Formiga Battle 0.68.1

Built on Formiga Desktop 0.68.1, released alongside it and Formiga Hill and Home 0.68.1. Battle
contract version 5, relay protocol 4 and rules version 9 are unchanged. A friend match needs both
Handlers on Battle 0.68.1 and Formiga Desktop 0.68.1.

• The notebook's pencil hand is drawn on a grain about a fifth finer, so its writing reads less
  blocky.
• Every right page writes on its ruled lines, and the rules are 20 pt apart on any screen: before,
  they spread out at 1x until the Lessons page's main button fell off the page.
• The hint along the foot no longer touches the pages above it, and the dashed rule above "After
  the lessons" is gone, as a blank rule does its job.

Formiga Battle 0.68.0

Built on Formiga Desktop 0.68.0, released alongside it and Formiga Hill and Home 0.68.0. Battle
contract version 5 carries the Handler's anonymous key, and relay protocol 4 passes it on to a
friend; rules version 9 is unchanged. A friend match needs both Handlers on Battle 0.68.0 and
Formiga Desktop 0.68.0, as the site's relay now asks for the newest Battle.

• The Season page is drawn in the notebook's pencil: its heading says in the Handler's own words
  what is next or how the last event went; the season's four events stand as stations on a line,
  stamped with who won each; the event under way is a bracket of cards, each Handler with their
  pennant, the one who went through in bold with how, an open place naming who could fill it, and
  the champion stamped. Its right page has the Handler's standing on a card with their pennant,
  the season's points as bars, the Hall of Champions on brass plates, the newest thing noticed on
  a sticky note, and every rival with their pennant and how the meetings stand.

• The result of a match against a rival shows their pennant beside how the meetings stand, and
  stamps how the event stands ("Through!", "Out", "Champion!") beside the line that says it.

• A fifth coaching style, the Adaptive, reads what the other Handler has ordered over the last
  three turns and answers it by the circle of orders, and a ninth rival plays it: Morrow Quill of
  The Weathervane. Seven rivals play each season, the rest sitting it out in turn.

• Rivals grow stronger as the competition rises: they play their style's book in cup matches and
  Opens, think each turn through with their style's priorities at a Regional, and also know their
  own team at a Championship. None reads the other team's leanings. A good playbook wins the cups
  and the Opens; a Regional needs more. See docs/RULES.md, "Rivals' tiers" and "Balance", and the
  new balance example that measures it all.

• A Secure stage set to hold facing across the board keeps that facing on the squares the team
  already holds, instead of pressing onto them and facing the nearest of the other team.

• The relay Battle keeps for tests never confirms a forfeited match, and once a finished match's
  boards are both in, a later report cannot change what the two windows were told, as the site's
  relay now does.

• A match opens on a painted card. Each side's panel slides in from its edge in its team's
  colours, its pennant flown large, its name on a ribbon, its Handler on a brass plate, its club
  on a cloth tab and a stitched badge saying how it plays, and a red burst with VS on it punches
  in between them. Under reduced motion the card is simply there. It takes the place of the
  ribbon and the paper tags.

• Playbooks: a trio's plan for a match, in up to three stages (secure the beacon, put pressure
  on, draw them out, counter their holders, fetch, work the board), written on a new Playbooks
  page among the Handler's own. A stage can come in whenever the board shows something, such as
  "they hold the beacon" or "we are behind". Against the visitors, the playbook the trio plays by,
  chosen on the Who page, fills in each turn's orders, and you change any of them before locking
  in; the whole match says what the playbook made of each turn. A friend match or a Field Lesson
  never uses one. Playbooks are kept with the career in Battle's own file. --review playbooks
  and --review planned picture them. See docs/PLAYBOOK.md.

• Orders can be given from the keyboard alone: the arrow keys move a square cursor over the board
  from the middle of the yard, and Space gives the order in hand there as a click would
  (Shift+Space as a right click). The mouse over the board puts the cursor away. The keys are
  listed on the Settings page.

