Preparing the December transmission
[December 10th, 2025] [10:48 AM MT]
I restored the CRT and message puzzle to the landing page after introducing the cinematic engine. The engine stayed in the project, but the visitor's first encounter needed to remain recognizable. I enlarged the television and adjusted the header and footer so the presentation had more space.
The next step was a timed transformation. The CRT would give way to a theater screen, with a glitch effect marking the change. I wanted the reveal to feel like something happening inside the experience, rather than a visitor finding that a link had quietly changed.
The schedule changed during the build
There were several timing revisions between December 10 and December 12. I separated the timers, revised the on-screen message and corrected the phase transition to the 10:10 AM target recorded in the December 12 commit. The intermediate messages are evidence of the schedule changing during production, not additional events I can claim took place.
The game access and the cinematic gate also became separate concerns. Opening a route and starting a timed presentation shouldn't depend on the same piece of interface state.
A large video was still a large video
The compression notes recorded a roughly 505 MB master and smaller working exports of about 95 MB and 99 MB. Those files were smaller, but they still exceeded Cloudflare Pages' 25 MB per-file limit. Compression alone hadn't solved the hosting problem.
I integrated YouTube into the theater player and worked on player readiness, the cover state and retry behavior. A blank screen with no useful recovery would undermine the whole reveal. The visitor needed a way to start again if the player wasn't ready.
Making room for the story
The lore page arrived during this work, introducing the collective and the Null Dominion. That gave the transmission context outside the screen itself.
The December 12 changes also reduced expensive visual effects and corrected timing behavior. I was cutting back the visual layers while getting the phase change to happen at the intended time. The theater was becoming the part of the landing page I wanted to keep.
Sources
Work dates follow the linked commit record in Mountain Time. This account was revised on October 3, 2026.
GitHub commits
- 5d1dc45 — Restore the CRT landing experience while retaining the engine
- c7d9bd7 — Adjust the television, header and footer
- 13b6e02 — Introduce the timed theater transformation
- ae4a127 — Record video compression and asset exclusions
- 7afb964 — Separate timers and integrate YouTube
- 5dfce1c — Separate game access from the cinematic gate
- 325acd8 — Revise the displayed reveal message
- 39db7db — Publish the early lore page
- 60acd79 — Improve player readiness and recovery
- 9efd70b — Correct the 10:10 transition and revise expensive effects