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Dress Up reports

Reports on Messed Up Dress Up, the game made with M and N, now a hybrid: JavaScript, with Hazel as the scripting language for its game logic (by default; Fumola beside it for comparison), where features are tried with real players before they are rebuilt as livelits in Hazel. Each report takes one question and answers it with measurements. The first rule they measure: 60 frames a second for everything a game controller does. Matthew Hammer.

The reports themselves live with the game, in its repository; Hazel's own series is the Hazel reports.

  1. The garden: a picket fence and arbor, a flower border, a shed, an apple tree and beds of soil
    ^du_report(24) · 2026-11-01 · work in progress
    Night, Day and the Garden

    The retro manual's second part, for M and N trying out the garden: a sword that cuts, what is cut stays cut, night and day, time for bed, plants that grow back, the 🌻 garden with 🌷 flowers and 🥕 vegetables to plant and a 💧 watering can to grow them, and the 💧 spring, with a quick card at the end. Every new thing from 0.0.465 to 0.0.473.

  2. The friend with a bee caught in a glass bottle
    ^du_report(23) · 2026-10-29 · work in progress
    Doing Things in Messed Up Dress Up

    A retro manual for young players, written for M and N on a day off school: the action button, the 🎒 backpack, pots, the bug net, floor switches, two puzzles, and the 🗝️ dungeon maze, with a full walk-through behind a spoiler warning. Built as it was written.

  3. From an ask to the kids' screen: an ask, a ticket, built, a quick check, released, live; then the speed run
    ^du_report(22) · 2026-10-26 · work in progress
    How Dress Up Is Made

    Who decides what goes in the game, how a change reaches the kids within minutes, the rules we keep (60 frames a second first) and why, how the code is laid out, and how we check our work. For anyone who wants to help, person or AI agent; it replaces most of the agent instructions.

  4. All 36 costumes drawn from above, as the friend is drawn in a dungeon room
    ^du_report(21) · 2026-10-26 · work in progress
    Dungeons, From Above

    A day of design work after A Link to the Past: a dungeon room seen from above, four kinds of way between its rooms (a wall, a doorway, a doorway that scrolls, no wall), holes and ledges; and the friend drawn from above and asleep in the tent, in all 36 costumes, each costume and view on sheets to look at.

  5. The game on a phone: the friend on a plain card, and the Start World button with a pointing hand on it
    ^du_report(20) · 2026-10-25 · work in progress
    A Way In

    A new player opens the game on a phone: how do they find its world, and know what to do in it? A friend, R, got lost doing just that. The first step, in Dress Up 0.0.433: a 🌍 Start World button with a pointing hand bobbing on it, and a welcome saying what the game is for now and how to get about. A live document, work in progress until R has tried it. From ^ticket(611).

  6. A catalogue of drawings re-mixed from the costumes' parts
    ^du_report(19) · 2026-10-24
    Ready to Re-mix

    After so many new costumes, are the drawing routines ready to be re-mixed: the ninja's gems in the king's crown, in treasure chests, on swords, shields and thrones, and fourteen more scenarios? Five are ready, eight need a small change, four a re-organisation. Three re-organisations are done, the ninja's gem now any drawing's gem among them, each proved by drawing the friend 12,570 ways, identical byte for byte, in node on the laptop, on today's code (0.0.428). From ^ticket(564).

  7. The friend dancing in the farm yard, as a story script says
    ^du_report(18) · 2026-10-24 · work in progress
    Story scripts: a director's guide

    For M and N: the 🎬 story box of Dress Up 0.0.424, where you write what your friend does, a step a line (walk, wait, pose, face, pull, say, loop), and the 🚶 paths the other people walk. Where the story box is, where 30 and 60 are in the picture, a first story, pulling levers, loops, what a wrong line says and how to fix it, stories to try, and a quick card. Also as a zine to print, fold and staple, with eight coloring pages (dress-up/manuals). Work in progress until M and N have read it. From ^ticket(600).