• Each creature's ring carries a small mark that says its team by shape as well as by colour: an
  arrowhead for the left team and a diamond for the right, so the teams can be told apart without
  telling the two colours apart.

• Seasons at the Battleground. Each season is four events on the places open to the colony, moving
  round a place each season: an Open of four, a Spring and a Summer Regional of eight, and a
  Championship of the four with most season points, where last season's champion defends their
  title. Season points come from how far each Handler went (8 for winning, 5 for the final, 3 for
  a semi-final, 1 for a quarter-final), the rivals' as well as the colony's, and a Championship the
  colony did not reach is played out under the same rules. Four more rivals join for the
  eight-Handler events: Wren Ashby of Thistledown, Otto Pell of the Weir Keepers, Sorrel Vane of
  Mossbank and Kit Tidewell of Shingle Club, each playing one of the four styles; one of the eight
  sits each season out in turn.

• The Season page shows the season's events and points, the Hall of Champions (every season's
  champion, rivals' too), the colony's standing (Newcomer, Contender, Champion, Season Champion,
  Legend of the Battleground, each saying how the next is earned, none earned by playing more),
  and what the Battleground has noticed, each backed by the matches that show it: a first win over
  a rival, an upset over a higher seed, a rivalry of five meetings, an event won, a title won,
  defended, lost or won back.

• Events at the Battleground. The Handler's notebook has a new page, the Season, where a colony
  enters an Open at a place whose cup is open to it: four Handlers, the three rivals who come to
  that place most and the colony itself, drawn as fourth seed against the first. The colony plays
  its semi-final and, if it gets through, the final; the rivals' own fixtures are played out under
  the same rules, each with its own coach and three. A draw is settled by a toss, the same on
  every machine. The result says how the event stands ("Through to the final against Tam Rook"),
  and an event won is kept as a title. The Season page also shows the titles won and the record
  against each rival. An event match counts toward the place's cup like any other.

• The visitors close to home are four named Handlers, each with a club, a pennant, a way of
  playing and a trio of their own: Hazel Thorne of Bramble Club presses first and sends everyone,
  Tam Rook of Sluice Gate holds the yard and shuts the board, Ivy Larkspur of the Glade Walkers
  goes round the sides and behind, and Bram Driftwood of Driftwood Cove plays for whatever turns
  up. Each arena's own Handler comes first, then each of the others in turn. The introduction
  flies their pennant and names them, the result card names them and says how the meetings stand
  ("Third meeting with Hazel Thorne: you lead 2 to 0"), and cups are won exactly as before.

• Battle keeps the colony's record against the rivals in a small file of its own, one per colony
  (careers/<colony>.json beside settings.json), counting each match once by the id Desktop
  counts it by. Cups, points, the notebook and trios stay with Desktop. A rehearsal keeps none.

• Every match against the visitors or a friend is set up in a variant of its place, drawn by the
  match seed: where the teams start (a step in, bunched far, spread wide, or as usual), what turns
  up (few finds, plenty, only light things, one pair of spots, or as usual), and at times one
  condition (an early or restless map event, the event left to the switches, switches that rest
  longer, a gate left open). The right team's half is always the mirror of the left's, and every
  variant passes the same fairness check the arenas do. The Where page says how the next match is
  set up, and the match introduction names what is different before the first order. Field
  Lessons stay the Backyard as it always is. A match record keeps the arena as it was set up, so a
  variant match replays exactly, and a record kept before reads as before. --variant, arena --variants and tournament --sweep set up, list and measure them from the command line. Rules
  version 9 is unchanged. See docs/RULES.md, "Match variants".

• Four coaching styles for a Handler who is not a person, each a way of playing the Exhibition
  coach's book: the Aggressor presses first and sends everyone, the Defender holds the yard and
  shuts the board, the Tactician goes round the sides and behind, and the Opportunist plays for
  whatever turns up. --coach aggressor,defender and the like play them from the command line;
  nothing in the window uses them yet. The Exhibition coach's matches are unchanged. See
  docs/RULES.md, "Coaching styles".

