v0.2.7 is now live at slingshotspeeders.com

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Patch Notes & Improvements

• MapMaker Orbit Updates: MapMaker can keep more than one orbit circle. A second one used to collapse into a small hold circle. It now stays an orbit, including one placed farther from the body.
• Checkpoint Navigation: The direction mark under a checkpoint line is a short chevron tucked under the line.
• UI & Numbering: Each checkpoint and ring shows its place as a faint number, so the one after the blinking checkpoint is the next number.
• Mobile Controls: On a phone, a finger scrolls Home and the MapMaker list. A short tap still presses the card. A tab that sits in the MENU band can be tapped.

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Skins & Shop Changes

• New Skins: Medivac sits with Plague as a time-limited Brick skin. Foliage is a Brick skin and Crimson is a Twin skin. Brick's stock picture is the new hull.
• Shop Shelf Availability: Brick, Halo, and Twin skins stay on the pax shop shelf, even before you own that hull.
• Automatic Hull Unlocks: Buying a skin whose hull you do not own buys that hull too.

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Season Zero Ending & Rewards

Season Zero ends 1 November 2026. About a week left.

• Season Zero Reward: Standings winners declared.
• Data Archiving: When it ends, this season's data is archived. The archive stays public. The look at that record lives on its own, apart from the live season.
• Fresh Start: The next season starts fresh. One map is there at the start. Every other map has to be made in the new season. Season Zero maps do not come with you.

Season Zero ends 1 November 2026.

Fly one signed-in run and Season Zero is yours. It paints Brick. It is not in the shop. A guest flight does not count. A flight on or after 1 November does not earn it.

If you already flew signed in during Season Zero, it is already on the account. Open the shop and equip it.

The skin stays after the season ends.

Play is at https://slingshotspeeders.com/

What changed is what draws the game, and one loading-screen stop that was fixed.

What you will notice

The corner chip says v0.2.6. Season page says the same.

The loading screen no longer gives up before the engine starts. The page used to ask the canvas for WebGL2 itself, then treat an empty reply as "turn on hardware acceleration" and stop. That early request is also the one that used to drop the only context the engine can draw with. The page does not open a context anymore. The engine opens it once, after the canvas is up.

If the picture still dies after that, the view parks instead of drawing over a dead surface. That part is unchanged from the last version.

Bevy 0.20

The client is on Bevy 0.20 (it was 0.19.1) and Rust 1.99.

Last version fixed a hull that could vanish for the rest of a visit after a restart or in MapMake, while the Δv bar and exhaust kept drawing. The renderer was keeping stale draws and could drop a hull whose picture was not ready yet. We were carrying a private copy of Bevy's renderer with that fix in it. Bevy 0.20 includes the fix, so that private copy is gone. The hull is still a mesh, and each paint is still uploaded once and reused.

The seven shaders (force arrows, body glow, exhaust, the idle gate, motes, ring glow, and the coast line) moved to Bevy's new shader language. Same pictures. The old import syntax does not exist in 0.20.

Buttons and hover use Bevy's new UI. A click still counts when you press down, the same as before.

Play at https://slingshotspeeders.com/

The original post is here if you want to see it: https://www.reddit.com/r/gamedevscreens/comments/1wsux07/prototyping_a_new_racing_game_idea_and_i_need/

https://www.reddit.com/r/sliprace/

EARLY ALPHA STATE for those who have experience playtesting.

Mostly to prove the racing mechanics. You need to know how to run the SlipRace sh script. Once you have it downloaded, and run that, it should load immediately. Works on Linux Mint tested without having to download any other dependencies. If there's further interest I will make a windows build.

Feels fun to me so far, I hope you enjoyed the video. Please comment and let me know if you have any suggestions or feedback, I read everything and I'll try to respond to everyone.

Thanks for trying it out!

https://masltech.itch.io/sliprace

Flying

• Your ship and the HUD are up during the 3-2-1. You can arm the afterburner, kill rotation, and the rest before the clock hits zero, and see the hull sitting on the pad while you do it. The attempt still starts when the countdown ends.
• Obstacles stay drawn once you play. On a fresh load you could see them on the map card, then they vanished the moment you launched and stayed gone. They stay on the map now.
• The ship picture no longer disappears for the rest of a visit. If the sprite pipeline failed, the hull used to stay invisible until you reloaded. It draws as a mesh, so a bad picture does not blank the ship.
• Gravity field. Settings has a field of arrows under the map that show which way the bodies push the ship. Purple is a pull, orange is a push, and the color eases where both meet. Weak cells stay visible and fade out. Strong cells are longer, wider, and more opaque. The field covers the whole pull and fades at the edge, so it does not end in a hard line. On a map with a moving body the arrows stay planted in the background. 9, LB, and FIELD turn it on and off. The choice stays on this device in MapMake, a flight, and VIEW.
• A hold does not make the ship heavier. Cargo Delivery is off the shelf. Clearing a hold no longer loads extra mass, so the engine pushes the same after a hold.
• Phone emote sends the face you have equipped.

Shop and pax

• Twin is a new hull, 2500 pax. Three Twin skins are in the shop for 1500 pax each: Jungle, Liquid, and Rainbow.
• Halloween section. Plague is a Brick skin there, marked SEASONAL, and it is time limited.
• Daily pax challenges pay ten times as much.
• Lifetime rewards are three. 1000 pax for your first map win, 1500 for your first published map, and 2000 for Apex.
• Dailies are Three Up, New Ground, and Drafted. New Ground is a win on a map that is still marked New. A daily only counts when that run's tape uploads with it.

Standings and records

• Your first signed-in win on a map is a vote. Weight is unique wins, times a slow-growing log of the record time, times a slow-growing log of the record delta-v. Flying it again does not add another vote. Guests do not vote. The pilot who published the map does not count, and their run does not set the record used for weight. A map many pilots have finished can outweigh a longer map only a few have finished. That is on purpose: taking the time to win is you saying the map should count.
• Your mark on a map is your best score divided by that map's record, from 0 to 1. A fast map's huge score and a long map's tiny score land on the same scale. Skip a heavy map and that zero hurts more. The FAQ has a search box, and this is written out there.
• A published map stays New until two other signed-in pilots finish it. Then it is Live and enters the rating.
• Your own runs no longer set the record on maps you made.
• Forecast calls close when that window's racing starts, so every call is in before anyone flies. A Forecast pays the fastest pilot who entered. A run from someone who did not enter does not decide it.
• An event is a 48 hour window on one map. The fastest verified time wins. There is no signup grid.
• A run longer than 20 minutes is not scored. Watch can still play it. Replays that are not on a board are kept for 30 days. A tape is kept for every win. A crash or quit is kept only when you spent delta-v and flew at least five seconds. A quit ends the tape on that tick, so Watch does not keep flying after you leave.
• The win card says VERIFYING until the server logs the run. A kick after a logged win keeps the card.

Home

• Home has a Search tab beside Tutorial. Type a map name. Search closes when you open a map, so keys fly the ship. PLAY from Search hides the field while you type your name. The menu opens over the search field.
• The menu is GAME and the site. PLAY is off the game menu. It only reloaded the page. MENU site pages and your name open in a new tab, so the game stays loaded.
• On a phone held upright, the tagline sits above the home tabs.

MapMake

• A body can switch off or on when you clear a stage, and at more than one stage. The trajectory line updates when a body switches. Force arrows hide that body's pull while it is off, so the HUD does not draw a pull the body is not emitting.
• FIELD arrows stay put while you drag or resize a body, and they update in place. They also stay the same size when a body moves on another part of the map.
• MapMake warns when two bodies sit on top of each other.
• LENGTH is the full gold line. WAY is one direction or both. VISITS works on a gate, an orbit, and a hold. Order is numbered dots. An orbit placed after five holds stays an orbit. A hazard kills on the drawn bar.

Watch, VIEW, and reconnect

• VIEW draws every stored run line on that map, including older ones. Where lines overlap they keep a steady stack.
• Watch names the map. The trajectory line stays on the flown path after a burn. On a MapMake map, the ship, its name, and the trajectory line stay drawn at every zoom. Replays and Recent runs show a MapMake map by its name.
• Recent runs is wider, so the time stamp fits. The pilot sits under PILOT. Time and delta-v stay readable past 100.
• Reconnect clears the previous room, so a dropped match does not keep its roster.
• Joining Multiplayer Test puts the orbiting body on the sky the other pilot is flying.

