Behind the pixel art and smoothie economy, Frenchieland Frenchies runs on a set of Sacred Rules documented in the GDD. These are not suggestions — they are the architecture that keeps the game at 60 FPS across devices.
I. Sacred Physics Doctrine
All dogs share a 36×48px hitbox. Visual sprite art is offset and scaled via SPRITE_CONFIG but collision is identical. Players trust that switching from Pied to Pink does not change jump timing or platform clearance.
II. UI Separation Protocol
Major UI overlays — Kennel, Black Market, Cosmic Challenges, Fame Titles, Codex — are HTML/CSS DOM elements, not canvas-drawn. This protects render budget. The canvas handles gameplay; the DOM handles menus. 13 overlays are lazy-loaded on first open to keep initial page weight manageable.
III. Performance First
- Speed dimming = simple rgba overlay, not canvas filters.
- Zoom = ctx.scale/translate with lerp.
- Glow effects use cached 128×128 offscreen canvases in a Map.
- Trail effects use a pre-allocated 40-slot circular buffer — zero per-frame allocation.
IV. Spawn Safety
player.screenX = 700 reset before platform init. Thorn bush clear radius around all spawn points. game.time > 5.0 guard prevents thorn spawns for the first 5 seconds. These rules exist because one bad spawn at speed 700 ends a 9,000m Owner's Crew attempt.
V. Canvas Sizing
Internal resolution locked at 1920×1080. CSS display size calculated from viewport. Double requestAnimationFrame + window.load listener safety nets prevent the blank-canvas first-launch bug that plagued early builds.
Why This Matters to Players
Sacred Physics is why the game feels consistent. The hitbox doctrine is why competitive runs are fair. Performance First is why mobile browsers survive Space zone at ×10 combo. These rules are the invisible foundation under every Frenchie's feet.