  8. The trap room, the pit room, as the game draws it
    ^du_report(17) · 2026-10-24
    Game scripts: a player's guide

    The 📜 Scripting panel of Dress Up 0.0.419, written up as a 1980s-90s game manual: the three languages (JS, Hazel, Fumola), the panel and its ⛶ outline, the pit room's rule, what a rule says (the shape of Cmd, every command), 🪵 the event log (pre event, post rule, post event: what the answer asks for, then what the game did) and debugging with it, four broken scripts and how to fix them, which game events and how much of the game's state reach a script, and the full feature list. Also as a black-and-white zine to print, fold and staple, with coloring pages (dress-up/manuals). From ^ticket(593) and ^ticket(597).

  9. The castle, as the game draws it
    ^du_report(16) · 2026-10-21
    The space between the boxes

    Every panel is boxed now: how much of each is empty, at the screens and zoom levels the game is played on, where does that space come from, and how much can the layout give back? Full screen is where the space is; the side panel is less empty than at 0.0.204, and less again after; and four bugs found on the way. The follow-up to ^du_report(5), from ^ticket(521).

  10. The mock-up's roaring flame on its dusk sky
    ^du_report(15) · 2026-10-21
    Seen before it was built

    What did the two mock-ups for a dragon, its fire and armour for the knight's horse show Matthew before anything was built, and what went out? Both pages are here to play with. They were ready 10 and 31 minutes after he asked; he left the pick to M and N, so the costume, all six fires and all six sets went out in 0.0.392, 81 minutes after the ask.

  11. The friend's joints, posed
    ^du_report(14) · 2026-10-19
    Posing the body

    How is the friend's body posed, what does a new pose need from the drawing, and which poses come next? Three views and transforms of them; a new angle is a drawing routine of its own; and elbows and knees now turn in three dimensions, from lying along the tent's sleeping bags (ticket 412) and the joints (ticket 414).

  12. The witch, as the game draws her
    ^du_report(13) · 2026-10-19
    Dress Up's hardest parts for Hazel

    Which parts of Dress Up's drawing would be hardest for Hazel, can Hazel do music, and how could the game's menus work in Hazel? The hard part of the drawing is not its SVG but what runs every frame around it; Hazel can compute the music today, though playing it takes a JS player or a new builtin; and the menus meet about two of the nine knolling rules, the gap being a layout Hazel lacks, then speed.

  13. The bubble makers, as the game draws them
    ^du_report(12) · 2026-10-18
    The foam, not the makers

    Why was the bubble room slow with one bubble maker, and how far can a kid go pressing "+ bubble maker"? In Firefox the room's own moving foam was the cost (18 frames a second; held still, 52; empty, 60), not the maker: still at the start since 0.0.306, his case now 60. Many makers share one budget and float in a picture of their own since 0.0.307: 16 makers on the slow tier walk at 53 instead of 37. And why each maker costs 4 times the drawing it did in 0.0.239.

  14. The castle's throne room, as the game draws it
    ^du_report(11) · 2026-10-18
    A cast of friends

    Could the friend's own design system make an adventure game's whole cast, like Hugo's, Quest for Glory's, King's Quest's or Monkey Island's? Most of it today: 27 people by place, made in the game with its settings alone, and the same few pieces missing again and again (something held, a hat or a crown, a beard). The king's room and the beach with people in them; what a person as a place's thing needs, and its cost on the black laptop; how costumes are made, and how the next could be cheaper.

  15. The friend crawling toward us
    ^du_report(10) · 2026-10-18
    Pose by pose

    How is the friend drawn in each pose, and how was it drawn before? One skeleton set by angles, moved by moments of a stride, turned by facing: fifteen poses drawn by seven versions from 0.0.30, which could only stand toward us. Crawling changed most, toward us and away, from a floating crouch to hands on the floor; and the picture archive had drawn sitting, cross-legged and dancing as standing at every run.

  16. The friend beside the doors, as the game draws them
    ^du_report(9) · 2026-10-18
    One size, every view

    Is the friend the same size inside a place and out, against its doors, when the player shapes the friend? Not on the tree's porches and bridges, which set everyone to one height: fixed in 0.0.302, with every door sized to the default friend (0.68 to 0.91 of each) and one rule for crawling, so a child and the default walk and an adult crawls, inside and out. Left to decide: the house's giant front door.

  17. The castle, as the game draws it
    ^du_report(8) · 2026-10-18
    Piece by piece

    How could the whole game move to Hazel, in two months or three? What it draws (56% of its 22,407 lines: the friend, the poses, the places) ports piece by piece, each checked against the picture archive's own SVG; in three months the rules too. The frame loop, the controllers and the sound wait on Hazel, not on time.