Also

• Win cards, replay banners, and MapMake labels no longer show broken symbols.
• Usage charts scale to the week's low and high. Usage keeps the all-time total across the week, and maps played is its own chart.
• How to play opens with Keyboard.
• Roadmap adds Discord, and Sign in with Apple.
• If the picture dies, the view parks instead of drawing over a dead surface. LibreWolf keeps the picture.
• The chip in the corner says v0.2.5.

Play: https://slingshotspeeders.com/

v0.2.4 is live

The first orbital racing game. Free in the browser.

https://slingshotspeeders.com/

Gravity field

Settings has Gravity field. A dense grid of arrows under the map shows which way the bodies push the ship. Orange is a push. Purple is a pull. Where both meet, the color eases between them. Weak cells stay visible and fade. A strong cell is longer, wider, and more opaque. The arrows cover the full pull and fade out at the edge. On a map with a moving body, they stay planted. 9, LB, and FIELD turn them on and off. The choice stays on this device in MapMake, a flight, and VIEW.

Home

Search sits beside Tutorial. Type a map name. The field closes when you open a map, so keys fly the ship. Dailies are Three Up, New Ground, and Drafted. On a phone held upright, the tagline sits above the home tabs. EMOTE sends the face you have equipped.

The menu is GAME and the site. Site pages and your name open in a new tab, so the game stays loaded. PLAY is off the game menu. It only reloaded the page.

Tapes and watch

A tape is kept for every win. A crash or quit is kept only when you spent Δv and flew at least five seconds. A quit ends the tape on that tick. Watch does not keep flying after you leave. Watch names the map and keeps the trajectory line on the flown path after a burn.

VIEW draws every stored run line on that map. Overlapping lines keep a steady stack.

An event is a 48 hour window on one map. The fastest verified time wins. There is no signup grid. Joining Multiplayer Test puts the orbiting body on the sky the other pilot is flying.

MapMake

LENGTH is the full gold line. WAY is one direction or both. VISITS works on a gate, an orbit, and a hold. Order is numbered dots. A hazard kills on the drawn bar. An orbit placed after five holds stays an orbit.

Cargo Delivery is off the shelf. A hold no longer loads extra mass, so the engine pushes the same after a hold.

Also

Usage keeps the all-time total across the week. Maps played is its own chart. The FAQ leads with account, MapMake, pax, how maps are weighted, and cloud hosting. Roadmap is Sign in with Apple. The chip in the corner says v0.2.4.

Full notes: https://slingshotspeeders.com/changelog How to play: https://slingshotspeeders.com/how

Play: https://slingshotspeeders.com/

The big change in v0.2.3 is map unification. There is no separate spotlight, no second card shape, no side shelf for “community” courses. Maps are maps. Leap, Trick Shot, and a course you publish in MapMake all use the same Home card, the same SCORE / TIME / Δv boards, the same SOLO / MULTI / EVENT row, and the same path to LIVE.

That matters because LIVE maps count on Season Zero standings. Your rating is not “how you did on the stock set.” It is a weighted average across every live map — studio seed and player-made alike. Publish a hard map that other signed-in pilots win, and it becomes part of the ladder everyone is climbing.

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How player maps hit standings

Season Zero rating is 0–1000. Standings sort on that number. Sign in to occupy a slot.

On each live map, the server compares your mixed SCORE to the record. That ratio is your quality on that map. Miss a map entirely and that quality is zero.

Each live map also has a weight on the card:

• Unique wins — how many signed-in pilots have a first win there
• Record time and Δv — how long and how much thrust the #1 mixed-SCORE run took

Easy short maps stay quiet. A hard map many people won is loud. Skip a loud map and that zero hits harder.

Your rating is 1000 times the weighted average of those qualities across all live maps.

The first 24 studio maps start already LIVE. A map you publish says NEW until two other signed-in pilots win it (not the author; guests and play-without-win do not count). Then it flips LIVE, shows weight on the card, and enters the standings pool. SCORE / TIME / Δv boards do not reset when a map goes live — only whether it counts toward rating changes.

Standings live on Home: place, name, rating. Tap a name for that pilot page. Below three live maps scored, your rating stays provisional and does not sort into the board.

This is the first time a MapMake publish can change who is #1 on the season ladder, not just who tops one map’s board.

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One Home shelf

Every card: map name, laps, Made by, date and time on one dotted line. NEW or LIVE at the top right. Weight, unique wins, and total wins under that. SCORE / TIME / Δv on every card. PLAY, VIEW, i, SOLO, MULTI, and EVENT on one row. EDIT when you are signed in.

Home tabs are New, Hot, Top, and Popular — not Easy / Medium / Hard filters. Difficulty tags are gone. They were always subjective; it is easier to open VIEW or PLAY and decide for yourself. Easy is still the beginner shelf (PLAY opens there; Leap is the recommended start). MULTIPLAYER TEST sits at the bottom of Easy. The old Home tab and Spotlight are gone.

Boards, Recent Runs, and Standings refresh about once a second while you stay on the page. Weight shows as soon as the list arrives.

WATCH TUTORIAL has its own tab after Recent Runs.

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Trajectory line

Click a body — static pull or moving mass — and the trajectory line is your orbit around that mass. Click another to switch. Click empty space and the line is relative to the static world: map origin, no body selected. Play still starts pinned to the home well.

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VIEW

VIEW draws every stored run line on that map — all previous runs, not the old ~60-line cap. Lines stream in a few at a time so the page stays smooth. Live ships show when someone is racing.

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MapMake

Gates can sit FAR or OPPOSITE on a pair of bodies like Apollo. Checkpoint ANGLE and FLIP stay within ±180°.

Slingshot Speeders is a free orbital racer in the browser. Gravity is inverse-square. You win by capturing an orbit, not by crossing a finish line. Play: https://slingshotspeeders.com/

v0.2.2 is up. Two player-facing fixes, and a hosting change that is the reason the site can stay on.

The site now runs on a small VPS

Until today, live was a Rust process on my desk. Cloudflare Tunnel pointed slingshotspeeders.com at 127.0.0.1:3001 on this PC. Fine for building. Bad for a public game: sleep the machine, or the power flickers, and the site is gone.

Live is now a 2-core / 6 GB box. Same URL. Same Google sign-in. Same Stripe webhook. Google and Stripe never needed new origins, because the hostname did not change.

What actually runs there is still one process:

• a release server binary (~19 MB)
• the wasm client and site files we already ship
• one SQLite file

The VPS does not compile. I build wasm and the server on this Linux PC, rsync the finished files, restart systemd. Downtime is the restart, not a cargo run in Newark.

The origin still binds localhost only. Nothing listens on 80 or 443 on the box. A second Cloudflare tunnel (slingshot-cloud) is the public front. The home tunnel still owns test.slingshotspeeders.com, so I can break test without taking live down. One tunnel cannot split “live on the VPS, test on the desk” — the origin is always localhost on whichever machine is running cloudflared. So we moved the apex hostname from one tunnel to the other. That was a dashboard click. The blank page for ~10 seconds was the route moving.

SQLite has one writer. We stopped the desk process, copied the live database, then pointed the hostname. Daily sealed backups (VACUUM INTO, then ChaCha) land on the VPS disk and get pulled to an 8 TB drive in the house. If the house burns, I SSH to the VPS. If InterServer dies, I unseal the drive.

I was worried 2 cores would choke a 128 Hz sim plus a room. At idle the game process is a few percent CPU and tens of MB of RAM. A real room is the test, but the box is not sweating.

Watch: the trajectory line is a forecast again

The trajectory line is how you read an orbit. Live play already re-solves a no-thrust coast from your current pose: if you let go now, that is the path.

Watch had drifted. The line was drawing the path you already flew, or following a smoothed display pose. That looks like a replay scribble. It is not a prediction.

v0.2.2 pins Watch to the recorded pose at the playhead, then runs the same no-thrust coast the live HUD uses. The hull can still lerp so scrubbing looks smooth. The predicted line cannot. If you pause on a burn, you see the orbit that pose actually had, not a blend of two frames.