• A match set up part way, as a Field Lesson is, records the board it began from and replays
  from it; a record kept before this reads as before. A ruleset with a zero in it (no ticks, no
  composure, no turns) is refused when a match is set up rather than played into a corner, and
  tournament counts forfeits apart from matches that reached the cap. Thirty-six seeded
  matches across every arena and coach now pin the board they end on, and the fairness check runs
  on all four arenas.

• The rules are checked against matches recorded by an earlier build, one on each arena, kept as
  a file beside the core's tests. A change to how a turn resolves now fails that test until
  RULES_VERSION moves and the file is rewritten on purpose
  (FORMIGA_BATTLE_WRITE_FIXTURE=1). Nothing in the window or the rules changed.

• Battle opened by itself, from Applications or the Start menu rather than from Formiga, says
  where your own companions come from before anything else: a card over the Battleground says
  Battle plays with your own colony when it comes by train from Formiga, and to choose "Play
  Formiga Battle…" from the Formiga icon in the menu bar (the notification area on Windows), with
  formigaworld.com for anyone without Formiga yet. "Look around with the sample colony" puts the
  card away and leaves the rehearsal as it was, and "Close" closes Battle. --sample opens on the
  sample colony with no card, ...

Formiga Battle 0.67.9

Released with Formiga Desktop 0.67.9 and built on its shared crates, with Battle contract version 3,
so it needs Desktop 0.67.9. Rules version 8 and relay protocol 3 are new: a friend match needs both
Handlers on Battle 0.67.9, and an older Battle is told to update.

