to play

Download NeonCue-win-x64.zip, unzip it, and run NeonCue.exe. .NET is bundled, so nothing else needs installing.

The game is not code-signed yet:

• If Windows SmartScreen appears, click More info → Run anyway.
• If Smart App Control is on, Windows blocks unsigned apps completely.

Neon Cue v1.11.0 — Professional interface

A professional new look

The whole interface has been redesigned in a clean broadcast-sports style, replacing the bright neon colours:

• Design: charcoal panels with thin borders, champagne gold for player 1 and steel blue for player 2, letter-spaced headings and no glows.
• In game: a TV-style score strip with a win-chance bar, a slimmer power and spin bar, and lower-third message plates. The pause, end-of-rack and statistics screens are restyled to match.
• Main menu: a settings card, a gold PLAY button and a racked set of 3D balls under a table lamp.
• Cue shop: dark cards with gold selection, muted rarity colours, thin gold stat bars with a marker for your current cue, and outlined perk tags.
• Pocket highlights are now crisp rings on the realistic tables.

The neon table is still available under Table Style.

Requires the .NET 8 Desktop Runtime. Download NeonCue-win-x64.zip, extract it and run NeonCue.exe.

Neon Cue v1.10.0 — Smooth motion

Silky-smooth motion, especially on high-refresh monitors (144–280 Hz).

• New game loop paced to your monitor's refresh rate, instead of a coarse Windows timer that fired every 10–16 ms unevenly.
• Interpolation between physics steps: physics runs in fixed 1/480 s steps, and every ball is now drawn exactly between its last two positions, so it advances evenly every frame.
• 3× faster frames: ball lighting is precomputed, balls are rendered in parallel across your CPU cores at quarter-pixel precision and copied to the screen with no resampling, and text and panels are cached.
• The game window gets priority over background AI work.

Measured with the new built-in benchmark (NeonCue.exe --bench, full-power break at 2560×1440):

	before	after
Frame cost	15.6 ms	5.2 ms
Motion unevenness	29% (up to 67%)	3% (≤ 2%)

Download: NeonCue-win-x64.zip. Unzip it and run NeonCue.exe.

Neon Cue v1.9.0 — Real physics & smart scoreboard

Real billiards physics, validated against textbook results on every build:

• Every ball has a full 3-D spin. It slides, then rolls at 5/7 of its speed after a centre-ball hit, just like real balls on cloth.
• Draw, follow and stun come from the real spin: the cue ball spins backwards while sliding forwards, then comes back.
• Throw: on a cut, ball-to-ball friction nudges the object ball 1–5° off the line of centres. It's larger on slow shots and smaller on fast ones (Alciatore's measured formula).
• Cushions grip a spinning ball, so right english sends it right and left english checks it.
• Verified: natural roll 0.714 (theory 5/7), sliding distance exactly matching theory, 90° rule 86°, 30° rule 33°, throw 2.4°, energy never increases, fully deterministic.

Exact aim line: the guide now plays your shot in the physics engine and draws the real paths:

• the cue ball to contact, the object ball (throw included), and the cue ball's path afterwards (draw and follow curves)
• where each ball stops, a green pocket when the ball drops, and a red SCRATCH warning

The ball goes exactly where the line shows. The cue's random stroke error is now an option that's off by default.

Smart scoreboard (Tab): frames or racks, score, current and best break, shots, pot success, fouls, live win chance for the frame and the match (based on the score, what's left, who's at the table and player skill), points left in snooker, and a match log. A win-chance bar also sits under the title.

The balls now visibly rotate with their true spin.

Download: NeonCue-win-x64.zip. Unzip it and run NeonCue.exe.

Neon Cue v1.8.0 — Snooker

New mode: Snooker.

• A real 12-ft snooker table: smaller balls (52.5 mm), tighter pockets, the baulk line and the D, and spots for every colour.
• Full rules:
  • 15 reds and six colours, played red, then a colour. The colour you hit first is your nominated ball.
  • Colours are respotted while reds remain, then taken in order from yellow to black.
  • A foul gives at least 4 points to the opponent (or the value of the ball on or the ball involved), and an in-off gives ball in hand in the D.
  • Level scores after the black: the black is respotted.
  • Matches are played as best-of frames.
• Smart HUD: the ball on, your current break, your best break, points remaining, and a SNOOKERS NEEDED warning when the deficit is bigger than what's left on the table.
• Snooker AI: it values the points swing, so it goes for the black and avoids fouls. It plays safety exchanges, opens with a safe break-off from the D instead of a power break, and concedes a frame it can no longer win.

Try it: Menu → Game mode → Snooker.

Download: NeonCue-win-x64.zip. Unzip it and run NeonCue.exe.