Same 128 Hz velocity Verlet as the server. The server still re-flies your button tape. Clients never send pose or race time.

Hoops that tell you the next sit

Hang Time (and any hold circle / gate / orbit-win hoop) was easy to misread: several rings lit, and a second sit on the same hoop waited until the last visit to burst.

Now the next checkpoint, hold circle, or win hoop pulses a glow like the force arrows. After you hit it, it goes flat green. Later yellow ones stay dim — no glow — so the next one is the only one shouting. Hang Time’s hold circle bursts on every sit, including the first. A hoop you sit twice does not wait for the last visit.

Also

Social lists YouTube, TikTok, and X next to Reddit and Lemmy: https://slingshotspeeders.com/social

Chip in the corner says v0.2.2. WHAT'S NEW in the game matches https://slingshotspeeders.com/changelog

Come fly. If the trajectory line makes sense in Watch now, that is the fix working.

A YouTube clip sent a lot of first-time phones at once. That is the demand we want. It also showed the old path: every new browser pulled ~86 MB (~43 MB gzip) through this machine. Cloudflare will not cache .wasm, so they all shared one home upload.

v0.2.1 puts that file on Cloudflare. Same bytes, a .bin URL the CDN will keep. First visit in a region still fills it — about 30–45 seconds. Open it again, even on a wiped phone, and it is fast. The next thousand new players in that region do not wait on this machine.

The boot screen shows percent and MB. If the stream stalls, it retries. No player queue — rooms already cap at 16. Today was the download, not a full lobby.

Season Zero runs through 1 November 2026.

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Play

Leap is first on Home for beginners. Trick Shot is a new Medium map below it. Holds show the sit countdown. Recent Runs names match the boards, FOUNDER glitter included.

Desktop: 5 heading, 6 trajectory line, 7 fuel, 8 HOME and the bottom card. A 120 Hz phone can run at 120.

Home only builds the boards you can see. Off-shelf lists stay parked. Gate dust stops when you cannot see it.

The trajectory line is how you read your orbit. Without it you cannot fly by eye. The sim is a 2D Verlet step at 128 Hz on both ends. Same buttons, same course, same hash.

The chip says v0.2.1.

---

Free. One Stock ship. The FOUNDER'S PACK is live.

Play: https://slingshotspeeders.com/

Slingshot Speeders is a free browser game: 2D, top-down, inverse-square gravity. You slingshot a body, sit a closed orbit, or run two laps of Trefoil. The server re-flies your button tape. The client never sends a pose or a time. Playing this is learning orbital mechanics. That is the product, not a mode.

v0.1.9 was a good test. You showed up, flew, broke MapMake, argued SCORE, told us what was wrong, and what could be better. That feedback is why this exists. Thank you. Slingshot Speeders is officially in open beta: a minimum viable product you can play, race, and build on.

What you can do today

• Official maps from Easy through Extreme: Leap, Reverse, Hover, Catch Up, Flow State, Drop Off, Trefoil, and the rest of the shelf. Championship max is 1650 across twenty-two maps and three lists each.
• SOLO, MULTI, and EVENT on the same courses. Event races allow you to try to forecast the winner and earn in-game currency called Pax.
• Earn Pax and MapMake in the browser. Place bodies, gates, ORBIT, HOLD, REFUEL. Publish and other people fly it on Community Maps.
• Watch any kept run. The tape is the buttons. The line you see is the trajectory line the server already flew.
• Season Zero is running through 1 November 2026. Boards, championship, and Elo are this window. Your name, maps, and tapes archived when it ends.

What we reset, and what we did not

We did not wipe play history. SCORE, TIME, Δv, and Watch from v0.1.9 are still there. Your old flights still play.

We did clear the test economy so a live shop does not sit on fake money. Pax wallets are back at 0. Shop cosmetics you bought in test are gone. Test FOUNDER'S PACK grants are gone. Sign in, you start at 0 pax, and you earn it in play. That is the honest start.

Eleven people signed in and flew during the v0.1.9 alpha. They keep the Alpha Brick look on the default Brick ship. That is a thank-you for the test, not a purchase and not pax. New sign-ins do not get it. They get the stock Brick and a zero wallet.

FOUNDER'S PACK

The pack is live. $10 to $250 through Stripe. You pick the amount. Same pack at every dollar: Spear, Spear Gold, the gold trail, the gold trajectory line, the gold name, the S chip on the boards, and FOUNDER on your profile. We never list how much anyone gave.

Pax cannot buy it. Paying does not buy pax, a faster ship, or anything from the PAX SHOP. The two shelves never sell the same look. After Season Zero the pack cannot be bought again.

Learn and experience orbital mechanics as you race to become the orbital racing champion!

Play: https://slingshotspeeders.com/

How: https://slingshotspeeders.com/how

Pack: https://slingshotspeeders.com/premium

Slingshot Speeders | Reverse, Drop Off, and placing with real orbits | Ongoing v0.1.9

Free orbital racer in the browser. No download.

Play: https://slingshotspeeders.com/

Home has a gold WATCH TUTORIAL under the subtitle, with the YouTube address under it.

New maps on Home (NEW!):

• Reverse (Easy) — leave the start orbit, cross the gold line the other way
• Drop Off (Extreme) — two gold lines, then sit the orbit on the running mass

MapMake is standardizing placement to position, angle, speed. Click where it sits, drag for heading and how fast. That is the same state the sim already flies: a point and a velocity. You are not drawing a hoop or typing an ellipse. You put a sample on the map the way a ship is already a sample, and the trajectory line is that coast. Moving bodies, ORBIT, HOLD, and REFUEL all aim the same way.

Also in this pass: middle-drag pans, left-click places. ANGLE steps by 1°. PLAY always shows your ship. Dragging a moving HOLD stays under the cursor. ATTACH is only on gates and a parked HOLD. Site MENU MapMake opens the editor. Inspect lists every entity under the fields — tap a row or X to delete; that list scrolls.

Shop: Magenta and Copper name colours. Crimson is the dark Extreme red. The extra Scarlet name is gone.

Roadmap: live race streams you can watch and bet on.

Slingshot Speeders — Leap, Flow State, and a cleaner Home

Play: https://slingshotspeeders.com/

Maps

• Leap (Easy) is first on Home. Leave the start, sit the far hoop. Recommended for beginners.
• Hover is Easy now. Closer orbit, smaller body, you start at the top. Sit ten seconds beside it.
• Catch Up (Medium) — three gold lines, then sit the hoop.
• Flow State (Hard) — five gold lines, then sit the orbit.
• Donut is off Home. Sit an ORBIT hoop to win. Prime and Reach stay on Easy.

NEW! is on Leap, Hover, Catch Up, and Flow State.

Editor

MapMake: ORBIT wins when your loop stays inside the hoop, not outside it. A finished hoop goes green when the next stage arms. CLEAR starts a fresh draft; SAVE keeps the last one. ANNULUS is gone — one hoop is enough.

Free to play. Same ship, same start.

Just shipped a batch:

• Ships look larger: Name, emote, and the tank bar sit clear of the hull.
• Orientation indicator: A white arrow on the nose shows which way you point. Press 5 to turn it off.
• Mobile improvements: Phone UI starts at full size, and Settings includes an EXIT button you can tap without scrolling.
• Visual fixes:
  • Pilot names stay sharp when zoomed in.
  • LAP sits under the Watch title instead of overlapping.
  • Donut now paints a faint green band between the two rings to make the capture zone obvious.
• Game mechanics: We will never add time warp. Watch can still scrub at 100x.
• Bug fixes: MapMake no longer freezes when you place a body. Firefox was sending extra click events, so the editor rebuilt the course in the same moment the glow stamp tried to touch a body that had just been removed. Chromium folds those into one frame, so it never hit.

If you have more feedback, issues, or suggestions, please feel free to drop them below!

Play now: slingshotspeeders.com

We Have Been Cooking: v0.1.9 Public Test & Patch Notes

Play: https://slingshotspeeders.com/

v0.1.9 is a longer public test before we commit. Season Zero lands with v0.2.0. Everything you earn or buy in 0.1.9 is thrown away first.

Sign in and you get 10000 pax. Spend it. The FOUNDER'S PACK is 2000 pax on this build so you can fly Spear and the gold look. That pax price goes away with the wipe. After 0.2.0 the pack is real money, $10 to $250, same pack at every amount. Stripe, no slider. After Season Zero it cannot be bought again. You can give more later.