• The Handler's things are painted as the notebook's other pictures are. A pennant is chosen
  from sample tiles of cloth (its cut, cloth, symbol and edge) and stirs on its cane in a tuft of
  grass; the Handler's title is engraved on a brass plate, with a ribbon rosette for each cup won
  and a pencilled one for each still to win; each trio is a team picture taped into the
  notebook, its three on a strip of lawn by their pennant with their name on a ribbon, faded once
  retired; and a match opens under a ribbon strung between the two sides' pennants.
• Matches against the visitors write the Handler's Notebook too, as friend matches do: what each
  of the three was seen to do, and its moments, listed with what the match earned. The notebook
  also notes now when a companion tends to hang back or is good at flanking with a friend, and
  while you give orders, pointing at one of yours shows the first thing it has noted of it. This
  needs Desktop's Battle contract version 3 as it is on the desktop-battle-ai-notebook branch,
  which Battle is pinned to until it merges.
• Rules version 8: a flank in the yard takes the ground. When two of a team break a hold in the
  yard, those of them standing in the yard start holding where they stand, and the beacon goes up
  a tick for the breakthrough as well as for holding the yard alone. Before, about half of all
  matches on Backyard, the Millpond and the glade ended without anyone ever lighting a tick of the
  beacon, decided on composure or drawn; now about a quarter to a third do, more are won from
  behind, and matches are no shorter. A team that only digs in loses more often than before.
  Knowing your companions counts for a little less (59% for the coach who knows them on
  Backyard, from 63%). Matches recorded under version 7 no longer replay, and friends need the
  same version to play.
• While you give orders, faint footprints show who of your three would probably take which job
  with the plan as it stands, and pointing at one says what it would probably do and why
  ("probably flanks, keen to go"). It is your own team's sharing out only: how each walks, who
  thinks again and what the other team does stay unknown. A holder that two of theirs could
  flank now says so on its tag.
• As a turn plays, the lines that matter most come first: a knockout, a breakthrough or the
  beacon lit is never crowded out by a lesser line. When one of your own goes its own way (the
  long way round, beside a friend, along the edge, on a whim, hanging back), a word goes over it
  and the line says why, once a turn, so a companion being itself is not mistaken for a slip or
  the other team's doing.
• The match screen says more of what a turn came to. While orders are given, the "Just now"
  card lists what came of each of last turn's orders. The top strip says "Last turn" on the
  last turn and "One tick to go" beside a beacon one tick from lighting. A match won when time
  ran out shows the counts that decided it: beacon, composure and creatures standing.
• Your Handler, your trios and their records. "Your Handler & history" at the station opens the
  Handler's own page first: sign your name, add a club if you like, and choose a pennant from
  three cuts, eight cloths, twelve symbols and three trims, painted at the notebook's pixel. Your
  standing sits beside it: a title that rises with Open Circuit points, and a rosette for each
  cup won against the visitors, with "Champion of the Circuit" once all four are, each saying
  how it is earned. On the Who page, name the three you picked as a trio. Whenever those three
  are picked again, in any order, the match is played as that trio and counts on its own record,
  against friends and against the visitors apart, with its cup wins; any three still play as
  before, and nothing about a trio changes how they play. Two of a trio's three with someone new
  offer to put the new one in: the trio keeps its name and record, and remembers who played with
  it before and until when. Trios can be renamed, given their own colours, or retired and brought
  back. Your pennant flies at the station, beside your side's name in a match and in the
  introduction over the board as it begins ("The Thistle Three vs The visitors"); the result
  says how your trio stands now, journal lines for matches against the visitors name the trio,
  and History says which trio played. Against a friend, each side sees the other's pennant,
  club, standing and trio, and the notice of what a friend match shares lists them. Desktop
  keeps all of it with your colony (Battle contract version 3, Desktop save version 32), and a
  name signed on the Friend page becomes your Handler's.
• After each turn, each team order can be told in one line: who took it on, what came of it
  (held, flanked, turned away, caught on the way, getting into place to flank), and whether one of
  them went its own way doing it. Squares are named as a player sees them ("the middle of the
  yard"), not by number. formiga-battle match prints it; the match screen can show it.
• A match won when time runs out says which count decided it and by how much: ahead on the
  beacon, or level on it with more composure left, or with more still standing. It used to say
  "on the beacon tally" whatever decided it.
• formiga-battle tournament says how its matches ended: how many never lit the beacon, how
  many were won from behind on the beacon, and how many flanks led to beacon progress that turn.
• Rules version 7: team orders. Each turn a Handler gives the whole team up to three orders
  instead of one to each companion: TAKE some squares (walk onto an empty one, move theirs off
  one, two flanking a holder), DEFEND some squares (stand on them, guard beside them, head off
  whoever comes), or INTERACT with something (fetch a found thing, pull the lever or set off a
  switch, go after what one of theirs carries, or have one of yours use what it carries). Naming
  a square in two orders makes it more pressing and brings a second companion to stand guard.
  The team shares the plan out by itself: what the plan needs first, then who is nearest and
  what each is already doing, and last, by no more than about two steps' walk, who each one is.
  A bold one would rather be the one to meet the other team, a wary one the one to stand and
  hold, a sociable one the one beside a friend, a curious one the one to fetch what lies in the
  grass. Alone where two were needed to flank, a reckless one goes at the holder anyway and a
  wary one waits beside it; and partway through a turn, a companion whose job came to nothing
  (what it went for was taken, its target dug in or was knocked out, a teammate got there first,
  the ground was marked for the map event) thinks again from the same plan, once. The account
  says each team's plan, who took on what and why. Personality pulls half as hard on the way a
  companion walks as it did, so that again about one in three goes its own way each turn: with
  team orders they walk further and more often, and at the old pull nearly half did, which left
  the kinds that lean hardest well behind against the thinking coaches. Friend matches speak relay
  protocol 3, and recorded matches from earlier builds no longer replay.
• Friend matches are more careful with the relay: Battle follows no redirects and never leaves
  HTTPS, takes a room's code and seat only in the shapes a relay gives them, cleans the other
  Handler's name and any reason for an ending before showing or keeping them, and waits longer
  between looks while the relay cannot be reached. The notice of what a friend match shares now
  names everything sent for each companion and when the relay deletes a room. The local relay
  for development asks for JSON and refuses bodies nested too deep, as the site's does.
• Rules version 6: every arena has a map event, warned on the board the turn before it comes
  round and set off early from a switch of its own. Backyard's sprinkler sweeps the whole yard
  (turns 4, 8 and 12; a garden tap on each side). Sandy Cove's wave washes whoever stands on the
  sandbar's ends toward the middle of the beach (every third turn; a big shell on each side).
  Millpond's water rises over the banks either side of the jetty for the rest of the turn, washing
  off whoever waits there to come at the yard (turns 5 and 10; a sluice on each bank). In Woodland Glade, a shaken
  oak sheds acorns on whoever stands round it and drops a twig (a breeze shakes a pair every fourth
  turn; a contest shakes one). Nobody loses composure to any of them. Recorded matches from earlier
  builds no longer replay.
• Found things: a dandelion puff, a twig, a leaf umbrella, a pebble bell, a honey drop or, rarely,
  a springy seed glints on two mirrored spots and turns up the turn after. Whoever steps onto one
  picks it up and can USE it once: a puff bowls over whoever stands across its way, a twig blocks a
  tile for two turns (keeps an open gate from closing, and floats as a raft in the millpond), a
  leaf umbrella keeps a teammate dry and bounces contests off, a bell spoils the other team's
  contests nearby (and sets the map event off, rung by a switch), honey stops whoever steps in,
  and a seed hops its user two tiles. Cautious companions keep off ground about to be hit;
  curious, playful ones go out of their way for what lies in the grass.
• Battle opens at the Battleground, the first spread of the Handler's notebook. On its left page
  the colony's train, the one Desktop and Hill share, pulls in with every companion already riding
  it, a face at each window, and a coach more for every three past six. On its right, two railway
  tickets: Out in the...

