Why the sharks did not hurt
Sharks lunged and snapped and nothing happened. God mode had been switched on in Settings since an earlier test run, and it blocks every bite while the shark still plays its attack. The Watch AI copied that setting, so it was invincible too. The Watch AI now never plays in god mode, and a "GOD MODE" tag shows on the dive screen whenever it is on.
Attacks are a feature again
- A blue shark now rolls 0.8 to 1.3 percent a second to attack and a great white 2.5 to 4.1. Sharks circle for 4 seconds before the first roll instead of 6, and a bump can turn into a bite. Keeping the lamp on a shark still cuts its chances.
- A shark can hold and shake you, and a limb can come off. Two sharks on opposite ends tear you in half after about a second of visible strain.
- A big mouth can swallow you whole, with a short struggle to escape. As a modelled average, not play data: about 60 percent of players escape a grouper, 45 percent a gulper, 25 percent a great white and under 10 percent an orca.
Bitten-off limbs leave a stump that bleeds for the rest of the dive. The body pieces are cut from the real diver sprite at runtime, then drift, sink and get eaten. A "Graphic violence" option is on by default.
A fuller sea
New animals include orcas that hunt sharks, electric eels that shock and short your lamp, marlin and swordfish that stab and pin you, groupers and gulpers that swallow, box jellies, barracuda swarms and leopard seals in the cold. Background life reacts now: schools gather at a flare, curious animals come to the lamp, and you can ride a turtle or a manta. The library holds 1,089 painted sprites. The water has ten depth layers, blurred and hazed by distance, with an Options toggle. The scenery is code-drawn stand-ins for now.
The Watch AI plays the speed run
A SPEED RUN button on the title menu starts a full-game clock with splits and boards per route. The Watch AI plays it as a real new game: no teleports, no flags set, using the real stations and menus. A watchdog notices stalls and escalates, from cancel and re-plan to an assist as a last resort, and any run needing an assist is marked not valid.
Its logs showed three real freezes: a ship pilot that never took back control after a dive step (280 seconds standing still), a key shortcut that never completed its goal (271 repeats) and start stages that did not give the AI what it needed. None was a crash.
What a three hour run showed
A three hour run finished with 0 errors: 26 dives, 21 home and 5 lost to sharks. But the AI had never bought an upgrade, so every dive began on the base tank, and it took 10 dives before the dive cap stabilised Leviathan, which counts as an assist.
| Problem found | Fix |
|---|---|
| No upgrades ever bought | Buys at the Equipment Workshop like a player: bigger tank, faster repairs, faster swimming and ascent, a leaner regulator |
| Arrival briefing stalled it for 76 seconds | A Back tap does nothing there, so it now holds Skip |
| "Stuck?" warning firing constantly | 36 of 38 warnings were held work such as repairs and welds, so it no longer fires then |
The fixes are built with 0 errors, but whether the AI now buys and stabilises Leviathan sooner is for the next run to say.