The wipe is complete. Wallets, PAX SHOP purchases, this pax pack, equipped cosmetics, boards, championship, Elo — none of it carries into Season Zero. Fly, break the shops, tell us what is wrong. Thank you for being in the test.

You will see the rest the first time you load Home.

The ships are painted hulls now, not the old Stock / Orb / Trident / Vanguard kit. You start in Brick. Halo is on the free shelf. Spear is the FOUNDER hull. The grey nozzle squares are gone; thrust still comes from those spots. Δv is a bar under the ship, green to red, so any shape can fly clean.

Two shops. They never mix.

• PAX SHOP is free. You fly, you earn pax, you buy a look. No real money on this shelf. Ever.
• PREMIUM SHOP is paid exclusives only. Right now that is the FOUNDER'S PACK. Pack pieces do not appear on the PAX SHOP. PAX pieces do not appear on PREMIUM.

More cosmetics will land over time. Free looks go on the PAX SHOP. Paid exclusives go on the PREMIUM SHOP. Same Stock ship on every board. Nothing you buy flies the ship for you.

---

FOUNDER'S PACK (PREMIUM SHOP)

One pack. Buying it — pax now, Stripe later — puts you in Spear with its Gold skin.

In the pack:

• Spear hull, plus Spear skins: Gold, Crimson, Unicorn, Anime
• Gold Glitter trail (main and/or RCS)
• Founder Gold trajectory line — dust and sparkle down the whole line; flying through it leaves a puff
• Founder Gold name — a traveling deep-gold shine on the boards, the profile chip, and the S chip. Not flat yellow. You can still equip a pax name color; the FOUNDER word stays Zector

Not in the pack: Halo and Halo skins. Brick Gold and Halo Gold live on the PAX SHOP.

Later PREMIUM pieces land here too, never on the free shelf.

SUPPORTERS in MENU lists FOUNDER names and the day they joined. Never how much they gave.

---

PAX SHOP (free shelf)

MENU → PAX SHOP. This is the free shelf. Buy with pax; buying equips. Pack exclusives are not listed here. Inventory is on Account. Public profiles show pax and what they own; only you can put it on the ship.

Hulls — Brick is the starter. Halo is the paid-with-pax ship.

Skins — grouped by hull. Brick: Oxide, Green, Red, Purple, Pink, Gold, Cosmic. Halo: Green, Red, Crimson, Gold, Cosmic, Rainbow. Inventory only lists skins that fit the hull you are flying. Switch hulls and a skin that does not fit drops to Stock.

Trails — one shelf. Wear a trail on the main engine, the RCS, or both (Gold main + Violet RCS is fine). Colors: Violet, Red, Blue, Orange, Green. Gold Glitter is the pack trail.

Trajectory lines — Violet, Red, Blue, Orange, Green. Founder Gold is the pack line.

Name fonts — Zector (stock), Manufacturing Consent, Alpha 54, Segment14. Equipping one updates the profile chip and the boards without a refresh.

Name colors — Cyan, Rose, Lime, Orange, Purple, Red, Blue. Founder Gold is the pack color.

Aura — Gold Dust, a pulsing spark ring around the hull. Separate from the line.

Emotes — including Alien. Press the emote key (Z by default). Watch tapes show them.

Owned pieces stay on the shelf marked OWNED. Cards are ship-art chips, cached after the first visit. Type-in fields use the How to play alphabet so you can see caps. Changing your display name updates the page in place.

---

The rehearsal boards

MENU has Season Zero so we can try championship, Elo, and EVENT on this build. They wipe with everything else. The real Season Zero is v0.2.0.

SCORE is mixed: time and total Δv spent, including after a refill. Burning a tank costs more than doubling your time. FAQ has the Reach example.

Schedule is gone. EVENT times sit on each map card.

---

Maps

• Slingshot is Hard now: gate, then capture. Two masses run left to right.
• Apollo is 3 laps, first on Hard, with a purple fuel body opposite the moon. Duality and Elevator are Hard with it.
• Trefoil is 2 laps. A win stays a win if you restart after.
• Click a body for relative orbit; the crash ring goes cyan.
• PATH strokes stay in MapMake. They do not draw under a moving mass in a race.
• Multi-lap maps show LAP up top.

Community Maps — a win lands on that map's board. PUBLISH is 400 pax after you win on it. No week wait.

---

Challenges

Today: the usual dailies, plus three online race wins, a Community Map win, and an Extreme map win.

This week (Monday 00:00 UTC): win an EVENT, call the EVENT winner, or fly someone else's Community Map three times.

Pax is for goals, new maps, and Forecasts — not grinding one map. Philosophy says so, and names James Masland and how the ship art is made.

---

MULTI and SPECTATE

Spectate now shows that pilot's name, thrust trail, and the hold ring counting down and going green. A 5 second hold lasts 5 seconds. Hold numbers are sharper.

Join a room that has been running a while and the moons stay in phase — other ships are not a few seconds behind the moon. The lobby card no longer says WAITING FOR PILOTS over the list. Results only list who raced.

VIEW is the still course with old trajectory lines. SPECTATE is the live race, and the ship you are watching stays on screen. The trajectory line stays up when you load in.

Afterburn (BURN / Shift) still doubles main thrust. The rear RCS lights with the bell. Same fuel. Phone BURN actually arms it now.

---

Phone and chrome

Flight taps sit at the bottom. SHIP / WORLD / FREE / HOME / RESET sit under MAIN. Stick and yaw scale separately; pads can be see-through. Ping / fps / version stay off until Settings.

MENU and your name sit together on Home and on the site. Sign in is top right; on a narrow phone the title drops under them. Connecting is top center. Tap away from YOUR NAME and it closes.

On Watch, HOME, the pilot name, Play Map, and SHARE tap. Camera chips sit on the replay bar.

Recent runs is a Home tab next to Community.

---

One kind of mass

Every gravity source in the sim is a body. It is static or it moves. It pulls or it pushes. That is the whole type. MapMake tools are STATIC PULL, STATIC PUSH, MOVING PULL, MOVING PUSH. Map titles can still say Planet & Moon — that is flavor. One vocabulary in the code means we can keep adding maps without a translation table. Philosophy says so.

---

Spend the 10000. Buy the pack with pax while that door is open. Then expect a blank slate when Season Zero starts on v0.2.0. Thanks for flying the test.

Just when we thought we were about to slow down, we shipped hard.

This drop sits on the core that was already there. The sim is server-authoritative at 128 Hz, same clock for every ship. Watch replays stay smooth at 100×. Sign in with Google and the account is yours. Pax is earned by playing — free, no cash shop. Cosmetics plug into that wallet and will keep growing. Forecasts is the spectator layer: call the field, watch the tape, treat a scheduled race like a tiny esport.

Maps. Every listed map now plays three ways from a tab on its card — that tab only changes that map. SOLO is you against the clock. MULTI is a shared grid with a 5 second countdown. EVENT is a scheduled race on that map: sign up, sit on the line, go. Community Maps have SOLO and MULTI. VIEW shows the course and its trajectory lines, and on MULTI or EVENT it shows whoever is flying it right now. There is no ghost on the pad. Wells are in their live place when you VIEW or join; VIEW does not jump to a ship.

The shelf moved. Orion, Asteroids, and Push Pull are off. Easy is Reach, Prime, and Donut. Reach is the new beginner map at the top of Home: start in orbit, raise it into a hold above the well, sit 5 seconds. Slingshot's start well is bigger, with a scripted well around the start and another around the finish.

A scheduled race needs two racers signed up, both on the line, and one of them has to finish. Anything less voids the cup and every pax comes back. Each EVENT tab has that map's countdown. SIGN UP fits on the play button. Schedule lists the next races with sign-up, grid lock, posted start, and the join window in your local time. The clock is fixed — a restart does not move it.

Forecasts. Spectator sport on that clock. One question: who wins. Pick an official map or the next event, pick a pilot, type how much pax you are betting. Call it right and you double. Call it wrong and it is gone. A no-show voids the race and every stake comes back. Leave the grid before calls close and every bet on you comes back, including a bet on yourself. Each runner shows how many pilots are on them; the clock counts down to when betting closes. You can sign up from Forecasts or from Home. The card shows who is on the grid. Placing a bet stays on the card. Your calls are public — a pilot page lists every race they called, hit or miss, and the pax they won or lost.

