Rope To The Node

The rope is a chain of sixteen knots solved with Verlet integration: each knot remembers its previous position, the velocity follows from the difference, and the distance between neighbours is held. The constraints are relaxed six times per frame: with a single pass the chain stays rubbery and sags more than it should. The first knot is always in the hand and the last is pinned to the port while the rope holds; when the nearest node leaves the reach the link snaps and the tail flies off — vanishing without a recoil would read as a rendering glitch. The rope is drawn as one curve through the midpoints of the segments: a polyline of sixteen points would give itself away with corners. The native cursor is hidden and the end of the rope takes its place. Frames are computed only while the hand is inside the field; prefers-reduced-motion leaves the rope still. The theme comes from the surroundings through light-dark().