Ignatius Rocketfrock Manual

Quick reference for starting, moving, fighting, and using the in-game menu.

Start

The game opens on the title card. Press a key, click, tap, or use the Start button to begin. That first interaction also unlocks the browser audio system.

The Manual link is available from the title card before the game starts.

Graphics compatibility

The game uses WebGL2 for its main sprite and scenery rendering when the browser supports it. On systems without WebGL2, it automatically falls back to the Canvas 2D renderer. The visual content and gameplay rules are the same in both modes, though performance may differ on scenery-heavy levels.

Gameplay physics continue to run at a deterministic 60 updates per second. Rendering blends moving actors, rockets, platforms, camera motion, scale, fades, and simulation-driven enemy animation between those fixed updates, so ordinary movement remains smooth when display-frame timing lands between simulation ticks. This visual blending does not change collision, targeting, jump height, or other gameplay results.

Goal

Guide Ignatius through the cave, survive hostile creatures and hazards, operate useful devices, and reach the exit door.

Controls

On a gamepad, either trigger launches the equipped weapon. Green walkable lines are one-way for Ignatius: he lands on them from above, but holding down lets him descend through them even while already falling. Enemies never intentionally drop through green lines. Player and enemy shots pass through green walkable lines. Yellow blockable lines and areas remain solid from every direction and stop shots.

Ignatius’s ordinary ground jump rises exactly 200 world pixels. Holding Down while he is still moving upward adds a braking gravity force; holding it from takeoff reduces the apex to 100 world pixels, while pressing it later allows intermediate heights. Down never adds extra gravity once Ignatius is level or falling, where it retains its existing green-platform drop-through role. The launch speed is derived from gravity, so the designed apex does not change with display or simulation frame rate; rocket-assisted movement remains variable. Quick jump taps and the airborne release-and-press gesture are buffered until the next gameplay step, so the double-jump does not depend on display frame timing.

Minimap

The upper-left score-and-bars panel and the upper-right minimap scale down together whenever the screen is too small to contain them. If the minimap is hidden, the score panel can use the released space and remain larger. The minimap matches the rendered height of the score panel, never grows wider than it, and shows the cave outline, horizontal platform surfaces, the current camera window, Ignatius, and the exit marker. Click or tap either upper panel to open the pause menu. The minimap can be hidden in Settings; the score panel and Escape still open the menu.

Rocketfrock

• The rocket pack can boost, slow falls, and fire homing rockets.
• Rocket launches have no firing cooldown. Each distinct launch press fires immediately whenever enough fuel is available.
• When a gamepad is the active control device, supported controllers rumble strongly when Ignatius is hurt and more gently for rocket fire, the double-jump kick, and sustained hover. Keyboard or touch control keeps controller vibration silent.
• Fuel normally begins recharging after Ignatius returns to the ground. Overdrive provides its smaller passive recovery even in the air and while hovering.
• Homing rockets only lock onto enemies that are at least partly visible on the current screen. They prefer visible active targets in the direction Ignatius is facing, and release a target that leaves the screen.
• A standard rocket deals 30 damage to the enemy it directly hits. Its small impact splash deals exactly 1 damage to other nearby enemies within a diameter of about two wizard heights. Overdrive retains this splash; wrench rockets use only their own behavior.

Power-ups

• Collected power-ups disappear and return after 60 seconds, so it can be worthwhile to revisit an earlier part of a level.
• Automatically generated levels aim for roughly one treasure chest per 500 pixels and one genuine power-up per 1,000 pixels of route travel at the default Reward density. Chests may appear on the main route, lower recovery routes, upper access steps, or reachable upper perches. Power-ups are placed directly on a walkable surface for easy collection; about half are random-wrench pickups, with the remainder split evenly between Shield and Overdrive.
• Generated static platforms that overlap horizontally keep their walking surfaces at least 180 pixels apart vertically.
• Generated vertical lifts reserve a full rider-height corridor and dock beside solid yellow platforms rather than carrying riders into their undersides.
• The top-left Power bar shows the highest-priority active effect and its remaining duration. Any active wrench upgrade is shown ahead of Shield and Overdrive; all compatible effects remain active at the same time.
• Shield lasts 10 seconds and blocks all ordinary incoming damage. The pickup glows blue, and Ignatius flashes blue while protected. The blue flash takes priority over the red critical-health flash.
• Overdrive lasts 20 seconds and halves the fuel cost of each launch. It also recovers fuel continuously at a minimum rate equal to 90% of hover consumption, including while hovering or during the ordinary recharge delay. Normal grounded recovery may be faster, but the two rates do not add together. Rocket firing itself has no cooldown.
• Wrench power-ups last 20 seconds and replace any other active wrench. A random wrench pickup chooses its type when the level starts and rolls a new type whenever it respawns.
• Rockets modified by a wrench carry a fuzzy outline in that wrench's colour, so the current payload remains visible even after launch. The six powered rockets use precomposited atlas frames, avoiding first-shot stutter and extra glow drawing during play.