Pax and cosmetics. Pax is the free platform currency. You earn it by winning maps, publishing, clearing daily and lifetime challenges, and calling Forecasts right. It sits at the top of Account next to Elo and Championship. Season points stay on the Championship card. The ring is your rating.

Spend pax in the Shop. Look only — none of it changes how the ship flies. Gold glitter paint, a violet trail, a violet trajectory line, the Orb hull, and emotes. Shop and Inventory are separate, grouped by slot. Every chip is the colour and shape the game paints: Orb has arms out to four square RCS pads, a fuel stripe cut to the rim, a bell on the hull, and a nose so you can tell which way it points. Strafe and rotation puffs come off those RCS blocks. A public pilot page shows the ship they fly, their Forecasts record, and maps they built.

Emotes. Equip one and press Z (remap in Settings). It plays over your ship for 5 seconds. Watch tapes show it. Five to start: thumbs up, party, fire, skull, snail. They sit above the name so they do not cover it. Pilot names stay one small world size, close to the hull, so a packed MULTI field does not eat the screen.

Account and site. Account and profile use a View dropdown: Overview, Maps, History, Races, Share, Settings, Shop, Inventory, Challenges, Forecasts, Creations. Challenges have a daily list next to the lifetime one — fly three runs, win a map, or join a race for a small pax top-up; it resets every day. The site MENU matches the in-game one, PLAY at the top, with Community Maps, Recent runs, MapMake, and Settings in both. The MENU scrollbar is thin and dark. FAQ covers pax, the Shop, scheduled races, and Forecasts, including how long you have to join and how long you sit on the line.

Feel. In multiplayer, other ships stay on the moon they are flying. Free moons in MULTIPLAYER TEST stay in orbit. Cargo Delivery's planet stays in its dance. If the trajectory line misses the first load of a race, it solves again; toggling it off and on starts a fresh line. Gravity wells are purple, push wells are dark orange, each swirl on its own clock. A selected moon or well has a glow ring just outside it. Checkpoint haze is fine sparks; the win circle uses the same pulse dust. Hold circles pulse like the next checkpoint and burst green when you finish one. Force arrows are one size and a bit shorter. Rotation ticks sit a little farther off the hull.

Phone and camera. On a phone, UI size starts at 50% and first fly is closer in. Stick size starts at 50%. Both go from 10% to 200%. In FREE, twist two fingers (or hold right-click and move) to rotate the view; click-drag pans with that rotation. WORLD or SHIP puts it back.

Play free: https://slingshotspeeders.com/

Onwards.

https://slingshotspeeders.com/

The sim now steps 128 times a second. That number is the whole point of this build.

128 is a power of two. A tick is an exact slice of a second, not a rounded guess. The server, your predictor, and every other screen count the same clock. We used to run a rate that could not even be written exactly in binary, so tick time and wall time slowly disagreed on a long flight, and every recording had to remember which clock made it. That layer is gone. One rate. No decoder for the old era. Old tapes do not play, on purpose — we would rather cut clean than spend years carrying two games.

Everything else hangs off that grid. Snapshots land on even ticks. A tap is several ticks, not a maybe. Display can chase 256 frames on a desktop (60 on a phone); physics never does. A dropped frame does not skip a burn. This is the boring kind of simple that lets the game still be the same game in two years.

Come try the proof. On Home, under Prime: MULTIPLAYER TEST. Anyone can join. No score, no countdown. You fly as soon as you are in. One planet, a rail moon, and two free moons that pull and push each other. Everyone sees the same dance, even after close passes. Other ships look like yours — same hull, same RCS, same main burn. VIEW on that card is the live room: moons keep moving and you see the other pilots. Two browsers, two phones, mix them. The room owns the moons. A crash puts you back on the pad when the server says so.

What you will notice first:

Wells. Pull is a tight purple void with messy spiral arms, a red lean, and a sharp dark red crash ring. Push moons use the same swirl in blue, with a dark blue ring. Phone and desktop match. The crash disk did not change.

Force arrows. Solid shafts, square shoulders, a short soft glow. Gold thrust is half size. Yellow rotation arrows sit off the nose and tail. Light forces keep their colour. The heading arrow on the hull is gone; 4 / ARROWS still toggles the set.

Gates and hoops. Next gate and the win hoop pulse colour only — they keep their size. Purple to gold on a gate. The hoop does the same, then turns green when you finish inside. Hold rings show 1, 2, 3, then the countdown. Passing a gate or winning a hoop throws more green confetti, and it glows.

Trajectory line. It keeps going through doors, spokes, and walls. A well or moon core still ends it. Watch reverse at high speed stays on the line.

The rest you will feel. Scroll or pinch zooms much closer (Z no longer jumps out). Settings remaps keys and the gamepad on this device. One KILL chip on the HUD; kill rotation on at start actually starts on. Speed, g, tank, and rotation are the bar and the units — rotation is RAD. On a phone, RESET sits with speed and ping. A map share link opens VIEW with the past-run lines. If MapMake PUBLISH has to wait, you stay in Edit and the hours stay on the bar.

Play free in the browser. Open a second tab on MULTIPLAYER TEST if nobody else is in the room.

Play: slingshotspeeders.com

The first orbital racing game featuring 2D gravity, force-based ships, slingshots, and closed-orbit captures. This patch makes playing on phones and executing light burns feel identical to using a keyboard.

---

Phones

Play and Watch modes no longer fight you on mobile devices:

• Controls: WASD is now a stick on the bottom left. Q/E yaw is a slider on the bottom right. Drag the dots to use both thumbs for yaw and thrust simultaneously.
• Visual Helpers: The stick shows direction arrows; the yaw pill displays turn arrows. Left/right inputs on the stick point correctly.
• HUD Integration: The RESET button on the HUD restarts (same as pressing R). Flight toggles sit top-right.
• Framing & Scaling: Play and Watch start farther out so you can see the course (pinch to zoom still works). The MENU now scrolls when lists exceed screen height, including landscape mode.
• Customization: Settings now includes UI size (+/− from 10% to 100%; phones default to 50%) and Stick size (+/− from 50% to 200% for the WASD circle and yaw pill). Both settings persist on your device.

Phone stick wins now save properly (light burns previously failed verification and missed Recent Runs).

---

Fine Throttle & Analog Control

Dragging the control dots is now fully analog:

• A slight drag off-center triggers a light burn or slow yaw, while dragging to the rim gives full thrust.
• MAIN, RCS, KILL, and BURN remain quick-taps.
• Keyboard WASD remains on/off; the on-screen stick is your primary way to feather controls.

---

Visual Upgrades & Hull Indicators

• The ship hull is ~20% larger on-screen for better readability (crash hitboxes remain an exact 8 m disk).
• The hull functions as your fuel gauge: a thick centerline transitions from green → yellow → red. A dry tank displays a white hull, letting you check remaining $\Delta v$ without looking at the status bar.

---

Map Sharing Updates

• VIEW SHARE now copies /m/ followed by an 8-character code for every map (including Prime and Duality).
• Pasting and opening the link loads that exact map's lines directly. (Legacy /v/prime links still open in VIEW).
• Community Maps on user profiles now display the title alongside the 8-character code (eliminating the old c- prefixes).

---

MapMake DRAW (Experimental)

MapMake has evolved into a full drawing toolkit:

• PATH: Draw a line (close the ends to loop) and place an N-BODY on it to ride.
• DRAW: Drag a kill bar. SPIN and SPOKES copy it around (the separate SPOKES tool has been removed).
• HOLD: Drag the aim stick to set the ride trajectory (matches the pad). HOLD also acts as the cargo ring — order and extra hull weight (kg) live directly on the hold.
• REFUEL: Places only the purple dotted circle; drag the rim to resize.
• UI Streamlining: Top bar PLAY and EDIT are unified into a single button (PLAY while placing, EDIT while flying).
• Publishing: PUBLISH still requires you to fly and win the map first.

Note: Free masses follow full simulation rules from GO. Ships cannot tug moons.

