Status report 2026.07.30: the broadcast finds its voice

The big one this week: the desk broadcast on the spectate page is now a fully voiced radio show. Every pooled scene has real speech from June, Kaori, Liv and their guests, the whole broadcast frame was rebuilt to cut between moments like a produced stream, and the auto camera learned some manners.

The Broadcast Goes Voiced

• Voiced every desk scene. All 81 pooled episodes now play with real speech: the three hosts each with their own locked voice and accent, plus a full guest cast for the interview episodes. Dialogue text types out in step with the words being spoken.
• Fixed audio stutter for good. The voice track is now the clock the whole scene follows, so playback never rewinds or hiccups mid-scene, and joining mid-episode drops you in at exactly the right line.
• Gave scenes titles and intros. Every episode opens with a title card and its cast before the first line, the current title stays pinned on the panel, and there is a proper breather between episodes.
• Made conversations read like conversations. Speakers keep stable sides for a whole scene and face each other; portraits got sharper, pose-consistent art across all expressions.

A Produced Broadcast Frame

• Rebuilt the spectate layout as a broadcast. Panels now slide and fade in and out as the battle moves through its phases, each with its own place per moment: the between-battles break spotlights the desk show, a tug-of-war bidding window brings the banner front and center, and the post-battle beat holds the kill feed and the result up for reading.
• Smoothed the auto camera. No more hard cuts, including on kills; the camera glides to the action with capped acceleration, so it swings instead of teleporting.
• Made everything readable. Side-panel text sizes came up to match the ticker and the desk stage, mech pointer lines now aim at the mech itself instead of the air above it and stay underneath the desk show, and mid-health bars read orange again instead of currency yellow.
• Fit the frame to any screen. The broadcast renders at full production resolution and now scales whole to fit a phone or a small window; the between-battles break also runs a little longer so there is time to breathe.

Under the Hood

• Hardened the server. Background systems now run under a supervisor, so a single crashing loop restarts by itself instead of taking the arena down.
• One switchboard per environment. Server configuration collapsed into a single sealed file per environment with one services manifest, so every feature and background system reads its on and off state from one place.
• Cleaned house. Support can now merge duplicate accounts safely, desk-posted skin thumbnails resolve correctly in production, and a mountain of legacy code left the building.

Spotted something off? Drop it in Discord, playtest feedback is shaping every one of these.