Score and treasure chests

• The line above the Health bar shows the current level number, level title, and Score.
• Treasure chests begin open with their riches visible. Walking close awards the authored Score value exactly once.
• After collection, the treasure disappears and the matching open-empty chest remains behind. A small +N popup confirms the award.
• Score survives ordinary death and respawn, level transitions, and save/restore. Starting a genuinely new game or restarting the level resets it.
• Score is not a Gold currency. A future upgrade economy may introduce Gold separately.

Health

• Damage briefly grants invulnerability, shown by the health meter feedback. The Shield power-up grants a separate ten-second invulnerability window and makes Ignatius flash blue.
• Health regenerates after a delay if Ignatius avoids further damage.
• Some hazards are damaging; explicitly lethal hazards may defeat Ignatius immediately.
• After the death sparks burst, the camera remains on the death site for two seconds before Ignatius respawns.

Menu

• Settings adjusts effects volume, music volume, difficulty, rendering quality, minimap visibility, renderer preferences, development-tool visibility, and browser fullscreen policy.
• Restart level restarts the current level and resumes play.
• Exit to Title appears while the game is running and returns to the title card.
• Exit to desktop appears only in the Electron build.

Settings

• Effects volume controls sound effects.
• Music volume controls OGG level music. Levels choose from the tracks listed in assets/music.json, and each selected file loops during play.
• Difficulty currently changes only incoming damage to Ignatius.
• Rendering quality changes visual particle density without changing gameplay timing or collision.
• Use hardware rendering selects WebGL2 by default after the next reload. An explicit ?webgl=0 or ?webgl=1 URL option overrides the saved preference.
• Development mode shows or hides the lower-right development tool strip in both browser and Electron builds.
• The development Profiler button records every requested frame until pressed again, then copies a JSON report. While Baking: Tiles is active, the report also separates tile-worker collection, cache planning, adoption, atlas upload, eviction, scheduling, and drawing without changing the tile-cache policy.
• Use pixmap pyramids enables prefiltered reduced copies of isolated character artwork after the next reload. Disable it to compare direct drawing from the original full-size pixmaps.
• Baking chooses how static background, terrain, and foreground artwork is reused. Off draws static scenery live every frame. Tiles continuously bakes nearby 256-pixel tiles in the background, reuses them while they remain near the camera, and falls back to live drawing until a visible layer is ready. Full keeps the experimental complete-level bake for renderer comparison testing. WebGL Full baking has a 2 GiB estimated texture ceiling; an oversized or failed bake returns the setting to Off.
• Show minimap controls whether the upper-right minimap is visible.

Ranged enemy attacks

Ranged enemies may begin an attack as soon as Ignatius is inside their awareness range and facing cone, even while they are still moving toward their preferred combat distance. They do not deliberately fire through solid scenery, and they cancel the projectile release if the shot becomes blocked or Ignatius leaves their current view during the wind-up. Skeleton Casters launch green undeath orbs with a bubbly trail. The Tri-fireball Goblin launches three slightly smaller, non-homing fireballs in a straight ±15-degree fan; it commits to the volley when at least one of the three real trajectories can reach Ignatius without hitting solid scenery first. Each fireball deals the same damage as the ordinary Fireball Goblin's homing shot. Bombing bats only release rocks when the predicted falling path can plausibly cross Ignatius and is not blocked by a platform or other solid obstacle.

Level authoring: automatic enemies

The Level Editor can enable Auto spawn enemies for a level. The percentage is checked once each second. A successful check creates one eligible enemy outside the forward edge of the screen, between one tenth and one full screen width away, normally in the direction of the exit door.

• The feature switch is disabled by default. New Level Editor levels prefill a 10% chance, so checking the box immediately gives a moderate reinforcement rate.
• The default pool is 1-999, meaning every enemy currently available in the catalog.
• The pool uses the generator format: comma-separated numbers and ranges, with ! exclusions. For example, 1-9,!2,!4.
• Ground reinforcements spawn on a safe support and immediately hunt the player's last-seen position. Flying reinforcements retain their flying attack behavior and also begin already aware of the player.

Enemy spawner is a separate placeable entity for scripted fights such as boss encounters. It is invisible during play and uses the same per-second percentage and numbered enemy-pool format as automatic spawning. Each spawner rolls independently only while its authored area is inside the current camera view. Off-screen spawners do not roll or accumulate time. A successful roll teleports one already-alert enemy onto the spawner point with a brief purple-blue flash. Ground enemies require a nearby safe floor, and a blocked or occupied spawn attempt is skipped. An optional Disable signal stops future rolls once that named channel becomes active.