---

Flying Physics & Fixes

• Trajectory Line: Remains visible until you burn. Coasting will not rebuild it, and it progressively disappears as you fly. Crossing your own trajectory line no longer crops the loop into a short stub. Unclosed lines fade out cleanly at both ends without hard joins.
• Capture Rules: Capture requires your actual loop to fall inside the green ring; nearby gravity wells that pull you out will invalidate it.
• Hold Rings: Transition from yellow (waiting), fill around as you hover, and turn green when the required seconds elapse. (Rendezvous, Cargo, and MapMake HOLD behave identically).
• Apollo & Duality Fixes: Resolved hitching on Apollo’s moon and moving gates. Apollo/Duality moons spin at their intended authored pace. Apollo gold lines only count when flown in the arrow's direction (moon line direction flipped to match).
• Course Adjustments: Asteroids is now a capture ring only (ghost checkpoint dust removed from the well field). Trefoil’s fuel well and purple ring now slowly orbit clockwise around the center.

---

Watch Mode Improvements

• PATH Integration: The historic purple-to-orange trajectory line sits under your ship.
• Scrub the timeline up to 64x or 100x while the trajectory line stays synced from start to finish.
• Coasting in Watch mode retains the trajectory line (analog yaw no longer forces it to redraw multiple times per second).

---

Home & Site Updates

• Lobby: Circuit JOIN / SPECTATE count down 5 s to GO (down from 10 s).
• Supporter Perks: Race winners who are alpha supporters are highlighted in gold (matching Easy difficulty).
• Spectating: Clicking a followed player's name in Watch mode allows you to easily switch and spectate other ships.
• Tracked Runs: Apollo, Duality, and Trefoil finishes now log to Recent Runs.
• Profiles: Default name starts as PILOT. Tap to edit; flying without changing it keeps PILOT.
• Settings: MENU Settings are accessible whether signed in or out. Browser defaults save locally; signing in syncs them to your account.
• Scoring: Site MENU now opens directly to PLAY. Race standard and Ranking formulas have been simplified: time and a full tank of $\Delta v$ carry equal weight (emptying your tank cuts your mixed score in half, equivalent to doubling your time).

---

Full Patch Notes: Check in-game under WHAT'S NEW or visit slingshotspeeders.com/changelog.

Slingshot Speeders is the first orbital racing game, a free 2D orbit race in the browser. Inverse-square gravity. One Stock ship. Public boards. The server re-flies your button tape — you never send position or time.

PLAY SLINGSHOT SPEEDERS NOW

v0.1.5 is live.

---

⚠️ Boards Wiped

The live database has been wiped with this update.

SCORE / TIME / Δv, lobby races, Watch tapes, and Community Maps from the previous era are gone. (Sign in with Google still works.)

This is still experimental alpha. Duality, Apollo, 3-lap Trefoil, MapMake, and the Stock sheet are a different game than the tapes we had. Mixing them would make last month’s gold look fake, and it would mean shipping a pile of compatibility for old rows. A clean cut now is the honest move.

Empty boards. First times on the new era.

---

Highlights

• MapMake is open: Sign in with Google. Build a map. PUBLISH puts it on Community Maps for everyone to fly. (Free accounts get 1 new map/week. Experimental — it may have issues).
• Two new circuit races (Duality & Apollo): Same lobby as Trefoil: JOIN / SPECTATE, a 10s countdown, Elo. No green corridor — fly your own path between the gold lines.
• Home is rebuilt: Opens on Home with Prime for beginners, followed by Duality and Apollo marked New!. Filter the rest via Easy / Medium / Hard / Extreme / Circuits. Community is now a dedicated tab next to Circuits.

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MapMake

Sign in with Google to open MapMake (MENU). Guests can fly the shelf, not the editor.

• Community Shelf: Community Maps is the public shelf (newest first on the Community Home tab). Uses the same PLAY / VIEW / i cards as official maps, tagged with Made by.
• Limits: Free accounts can publish 1 new map/week. Alpha supporters can publish 1/day.
• Palette & Placement: Entities sit in a left palette (wells, pads, walls, win rings, checkpoints, hold/donut rings, cargo, refuel wells, rails, sliding doors, spokes).
  • Drag to place, or click to select then click to drop.
  • Hold Shift to place without grid snap.
  • Esc returns to SELECT.
• Inspector & Rules: The right rail edits the selected object. The inspector sets laps, gate order, and flip. A built-in problems list blocks PUBLISH if a map is unwinable.
• Saving & Publishing:
  • SAVE keeps an editable draft (max 3 saved maps).
  • PUBLISH names, locks, and pushes it to Community Maps. (No separate SUBMIT step).
  • PUBLISH names the map in the MAP NAME field (same as YOUR NAME). LOCK publishes it. SAVE asks for a name pre-filled in that same field. The field is a centered card, not a full-screen bar.
• Gameplay & Testing:
  • PLAY starts on your placed pad. An N-PUSH or N-BODY plus a gate no longer moves the ship onto that mass.
  • Fly-test WIN acts as EDIT and PUBLISH — not HOME and SHARE.
  • EDIT next to VIEW opens that map as a new MapMake draft while the published version remains locked.
  • YOUR MAPS displays SAVED and PUBLISHED. Deleting requires a single confirmation. Editing a published map prompts to create a new version.
• Details & UX:
  • LAPS only displays once a map has 2+ checkpoints (a win ring on its own has no laps).
  • A winning orbit sits inside the win ring; the green hoop is just outside the capture zone.
  • MapMake System view displays the trajectory line directly from the pad.
  • Made by text displays in gold for alpha supporters and white for free accounts.

---

Duality, Apollo & Trefoil

• Duality: 3 laps around two wells, each featuring a close moon locked on a rail. Start on the left line. Gold lines sit on the far-left and far-right well rims (both flown upward in order). A lap counts when crossing the first line again. Purple orbits above/below refill your tank. Nose orientation matches the cyan arrow on JOIN and at GO.
• Apollo: 2 laps around a planet and a close rail-bound moon. Start on the planet line. Gold lines sit on the far side of the planet and far side of the moon in order. (Planet & Moon remains free-flying capture; Apollo is the official race).
• Lobby & Finish: Uses the standard Trefoil lobby (JOIN / SPECTATE, 10s countdown, Elo). Finishes save directly to the race board without throwing SCORE write errors.
• Trefoil Updates: Now 3 laps. The center well is a pit — resting inside the purple ring refills your tank in 5 seconds.
• General Mechanics:
  • Circuit races start on the first gold line. The next line pulses gold. Lines turn green when flown, resetting to gold when hitting the subsequent line. Crossing line #1 again triggers the lap/finish.
  • Trefoil, Duality, Apollo, and Water Rapids have dropped the green corridor — fly any path you want between gold lines.
  • Championship remains 15 maps (1,125 max). Lobby races track via Elo.

---

Home & Navigation UI

• Structure: Opens on Home: Prime (beginners) → Duality & Apollo (New!) → Easy / Medium / Hard / Extreme / Circuits.
• Menu Hub: Community Maps, Recent Runs, and MapMake live in MENU. Settings is consolidated into a single row.
• Sizing & Links: MENU width scales strictly to the longest row. How to play and Social link to dedicated site pages (/how & /social). MENU includes Philosophy (explaining leaderboard integrity).
• Map Viewing: VIEW map layout features HOME, PLAY, and SHARE at the top. PLAY launches immediately without returning to Home. Removed background dimmed maps on Home.
• Track Info: Trefoil i displays active race plays and wins. Community Maps cards include i info.
• Visual Tweaks:
  • Donut classified as Easy; Push Pull as Medium.
  • Loading indicator updated to a single sun wrapped by two-way rotating dots.
  • RECENT RUNS logs the last 100 flights.
  • Sign Out row matches standard menu sizing.