  18. The castle's dining room, as the game draws it
    ^du_report(7) · 2026-10-18
    Stories and stress

    Does M extend the game for social stories, and N for stress tests? Read against all 34 of their requests: N's mostly, 8 of 13, by load (cauldrons until the laptop froze, a room of bubbles) or by rules at their edges (pits, boulders, being hit); M's 9 of 22 make room for a story or something her own (a dining room, a hut village, her letter), and 6 more mend the tools.

  19. The trap room, its collision boxes shown
    ^du_report(6) · 2026-10-18
    Then and now

    Messed Up Dress Up beside the adventure-game engines of 1984 to 1993: Sierra's AGI and SCI, LucasArts' SCUMM, the Hugo games. The same layers behind a picture (priority, control; our depths and collision boxes); of their eleven hard problems we meet nine again, faster; what is new now; Hugo's House of Horrors, and what it would take to be a game like it.

  20. The lake, as the game draws it
    ^du_report(5) · 2026-10-18
    Always be knolling

    What did the two full-screen designers (🎵 Music, 🗺️ World design) do alike that the other 17 tabs do not? Thirteen choices, from a slim bar to boxes within boxes and the game as the first card. 🏞️ Background alone declares 1,337 rows; a player sees 9 to 50 in one place. A proposal for every panel, nine rules, with before and afters for the castle's themes, the bubble themes and a full-screen background designer.

  21. The jungle waterfall, as 0.0.201 draws it
    ^du_report(4) · 2026-10-18
    One folder, every run

    How can the picture archive keep a year of runs in one repository? No PNGs (a run's were 185 to 397 MB), one folder rewritten by every run and every run a git tag: the same five runs in 24 MiB, against 768. And what moving it showed: the settings file did not decide its drawing (a saved time, the page's clocks, random choices), and 0.0.198's hidden drawings left out look the same, the waterfall 183 to 116 KB.

  22. The duck pond, as the game draws it
    ^du_report(3) · 2026-10-16
    Slow until reloaded

    Why did the game stay slow after the duck pond, everywhere, until a reload? The 🏞️ Background tab: with it open the pond swam at 2.4 to 14.9 frames a second, its controls working out the whole castle on every refresh (790 ms); fixed on a branch, 59.3. And what a session keeps: a bounded cache, not a leak. The series' first measurements on GitHub's computers.

  23. Paired bars, swimming in the duck pond as it is and with the place as still bitmaps: an Ubuntu laptop 27 to 58 frames a second, an iPad 22 to 60Paired bars, swimming in the duck pond as it is and with the place as still bitmaps: an Ubuntu laptop 27 to 58 frames a second, an iPad 22 to 60
    ^du_report(2) · 2026-10-16
    The kids' computers

    Why was the game choppy on an Ubuntu laptop (Intel i7) and an iPad, and pausing on Matthew's laptop, and what made it smooth? Two causes, Firefox's animations and Safari's shapes, both answered by drawing the places as still bitmaps while the friend moves: the duck pond 27 → 58 and 22 → 60 frames a second. And a stale "choppy" mark on Matthew's laptop. Measured on each computer and pasted into a public page; next, an opt-in canister of our own.

  24. Paired bars, before the fixes and on 0.0.78, for four cases: the castle drag 45.8 to 60, swimming in the duck pond 51.7 to 60, walking in the imagination 18 to 59.7, the witch's woods drag 55.6 to 59.3; a dashed line at 55, the gate.Paired bars, before the fixes and on 0.0.78, for four cases: the castle drag 45.8 to 60, swimming in the duck pond 51.7 to 60, walking in the imagination 18 to 59.7, the witch's woods drag 55.6 to 59.3; a dashed line at 55, the gate.
    ^du_report(1) · 2026-10-16
    60 frames a second, and what checks it

    Does the game hold 60 frames a second for what a game controller does in a place, how much of that do our tests check, and where do they run? Every measured case holds 59.3 to 60 on 0.0.78: walking and dragging the friend in seven places, at 1920×1080. What made the difference was in the browser's work, not the game's: masks, a repeated write, blurs, the imagination's live pictures. The measuring covers 2 of 8 kinds of action in 7 of 24 places, and none of it runs in CI yet.