Formiga Battle 0.67.8

The first Battle to download: an app for macOS and an installer for Windows, released with Formiga
Desktop 0.67.8 and built on its shared crates. A friend match needs both Handlers on Battle 0.67.8.

• Battle comes as an app to download for macOS and Windows, with an icon of its own: the
  Backyard's beacon between the two teams' pennants. Installed in Applications, or with the
  Windows installer, Formiga Desktop finds it on its own.
• Built on Formiga Desktop 0.67.8, which keeps every cup's trophy and medal (the Woodland,
  Millpond and Sandy Cove Cups' as well as the Backyard Cup's) and offers them to Formiga Home,
  and reads its colonies (save version 31) for --from-save. A rehearsal from a colony file says
  it was opened by the Desktop this Battle is built on, rather than naming 0.67.7.

Formiga Battle 0.67.14

Built on Formiga Desktop 0.67.14, released alongside it and Formiga Hill and Home 0.67.14 so every
app has the same version again. Rules version 9, relay protocol 3 and Battle contract version 4
are unchanged. A friend match needs both Handlers on Battle 0.67.14 and Formiga Desktop 0.67.14.

• Less plain text where Battle should be pictures, painted at the notebook's pixel as its other
  pictures are. A match ends with a rubber stamp inked onto the board in the board's own letters,
  and the result is lettered on a ribbon beside a rosette: gold round the cup's colour for a win,
  green for playing well, two colours for a draw, a brass star for a Field Lesson learned and a
  pencilled one still to earn. Each thing a match earned sits beside its keepsake (a brass medal
  for points, a punched ticket for a friend match, the cup's rosette, a trophy, a key for a place
  opened, the colony's journal, a page of the Handler's Notebook, the trio's pennant). The turns
  are brass studs along the leather, the last ringed and glinting while it is given. The slips
  over the board saying a turn plays out, or that it is the Handler's move, are ribbons: the
  notebook's green, or the Handler's team colour. Cups' wins are counted in painted rosettes in
  each cup's colour, a place still to open hangs a padlock, and the place chosen has its name on
  a garden sign under its picture.
• For contributors: --render-window <png> makes the same picture of the window as --snap,
  with the same --review, --at and --window, without opening a window, by painting egui's
  last frame on the processor.

