Routines

The spawn reaction plays a 10-frame spawn animation. On its first played frame it sets the sprite's active flag and arms the spawn sound. At the end it leaves the inhabitant live.

The death reaction plays a 16-frame animation. On its first frame it arms the death burst sound. At the end it empties the slot and clears the sprite's active flag so nothing draws it. The animation step advances a frame every other call, so each animation spans twice its frame count in game frames. That is 20 game frames for spawn and 32 for death.

Death means the same for every handler that sets it. Each handler calls this machine before its update. Only the warp gate first pins its position. While a reaction is in progress the machine tells the handler to skip its own code for every frame of the animation. No handler can therefore cut a death short or clear it early. It always runs to the end that empties the slot.

There is therefore no inhabitant that starts dying, springs back and carries on. The object is destroyed and its pool slot freed. That holds whether the death came from a ball kill or the sweep. It holds equally for an overlap with a named slot or a blocked step.

The knock-backs objects do survive are handler-private states instead: the starburst's ball-knock and the orb's chew and spit. Those run in the handler, which this machine passes through when no reaction is in progress.