The Great Iceflow Relay — decisions and open questions
Creator-authored direction (direct evidence)
The original, first-person README explains that passing a ball around in WoW became repetitive, inspiring a proper mini-game in Iceflow Lake. The author describes enjoying RP activities and small group challenges, specifically passing balls among pairs or three-player triangles. The same README explicitly says AI helped with coding because the creator was new to addon development.
This is creator testimony, not an AI idea inferred from an implementation.
Implemented approaches (no inferred approval dialogue)
| Implemented approach | Code / Git evidence | Important qualification |
|---|---|---|
| Use in-game landmarks as checkpoint triggers | checkpoints, CheckCheckpoint |
Current boundaries are rectangles; earliest committed prototype used triangles (5c86d98) |
| Arm before crossing start | /iceflow ready, armed and runActive |
Historical motivations for this split are not recorded |
| Reward catches and intermediate stops | OnItemPush, visitedCheckpoints |
Catch detection is icon/event-based |
| Give penalties for ball holding | CheckBallInInventory |
One per ~2-second poll, not measured seconds |
| Discourage closeness | CheckTargetDistance |
Checks targeted unit, not every teammate |
| Communicate in existing party/raid channels | RelayGroupMessage, 6b69b48 |
Messaging is not multi-client state synchronization |
| Save little beyond the play session | No SavedVariables in TOC | Current design is session-local; not proof of a rejected save system |
Source-based iteration (documented evidence)
- The first Lua commit on 2025-09-11 used five triangle-shaped checkpoint regions.
- Later 2025-09-11 changes converted the course to six rectangular regions with separate start and finish, a local shard count and repeated checkpoint logic.
- Successive changes exposed distinct armed versus running states and added bag detection, an item-event reward and a combined penalty accounting approach.
- On 2025-09-13, commits revised finish-message wording and added raid messaging alongside party output.
These transitions are verifiable from commit diffs; the original discussions, disagreements and rejected proposals behind them have not been recovered.
Creator decisions still required, not assumptions
- Should the course be a strictly ordered race, or intentionally allow route freedom?
- Should holding a ball incur penalties by elapsed time, frequency of checks, or only after a threshold?
- Must “too close” mean within 28 yards of any teammate, and how would we detect that reliably?
- Do participants need an authoritative/shared leaderboard, or is friendly local scoring sufficient?
- Should the existing English item/zone names be generalized for localization?
The documentation review did not answer these on Babuni.dev's behalf.
Review decision — 2026-10-26
The assistant documented discrepancies and historical development without editing gameplay. This is a documentation action, not evidence of user approval of future feature changes.
Document information
Creator: Babuni.dev. This register separates what the creator actually stated, what code demonstrates, and what is still undecided.