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Gold Lines, Moons & Flight Feel

• Gold Lines: Thinner visuals featuring a single directional arrow underneath. Touch the stick to register line contact (arrow denotes direction only).
• Line FX: Active lines pulse deep purple-to-gold mist. Flying a line shatters it into blinking green firefly dust that wisps away (blurry streaks/orbs removed).
• Map Physics & Start: Moons and rails remain stationary until GO. Duality, Apollo, and moving maps load on identical sky states.
• G-Force & Thrust:
  • G-force tracks felt engine load; coasting and slingshots read 0 g.
  • Afterburn doubles thrust, billing the tank at 250% of a standard W tick. (Experimental tuning).
• Bug Fixes: Trajectory lines no longer disappear after opening VIEW or Watch tapes. Grid input stutter fixed when sitting on RACE FINISHED.
• Water Rapids: 3 staggered loops, 3 gold lines. Starts top-center above loop 1 (nose 50 m/s down). Uses Trefoil lobby system and Foot Work style Home cards (SCORE / TIME / Δv).
• Foot Work: Wells are standard (no purple dotted refuel rings).
• Orbit Markers: Ring orbits use white dots; purple dots strictly indicate refuel rings.

---

Watch Mode

• Replays: Watching a tape offers Play Map to join the room. Homemade tapes open the source community map.
• Accuracy Fixes: Duality/Apollo replays preserve moon positions at GO (prevents false crashes/fly-offs). Water Rapids/Foot Work tapes accurately replicate line pulsing and green flash hits.
• Profiles & Camera: Clicking names in signed-in tapes opens player profiles. Free-look camera retains your panned position without snapping back to the ship during scrub, skip, or restart.

---

Accounts, Site & Ranking

• Account Page: Settings moved to Account next to Share (toggles: afterburn, kill rotation, start view). Modifying values no longer prints a "Saved" status line.
• Profile Layout: Counters widened (MAPS COMPLETED fits on 1 line). Removed Crashes metric (covered by Plays/Wins). Share section split into link copy + embed code.
• Site Docs:
  • Race Standard: https://slingshotspeeders.com/stock (mass, engines, Δv, score formula)
  • Ranking System: https://slingshotspeeders.com/ranking (Season Alpha, championship pts, 0–1000 rating, Elo)
  • Public Roadmap: https://slingshotspeeders.com/roadmap (MapMake, weekly challenges, seasons)
• Navigation & Typography: Top-left site MENU matches in-game layout. Fixed site bar with centered Slingshot Speeders header. Paragraph text across long pages updated to a readable monospaced font; Zector reserved for titles and leaderboards.
• Analytics: Usage displays full-width single-row charts (Visits, Plays, Δv, Distance, Rotation, Accounts) with whole integer counts.

---

• How to Play: https://slingshotspeeders.com/how
• Philosophy: https://slingshotspeeders.com/philosophy
• Changelog: https://slingshotspeeders.com/changelog

Controls: WASD Thrust | Q / E Rotate | Shift Afterburn | Click any celestial body to pin the trajectory line.

Slingshot Speeders — what's new (v0.1.4)

Play: https://slingshotspeeders.com/

---

Boards were wiped

This is still an experimental build. v0.1.4 needed a clean database.

The 0.1.3 scores, tapes, Watch links, Google accounts, profiles, and championship would not start on the new schema without a pile of compatibility shims. The server refused to boot. We wiped the live database instead of shipping that jank.

Empty now:

• SCORE / TIME / Δv
• RECENT RUNS
• Watch / /r/ links
• Public profiles / /u/ codes
• Championship, rating, Trefoil Elo
• Usage totals
• Alpha Supporter Community Maps shelf

Sign in again. Fly again. Pre-Alpha Archive is still the older snapshot.

---

New maps

Gold New! maps sit at the top of Home. Prime is still the beginner map.

Championship is fifteen maps, 1125 max (it passed through fourteen maps / 1050).

Push Pull — Hard

• First official map built in MapMake. It was made with the in-game tools, then ported onto the official list — a test for how future community maps can become scored maps.
• Pushers and pullers, a moving well, and a wall.
• Capture a closed orbit in the green ring on the far well.
• Gold New!

Cargo Delivery — Extreme

• Planet and a closer, faster moon.
• Hold the yellow ring around the planet for 5 seconds; it turns green and cargo comes aboard (the ship gets heavier).
• Then hold the smaller yellow ring around the moon for 5 seconds.
• Sits at the top of Home with gold New!.
• Live hold ring fills and shows remaining seconds (same on Rendezvous). The top of the screen does not.
• Trajectory line stays wrapped around the moon as you fly the orbit. It no longer fades out along the lap.
• Watch fills that same moon wrap (it was leaving a short leftover from the burn).
• Watch shows the hold ring filling, the remaining seconds, and the ring turning green — same as the flight.
• Watch reverse stays instant, including 100x.
• Watch opens right away. The hold clocks catch up in the background.

Water Rapids

• Start above the first loop and slalom two outer wells.
• Loop under each well and fly up through the gold line — it turns green when you do.
• A weaker well sits across from each loop.
• The finish is the line after the last well, not a capture.
• Gold New!
• Sits with Trefoil:
  • List is RECENT / FASTEST — click a row to Watch
  • Championship still counts the map
  • Opens on the start pad with the same JOIN / SPECTATE card
• Spectate stays on Trefoil and Water Rapids. Other maps are your own run — a moving well is a clock. Home still shows who is flying.
• R starts you on the centerline, same pad as a first start.

Foot Work

• Nine wells in a sideways S.
• Gold sticks poke out top, then bottom, then top.
• Fly each from the left; they turn green in order.
• The last stick is the finish.
• Gold New!

Donut

• Two wells.
• Fit a closed orbit in the green ring: inside the outer edge, outside the hole.
• Gold New!

---

Community maps and MapMake

• ALPHA SUPPORTER COMMUNITY MAPS is the public shelf.
  • Everyone sees the same published maps
  • MapMake is still your own drafts
• SHARE on a community map copies a link.
  • The link opens that map
  • Asks for a name unless you are already signed in
• MapMake stays gated while it is in experimental testing. Alpha supporter access is not open yet.
• Alpha supporters publish one new map a week, not a lifetime of three.
  • Same map again does not spend the week
  • One a week so a map stays meaningful — not a flood — and so it can be picked for a weekly challenge
  • The shelf also has a real storage limit
• N-PUSH places a moving pusher. N-BODY still pulls. Resize keeps the sign.
• DELETE removes the draft you are looking at, after Yes.
  • Locked submitted maps stay
  • YOUR MAPS splits drafts and locked
• PLAY exhaust does not stay on the Edit pad.
• The faint outer gravity-reach circle is MapMake Edit only. Play does not draw it.

---

Profiles, names, and ranking

• Sign in with Google and you get a unique six-character share code (a–z and 0–9).
• Then pick any display name — it is never taken.
  • That name is what PLAY, the boards, and your profile show
  • Google sign-in does not pick it
  • Change it on Account (alpha supporters included)
  • Free accounts edit it from a circle next to the name
• Gold and the S are a look on that name, so any letters can wear them.
  • Alpha supporter names on SCORE / TIME / Δv and Standings show a gold S
  • The S sits after the name, with a little room inside the box
• A public profile is only /u/ plus the short code.
  • Overview is that page, not #overview
  • /u/james and other name URLs are gone
  • The code is not repeated under the name. It is on Share
• Overview charts:
  • Distance
  • Δv
  • Wins
  • Plays
  • How far the nose turned, in radians (Usage shows this too)
• Rating titles (old maneuver names are gone):
  • Rookie (0–199)
  • Pilot (200–399)
  • Racer (400–599)
  • Ace (600–799)
  • Captain (800–949)
  • Apex (950–1000)
• Signed-in MENU saves kill rotation, start view, and tap-or-hold afterburn to your account.
  • Guests keep those on this browser
  • Account has the same switches

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Boards and Recent Runs

• RECENT RUNS is its own page.
  • Last 20 flights
  • Click a row to Watch
  • Picks up new flights while you sit on the page
• SHARE and Watch links are /r/ plus eight characters.
  • Old ?r= and ?race= links stop working
  • Tapes from before this cut are gone
• SCORE / TIME / Δv keep one row per name. Caps do not count as a second pilot.
• Map cards have an i for plays, wins, and who is in the room.
• After R, the next finish still lands on SCORE / TIME / Δv. Restart starts a new attempt.
• R puts you on the same pad as a first start.

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Play

• Trajectory line:
  • Same line, same 5 toggle
  • No longer hitches the frame around moving masses
  • Stays on while you burn — a short preview
  • Let go and the full line still grows in
• LINE and ARROWS chips show whether 5 and 4 are on. Same lights on touch.
• MENU Afterburn: tap Shift or hold Shift. Default is still tap.
• Wells no longer draw a faint outer gravity-reach circle in play. That ring is MapMake Edit.