Formiga Battle 0.67.13

A patch to 0.67.12, built on Formiga Desktop 0.67.11 as it was. Rules version 9, relay protocol 3
and Battle contract version 4 are unchanged. A friend match needs both Handlers on Battle 0.67.13
and Formiga Desktop 0.67.11.

• The CLEAR and TURN buttons on the orders given work again: the card under them took their
  clicks. The words on each card now wrap short of its buttons instead of running under them.

Formiga Battle 0.67.11

Built on Formiga Desktop 0.67.10, as Battle 0.67.10 was. Rules version 9 is new and relay
protocol 3 is unchanged: a friend match needs both Handlers on Battle 0.67.11 and Formiga Desktop
0.67.10.

• Rules version 9, a new circle of orders: PRESS, HOLD and TRICK take the place of TAKE, DEFEND
  and INTERACT. A PRESS pushes anyone not holding one tile back, stops it for the turn and takes
  what it carries; two presses meeting cost each one composure and stop both; a HOLD turns a
  press away. Two presses from different sides still flank a lone holder. A HOLD now faces north,
  east, south or west, chosen when the order is given and shown on the board, and costs a presser
  coming at it head on one composure. A TRICK slips round a holder's side or back, costs it one
  composure and breaks its hold for the turn without moving it; from the front, or from where
  another holder of its team faces, it is read and comes to nothing, and anyone pressing catches
  a trickster. See docs/RULES.md.
• INTERACT is its own command for the board: levers, taps and switches, and fetching what turns
  up. A press stops a creature working one.
• USE ITEM is a bonus beyond the three orders, for a Formiga carrying something: it is used at the
  start of the turn from where the carrier stands, which takes its first step, and then it gets on
  with its job. Something taken from the other team can be used from the next turn.
• A switch can no longer set the map event off again in the turn it came round by itself, so a
  wave, the pond rising or a shaken tree comes at most once a turn.
• Recorded matches from earlier rules versions are refused rather than replayed differently, and
  Battles on rules version 8 and 9 do not meet in friend matches. The relay protocol stays 3; a
  plan may now carry a USE ITEM for each creature besides its three orders.
• Field Lessons, from the station: seven short lessons on the Backyard, under the real rules, on
  lighting the beacon, holding and which way a holder faces, flanks, tricks, team orders, the
  sprinkler and USE ITEM, and who your companions are. Each begins from a board set up part way through a match,
  with a goal, the squares that matter marked, notes where the field guide would be, and a few
  turns to do it in; the timer waits, and a lesson earns and keeps nothing. Your own three play
  them, doing exactly as told until the last lesson, where they are themselves. A colony that has
  never played is pointed to them. --review lessons and --review lesson picture them.
• A match against the visitors played from Formiga Desktop 0.67.8 leaves its notebook entries out
  of the result, which that Desktop would otherwise turn away whole.
• A gate a twig keeps from closing no longer goes on looking as if it is about to swing for the
  rest of the turn.
• A trio given a colour of its own flies the Handler's pennant as it is now in that colour, on the
  Handler's page and to a friend, rather than the pennant the Handler had when the colour was
  chosen.
• The Handler's name and club are kept as they are typed, so closing Battle before leaving the
  field no longer loses them.

Formiga Battle 0.67.10

A patch to 0.67.9, built on Formiga Desktop 0.67.10, which takes the colony to Battle by train as
for a trip to Formiga Hill. Rules version 8 and relay protocol 3 are unchanged. A friend match
needs both Handlers on Battle 0.67.10 and Formiga Desktop 0.67.10.

• Battle no longer freezes after a turn with Interact orders, when two lines over the board came at
  the same moment.
• Going back to the station from the Handler's page, from any notebook's first page, or after a
  match no longer crashes Battle.