Level authoring: bosses and signal gates

Any placed character enemy can be marked as a Boss encounter, given a display name, and assigned an optional defeat signal. It remains an ordinary enemy underneath, so its scale, health, movement, projectile, and attack overrides continue to define the fight. Enemy scale is one uniform multiplier: it enlarges the Character Editor hitbox, rendered character, artwork offsets, and projectile radius together, and updates immediately while typed in the Level Editor. When the boss notices Ignatius or takes damage, a prominent current/max-health bar appears at the top of the game view. Defeat hides the bar, emits the boss event, and activates the configured signal channel.

Every wizard exit door automatically remains closed while any living boss exists in the current level. Once the last boss is defeated, the ordinary proximity-opening sequence works normally. Level authors therefore do not need a separate gate merely to keep the player inside a boss encounter.

Hanging Gate and Spiked Gate entities can still listen to a named signal channel for other authored barriers. They begin closed and blocking when Blocks player is enabled, then enter their raised/open state and remove their collision when the channel activates. This allows a lever, keyhole, boss defeat, or future scripted event to open passages elsewhere in a level.

Level authoring: Background and Foreground

Placed artwork can use a cosmetic Background layer behind terrain and actors, ordinary Terrain, or an inert Foreground layer in front of them. In the Asset palette, choose Layer for new assets, then use the single Place asset tool. Background and Foreground automatically disable atlas collision and moving-platform behavior. Background artwork remains behind ordinary scenery regardless of its stack-order value.

The dedicated Layers panel contains matching Foreground and Background groups for each cosmetic layer's Parallax, Brightness, and Scale. Background parallax defaults to approximately 0.925926, the exact reciprocal of the Foreground default 1.08. This makes distant artwork scroll more slowly while the Foreground scrolls slightly faster. Set either parallax value to 1.0 when that layer should move exactly with the playable world. Background brightness and scale normally begin at 1.0. Foreground displays its complete treatment directly, normally about 0.36 brightness and 2.0 scale, so there is no additional hidden darkening or enlargement. Hover over a field for a compact explanation. These settings affect the whole layer, including generated perimeter artwork on Foreground. The separate Perimeter panel contains only cave-shape, feather, spline, and perimeter-population controls.

Level authoring: cave perimeter

Manual and generated cave windows default to a 200-pixel Feather to full black distance. The fade can be made organically uneven with Gradient waviness, Wave period, and Gradient seed. Wave period accepts 10-500 pixels and defaults to 50; waviness also defaults to 50 pixels. The smooth cyan perimeter remains unchanged so automatic stalactites and stalagmites keep stable inward directions. Only the opacity contours inside the feather wobble, while collision, navigation, and the exact full-black boundary remain unchanged. Automatic perimeter decoration defaults to a 2.0 asset scale and places about 40% of each formation inside the cyan opening, with slight deterministic variation. The Level Editor's Inward coverage % field adjusts that overlap before repopulating the perimeter. Formation spacing is calculated automatically from each asset's rendered size so the decoration remains densely overlapped through the full-black boundary. Manual Populate perimeter deliberately reserves no gameplay clearance: foreground formations may cover platforms, doors, enemies, pickups, or the wizard so level authors can create passages that are partly hidden behind stalactites and stalagmites.

Level authoring: selection and assets

Use Shift-drag on the canvas to select every fully enclosed entity or asset. Ctrl-click toggles one object, and Ctrl+Shift-drag toggles all objects enclosed by the rectangle. The last selected object remains the primary white-outlined object whose properties appear in Selected object; the other gray-outlined objects participate in group movement and clipboard actions. Position, size, angle, layer, mirror settings, entity state, and other inspector controls commit directly, so there is no Apply button. X, Y, W, H, angle, enemy scale, and the single-line Notes field update while edited. The toolbar provides standard Cut, Copy, Paste, and Delete actions for either one object or a multi-selection. The corresponding Ctrl/Cmd+X, Ctrl/Cmd+C, Ctrl/Cmd+V, Delete, and Backspace shortcuts work whenever a text field is not being edited. The first paste after Cut restores the objects at their original coordinates; copied objects paste with a small snapped offset, and repeated pastes continue to cascade. The Asset palette lists every asset from every loaded atlas, so no separate atlas dropdown is needed. Both the Asset and Entity palettes use matching two-column thumbnail cards, compact filter fields, and their own full-height scroll areas. Thumbnail rows keep a useful fixed height and scroll rather than being compressed to fit; previews use the displayed card aspect ratio and are centered from the final visible artwork, including complete composed enemy poses. Selecting an asset card enters Place Asset mode; choosing an entity card enters Place Entity mode, while the toolbar placement buttons reuse the current palette choices without duplicate dropdowns. Moving over the canvas shows the selected item as a snapped translucent preview. One click places it, after which both asset and entity placement return automatically to Select mode.

Rendering defaults: Fresh profiles use hardware rendering with baking Off. Existing saved rendering preferences are preserved.