Ghost Mode: Adding a Real Fail State
Spikes, gap angles and rotation engines. How to build a run where the ball can actually lose.
Why Ghost Mode Is Different
Every other mode is a process the viewer watches unfold. Ghost mode is a run the ball can fail. A single ring surrounds the ball with one gap and a set of spikes. Touching a spike ends the run and resets. That changes the viewing experience completely: instead of waiting to see how long something takes, the viewer is watching to see whether it survives. If your clips are getting watched but not rewatched, this is the mode to try.
- •The fail state is the point. Do not tune the spikes down until failures are rare, or you have removed the reason to watch.
The Gap
Gap Size is measured in degrees and accepts 10 to 180. Gap Start Angle accepts 0 to 360 and sets where the opening begins. A wide gap of 90 degrees or more makes escape routine, so the spikes carry all the tension. A narrow gap of 20 to 40 degrees makes the gap itself the challenge. Pick one to be the difficulty and keep the other generous, because tuning both tight produces a run that fails in the first second every time.
- →Gap Size: 10 to 180 degrees
- →Gap Start Angle: 0 to 360 degrees
- →Reset Delay after a hit: 0 to 3000 ms
Spikes
Spike Count accepts 1 to 50 and sets how many hazards sit around the ring. Spike Height accepts 5 to 100 and controls how far they project inward, which is the real difficulty control since taller spikes shrink the safe area. Spike Spacing accepts 0 to 30 degrees and sets the gap between them. Start at a low count with moderate height and raise the count until failures happen often enough to be interesting but not so often that no run finishes.
- →Spike Count: 1 to 50
- →Spike Height: 5 to 100
- →Spike Spacing: 0 to 30 degrees
Rotation
The Rotation Engine decides how the ring turns. Continuous rotation uses a Continuous Velocity from -2 to +2, where negative reverses direction. Stepped rotation advances the ring by a Step Increment of -180 to +180 degrees on each trigger, which produces a sharper, more deliberate feel because the hazard snaps into a new position rather than sliding. Stepped rotation is easier for a viewer to read on a small screen, since they can see exactly where the gap moved to.
- •Negative velocity is not just cosmetic. A ring turning against the ball behaves very differently from one turning with it.
Death and Escape Feedback
A fail state needs to land. Death Audio picks the sound that plays when the ball hits a spike, from the built-in effects or anything you have uploaded. Death FX picks the visual, grouped as Fire and Physics, Shatter and Debris, Energy and Light, and Cosmic. On the other side, escaping has its own Wind Sound and an optional Ghost Melody so success sounds different from failure. Reset Delay, from 0 to 3000 milliseconds, sets the pause before the next attempt, and a short pause of around 400 to 800 milliseconds lets the failure register without stalling the clip.
- •Give the failure a heavier sound than the bounces. If they sound alike, viewers miss the moment it went wrong.
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