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Ship

• Stock hull is a longer rectangle with a triangular bell.
  • The gray thruster is a short trapezoid with a flat on the hull, not a triangle that pinches to a point
  • A heading arrow sits just off the nose and matches the HUD arrows
  • Heading mark sits farther off the nose and is thinner
  • 4 / ARROWS hides it with the other arrows
• Four small gray pads sit on the hull corners so you can see where RCS fires.
• Exhaust is a fine white spray from every thruster, including RCS.
  • Sparks hang where you burned and fade out slowly
  • Afterburn is denser
  • Sparks shoot farther, last a little longer, and fade out while they are still moving
  • They leave the nozzle slower — a stutter no longer throws a burst
  • They keep the ship's speed when they leave the bell — a brake burn no longer outruns its own trail
• Main exhaust comes from the bell. RCS sits on the hull corners.
• RCS sparks shoot out the thruster that fires.
  • S comes out the nose
  • They were coming out the opposite face

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Watch

• An alpha supporter name is gold outline and gold text, not a gold fill.
• Remaining Δv stays next to speed and g, including while you scrub.
• Cargo Delivery and Rendezvous:
  • Hold ring fills, remaining seconds, ring turns green — same as the flight
  • Reverse stays instant, including 100x
  • Cargo Delivery Watch opens right away; hold clocks catch up in the background
• Cargo Delivery moon wrap matches what you saw while flying (see that map above).

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Site

• FAQ answers how mixed score is calculated:
  • Clock and a full tank weigh the same
  • RCS costs half of main
  • A fast sip beats a fast dump
• The game download is gzipped, so Home should come up sooner on a slow connection.

Slingshot Speeders v0.1.3 is up on https://slingshotspeeders.com/. Play in the browser. No install.

Home

• Home is MENU plus Sign in with Google. Account, standings, FAQ, and the rest live on their own pages.
• Sign in with Google sits on home next to HOW TO PLAY. YOUR RUNS follows that account.
• YOUR RUNS has SIGN OUT when you are signed in.
• Signed-in pilots get a public profile (/u/…) with rating, Season Alpha points, Trefoil Elo, and Watch links.
• Profile links are a short code, not a row number. Gold names like /u/james stay.
• Public profile names homemade maps, shows career totals (distance, Δv, time, maps won), and paints an alpha supporter gold name.
• Profile and Usage plot each stat on its own chart — distance, Δv, time, plays, and wins, not stacked on one graph.
• Home ALPHA SUPPORTER COMMUNITY MAPS is open whether you are signed in or not. MapMake stays for signed-in alpha supporters.
• MapMake has one HOME. The ship HUD (speed, Δv, chips) only shows when you PLAY the draft.
• STANDINGS is Season Alpha: championship points from SCORE / TIME / Δv, and a separate Trefoil Elo. It resets when Season 0 starts.
• Home maps are Easy, then Medium, then Hard. Temple is Medium. Rendezvous is last (Hard).
• Prime is the beginner map: two small wells side by side. Start clockwise on the left; capture the green ring on the right.
• Temple no longer has a New! mark.
• MENU closes when you click off it.
• MENU Sign out sits at the bottom when you are signed in. Hover stays inside the panel.
• MENU has Race standard — the Stock ship every public board uses.
• Signed in? PLAY uses your name. No YOUR NAME prompt. Alpha supporter names are gold on SCORE / TIME / Δv.
• SCORE and TIME numbers are white, so gold names stand out.
• SCORE / TIME / Δv headers are white with a border when selected — not gold.
• 1 flying is white, in a small outline next to the map name.
• Profile tabs switch — Maps, History, Trefoil, Share.
• Copy link lives on Share. Sign out is in Menu. Alpha supporter is a gold badge next to the name. The round portrait is the trefoil.
• FAQ answers how Season Alpha ranks work — championship points, the 0–1000 rating, and Trefoil Elo.

Play

• A 3 · 2 · 1 counts you in before the ship moves. The clock and the tape start when it hits zero. Restart is a quick 1.
• Official runs save after the 3-2-1 — Orion and the rest.
• Other pilots flying the same map show up beside you, dimmed. They cannot push you or crash you, and your run is still your own.
• Empty tank is not a lose. You keep coasting. Crash or the 10-minute cap still ends the run. On Trefoil you can burn the last of the tank and glide over the line.
• Trefoil fastest only lists real finishes. A crash is not 0s.
• Trefoil RECENT / FASTEST turn white with a border when selected.
• Every map has a JOIN card now, and home shows how many pilots are on each one.
• Home map names say 1 flying when someone is on that map — not a missing-font box.
• Spectate: SHIP / WORLD / FREE at the bottom, and LOBBY opens the JOIN card so you can fly or watch again without going home.
• Homemade maps capture a closed orbit in the green ring, same as Orion.
• Capture needs a full loop inside the green ring. A nearby well yanking you out the other side does not count.
• A closed orbit inside the green ring is a win even if another well would tug it later.
• A win on a homemade map shows up on that map's SCORE / TIME / Δv so you can watch it.
• Homemade maps with moving wells start those wells in the same place every play.

Ship

• Kill-rot dumps spin faster and stops clean. It no longer crawls at the end.
• RCS and Q/E jets shoot out the way they push, same white exhaust as the main engine.
• The stock ship leaves a white exhaust trail when you burn the main engine.
• Main-engine smoke is left behind the ship and fades, not stuck to the tail.
• Main-engine exhaust is smoke left behind the ship — no tail flame.
• Main-engine smoke is a wider plume and hangs a bit longer.
• Afterburn throws a bigger, faster jet than regular main. Exhaust puffs are finer and shoot out quicker.
• 5 hides the trajectory line. Same control in Watch. 4 is still arrows.
• The trajectory line is back in play. 5 still hides it.
• Every well now draws a faint outer circle: that is how far its gravity reaches before it fades to nothing. The ring is quieter so it does not shout over the well.

Watch

• After rewind hits the start, 1x plays again. You do not have to tap PLAY.
• Afterburn marks on the flown path are twice as long as regular burns.
• A gold name on Watch opens that alpha supporter's profile.
• That name is a light gold chip with dark gold type — not a green SHARE button.
• Links open the tape without flashing home first.
• [ at 1x rewinds. Speed goes -1x, -2x, and so on. SHIP / WORLD / FREE sit under play with PATH.
• Path rotate marks match live Q/E, and the arrow heads are larger.
• Rotate icons on the flown path follow Q and E.
• Pink and red burn arrows point the way you thrust, not along the flown path.
• Burn arrows are longer, thinner darts, spaced out along a held burn instead of stacking up.
• Time slider: grab the dot.
• Rewind (|<<) jumps to the start of the tape. << / >> still skip 5 s.
• Scrubbing lands on the time you dragged to, and the transport bar is wider so the slider has room.

MapMake

• Drag a well's edge to resize it. Bigger wells pull harder and reach further — twice the radius is four times the pull. Grab the middle to move it, the rim to resize it. Pushers and moving wells work the same way.
• The trajectory line follows a moving N-body the same way it does on Planet & Moon.
• Park a closed orbit in the green ring to win. The circle does not have to sit exactly on the well.
• Drag the start pad to move it. Drag the gold stick to set heading and speed.
• Drag an N-body's gold stick to set its starting speed.
• Deleting a moving well takes it off the map.

Alpha supporter maps

• The community shelf is Alpha Supporter Community Maps. The $10 pack is alpha supporters.
• Supporter Community Maps is the shelf of maps from supporters. Cards say who saved them and when.
• Alpha Supporter Community Maps has NEW MAP.
• SUBMIT a community map asks you to name it (20 characters). Recent runs and profiles show that name, not HOMEMADE.
• SUBMIT locks a community map. You cannot change that version. COPY opens a new draft from it. Three submitted maps max.
• Each supporter community map has its own SCORE / TIME / Δv under PLAY and EDIT. Click a row to watch that tape.
• Community map thumbnails sit on the start pad.

https://slingshotspeeders.com/

PLAY FOR FREE, IN BROWSER, NO ACCOUNT REQUIRED. 2d top down first orbital racing game, competitive speed runs.