Neon Cue v1.7.0 — Clean knocks & cue voices

• No more hiss or static. The rolling rumble is gone, and the cushion and pocket sounds no longer have noise tails. You only hear the knocks, and between hits there is complete silence (verified: 0 noisy samples). A larger audio buffer prevents crackling on a busy PC.
• Every cue has its own strike sound:
  • House Cue: a dull wooden knock
  • Neon Starter: a clean maple tock
  • Violet Viper: a snappy, lively hit
  • Thunder Breaker: a sharp phenolic crack
  • Carbon Phantom: a glassy carbon tick
  • Silk Road Inlay: a soft, warm knock
  • Golden Dragon: a rich knock with a bell-like ring from the gold fittings
  • Black Diamond Royale: a deep knock with a shimmering ring
• The CPU plays with its own cue's sound, and selecting a cue in the shop plays its sound.

Download: NeonCue-win-x64.zip. Unzip it and run NeonCue.exe.

Neon Cue v1.6.0 — New sound engine

Sounds no longer cut out or play unevenly.

The old player could only play one sound at a time: each hit cut off the previous one, and most hits on a break were silently skipped. On a simulated break plus three shots it played only 35 of 69 hits.

The new built-in audio mixer:

• Plays every hit on its own voice. Dozens of clicks overlap naturally on the break: 69 of 69 played, 0 dropped, up to 28 at once.
• Volume follows impact speed: soft taps are quiet and hard hits are loud.
• Stereo panning follows where the ball is on the table.
• Slight pitch variation on each hit, so repeats don't sound robotic.
• Rolling rumble that rises and falls with the speed of the balls.
• Constant, low latency (about 46 ms), with a soft limiter instead of distortion.

CI now renders a break offline and fails if any sound is dropped or clipped.

Download: NeonCue-win-x64.zip. Unzip it and run NeonCue.exe.

Neon Cue v1.5.0 — Free cue movement

The cue no longer feels stuck to the target.

• The cue follows the mouse freely at any speed as you sweep around the cue ball. The only motion it ignores is moving straight in to grab the cue ball, so the aim you set still holds when you press on the cue ball and pull back.
• Aim assist is now a menu option: Off (free aim), Light (default) or Strong. It only acts when the cursor rests, never while you move.
• Precise aim: hold Ctrl and move the mouse to turn the cue at a tenth of the normal speed.
• An aim fine-tuned with the keys or wheel unlocks as soon as you clearly point elsewhere.

Play-test: the cue tracks the cursor with zero lag while sweeping. Every accuracy case still matches a perfect stroke: sloppy reach 98%, quick sweep then reach 98%, close shots 100%, ball in hand 98%.

Download: NeonCue-win-x64.zip. Unzip it and run NeonCue.exe.

Neon Cue v1.4.0 — Smart aiming

Shooting fixes found by playing the game by hand and with a play-test that behaves like a human hand.

• The aim no longer drifts when you reach for the cue ball. Point at the target and pause for a moment: the aim commits. Quick moves towards the cue ball no longer change it, so you can press on the cue ball and pull back.
• Fine-tuning stays put. Arrow keys and the mouse wheel step 0.03° (0.23° with Shift), and the aim stays locked until you deliberately point somewhere else.
• Pocket magnet. If your aim is within a few pixels of a line that pots a ball, it snaps onto that exact line. It's strong with Full prediction, light with Ghost ball, and off with Off.
• Power preview. Thin cuts used to stop short with no warning. The game now simulates your aim at 20 power levels: green ticks under the power bar show which powers pot the ball, with messages like POTS ✓ or POT NEEDS 55–80%. The pocket glows green only when your aim and power pot the ball, and amber when the line is right but the power isn't.

Human-like play-test results (100 pots per row): pointing a few pixels off, then a wobbly move to the cue ball, now pots 96% (was 42%). With side spin it's 96% (was 38%), close shots 89% (was 31%), and ball in hand 96% (was 41%).

Download: NeonCue-win-x64.zip. Unzip it and run NeonCue.exe.

Neon Cue v1.3.0 — Shooting fixes

Shooting fixes found by an automated play-test: a scripted player drove the real mouse controls through hundreds of set-up pots.

• Pressing on the cue ball and pulling back now works. The aim used to swing as the cursor approached the ball: only 18% of makeable pots went in, and now 96–98% do. The aim freezes near the cue ball and ignores rounding noise from single pixels.
• Ball in hand: a click picks the cue ball up, and a drag from it shoots, so you no longer lose a shot by grabbing the ball.
• Cue wobble is fairer and visible: it is smaller, soft shots are nearly exact, and a cone on the aim line shows the spread at your current power. With the starting House Cue, perfect aim now pots about 80–88% of shots instead of 34%.
• Weaker cues magnify the CPU's own errors too, so equipment still matters against the AI.
• CI now runs the play-test and fails if aiming accuracy drops.

Download: NeonCue-win-x64.zip. Unzip it and run NeonCue.exe.