Routines

A capture of the ball scores 500 points. An orb that catches nothing within 250 frames turns into a capsule.

The orb homes on ball A and captures it. In its default state it chases ball A. When it overlaps ball A, it chews the ball for 110 frames, then spits it back toward the bat.

Hunt, the default: it forces the hunt sprite into the sprite record each frame, then steers. While the bat holds ball A, for a serve or a glue catch, the orb wanders on a random heading. In free flight it homes on the ball.

It avoids walls, advances, and leaves play at the far edge. A counter in its record counts to 250 frames, and at 250 the orb gives up. It then tests for the catch. An overlap enters the chew. Otherwise the sweep destroys it.

Chew: on the first frame it deactivates the ball. It clears ball A's active flag so nothing draws the ball. It runs the chew animation, and loops frames 21–28.

For its first 10 frames, timed by a counter in its record, the orb still homes on the ball and moves. The ball stays where it was caught. After that, a second counter is a hold timer that ticks to 100 frames. The ball's Y is pinned to the orb's Y while it ticks. At animation frame 20 it arms the chew sound. When the hold timer reaches 100 it switches to the spit.

Spit: it plays the continuation of the orb animation, and at animation frame 6 it arms the orb-spit sound. From animation frame 8 on it points ball A's sprite at the spat-out ball. It also re-arms the capture slide, which makes the ball active again and walks it back to the bat side.

QUIRK: the spit code carries a death transition on animation frame 14. It sits on the branch for frames below 8, where the frame can never be 14. The orb therefore never dies here. From frame 8 onward it merely re-arms the ball every frame. The spit has no self-exit.

The slot is reclaimed externally, via the ball-loss path. Each frame it re-arms the capture slide. The slide walks the caught ball to the bat's losing edge at 5 px/frame and, on arrival, loses the ball. With ball B in play, ball B takes over as ball A and the re-armed slide carries it off too. When the last ball goes, the last-ball branch zeroes the type field of every inhabitant record. The dispatcher therefore skips the now-empty orb slot on the next pass.

Give up: it zeroes the anim frame, state and both counters. It then rewrites the type field. The slot becomes a capsule on the next frame.