Daily Brains · a scope is on you. Read range and height from the view, then pin his window.
Sightline is the map-logic puzzle in Daily Brains (/daily). Every day the whole world gets the same small misty city, built from the puzzle number. You stand on a round paving stone in a park, a plaza or on a street corner, and you see yourself the way the shooter does: through his scope, crosshairs on your chest. There is no range readout. Work out how far away he is, how high he sits and which way he is looking from, then pin his building on the map, set his floor and take the shot. The closer you are, the more you score.
STORY & LORE
Where it comes from
The idea is borrowed from the 'where is the shooter?' map puzzles that do the rounds on social media: a scope view and a street map. Sightline makes one every day, procedurally, and makes it fair: everything you need is in the view, and the generator proves no other window looks the same from where you stand unless it is right next to his.
The city
A 7 × 7 grid of 72 m blocks and 20 m streets on an island in a river: buildings of 2 to 48 floors that rise towards a downtown, a park with a fountain and trees, small paved plazas, parked cars, lamp posts, benches, bins and a few grey figures who are not looking at you. The scope view is a real 3D render (three.js) from the true window, with fog, shadows and a mil reticle; the map is the same city drawn from above, buildings shaded by height.
Light on any device
Sightline loads behind a real progress bar in steps (the city, the scope, the streets, the towers, a shader warm-up, the map), so nothing stalls without telling you. Sun shadows are baked into the street textures once instead of being computed every frame, every shader (including the reveal's) is compiled during loading, the scope only redraws when something changes, and the pixel ratio is capped (1.5 on phones, 1 on low-end devices) with anti-aliasing only on desktops.
HOW IT PLAYS
Reading the scope
Step 1 is the scope, big and in the middle of the screen. The paving stone you stand on is exactly 4 m across, so it is a ruler: drag a box tight around it (drag an edge to fine-tune, drag inside to move it) and the readout above the scope does the sums in plain sight. Range = 4000 ÷ the box's width in mils. A flat circle squashes as you look down on it, so height = squash (height ÷ width) × range, and the floor is height ÷ 3.5 m. Three zooms (6×, 12×, 24×) are a first-focal-plane scope: the reticle and your box scale with the picture, so mils stay true at every zoom. What lies behind you in the picture (lawn or paving, a near wall or open street) says which way he is.
Pinning him
Step 2 is a clean city map: buildings shaded by height with their floor counts where they fit, trees, plazas, the park and you. Tap the building you think he is in and its side view pops up at the foot of the map, floor by floor: tap or drag it to his floor (or use - and +, or the arrow keys), then Take the shot. On a phone the two steps are tabs (Read the scope, Find his window); on a wide screen they sit side by side.
Hints through the week
Monday to Thursday the map draws your measured range as a ring round you. Monday to Wednesday it also greys out the buildings too short to hold him at your reading and marks your reading on the side view; Monday and Tuesday shade a sector his bearing falls in (centred near, never exactly on, the truth). From Friday you only have the scale bar. The range band grows and the scope haze thickens towards Sunday.
Fair by construction
The generator enumerates every window in the city with a clear line of sight to you. Any whose scope picture matches the shooter's within reading tolerance (ring width within 12%, squash within 0.05, direction within 20 degrees) must lie within 45 m of him, so a careful reading always lands close. scripts/test-sightline.mjs re-enumerates 400 days independently in CI.
Scoring, streaks and sharing
Score falls with the 3D distance from your guess to his window: horizontal distance from your pin to his building (nothing if you pinned it) and 3.5 m per floor off. Within one floor on his building is 1000; about 600 at 25 m off, 300 at 57 m, 100 at 107 m. 500 or more keeps the streak. Then the shot: over your shoulder, the bullet flies to your pick in bullet time, glass bursts if you found him, and the camera pulls out to show his real window, the line he had on you and where you aimed, while the score counts up. The share card gives how far off you were, never where he was.
Intro and rules
The first time you open the puzzle each day a short skippable intro plays: a glint, the breathing sway of a scope settling on you, then the title. The rules never open by themselves; the How to play button opens a five-page illustrated deck.
GALLERY
WEEKDAYS
| Day | Level | Range band | Map hints |
|---|---|---|---|
| Monday | Easy | 110-210 m | bearing sector (45 degrees each side), rings |
| Tuesday | Steady | 110-240 m | bearing sector (60 degrees each side), rings |
| Wednesday | Medium | 120-270 m | rings |
| Thursday | Tricky | 130-300 m | rings |
| Friday | Hard | 130-320 m | scale bar |
| Saturday | Sharp | 140-330 m | scale bar, more haze |
| Sunday | Fiendish | 150-340 m | scale bar, most haze |
REWARDS
| Event | Reward |
|---|---|
| Close enough (500+) | 15 Tickets (daily_solve) |
| Perfect (1000) | 25 Tickets (daily_perfect) |
ACHIEVEMENTS
| Badge | How |
|---|---|
| Found Him | Score 500 or more |
| Right Building | Pin the shooter's building |
| Rangefinder | Finish within 25 m of his window |
| Plumb Line | Right building, exact floor |
| Dead On | Score 1000 |
| High Ground (secret) | 800+ on a shooter at floor 30 or higher |
| Weekend Marksman | 900+ on a Saturday or Sunday |
| Three Days Watching | 3-day streak |
| Counter-Sniper | 7-day streak |
| Nothing Gets Past You | 30-day streak |
VERSION HISTORY
- Redesigned end to end as two clear steps: 1. read the scope, 2. find his window (tabs on phones, side by side on wide screens).
- The scope is big and centred; the measuring box can be fine-tuned by its edges and survives zooming, and the readout states range, height and floor with the sums shown.
- A clean map: no street names; your measured range drawn as a ring (Mon to Thu), too-short buildings greyed (Mon to Wed). Tapping a building pops up its side view to pick the floor, replacing the narrow floor strip and the separate floor bar.
- New reveal: an over-the-shoulder shot, the bullet in bullet time to your pick, glass or dust on impact, then a pull-out to his window and the line he had on you, with labels and a counting score card. New sound for the measure, the flight and the impact.
- Performance: shadows baked into the street textures (no shadow map), shaders compiled during a loading screen with a real progress bar, render on demand, pixel ratio capped and anti-aliasing only on desktops.
- Slim one-row header; the hint line and swap buttons are gone.
- Scoring and the generator are unchanged; the test now also checks that the readout recovers his floor (within one) and range from a perfect box, and that the greying hint never hides his building even with an 8% misreading.
- New thumbnail and wiki screenshots.
- Redesigned as a pin-drop game: the four lettered windows and the two shots are gone. Pin his building on the map, set his floor on an elevation strip beside it, take one shot; score falls with the 3D distance to his window.
- The range and floor sliders are gone too; the mil caliper now also shows the sums (range, height, floor) as you measure.
- Scope and map share the screen and swap with a tap on phones, side by side on wide screens; the map drags, pinches and zooms, with floor counts on the buildings.
- Reveal draws the sightline on the map and in 3D, flying the camera out of his window to show the shot and your guess.
- Generator rebuilt: no decoys; every window that looks the same in the scope must be within 45 m of the shooter, re-checked over 400 days in CI. Weekday hints: bearing sector Monday and Tuesday, range rings to Thursday.
- New thumbnail and wiki screenshots captured from the redesigned game.
- New thumbnail: a straight, full-bleed square crop of the game in play.
- Launch version in Daily Brains.
- Procedural island city per day; three.js scope view from the true window with fog, shadows and a first-focal-plane mil reticle at 6×, 12× and 24×; drag-to-measure caliper.
- No range readout: range from the 4 m paving stone's width in mils, height from how squashed it looks.
- Optional range and floor call for up to 300 bonus points, then four windows and two shots; reveal animates the sightline and labels why each decoy fails.
- Weekday ladder Monday Easy to Sunday Fiendish, with wrong-direction decoys at the weekend; generator + validator proven over 400 days in CI.
- Skippable once-a-day intro, centred controls, rules only on request, no emoji anywhere.
- New thumbnail art
- Thumbnail now captured from the game.
- Square thumbnail