Character and movement pass

NPC characters
- Articulated rig (hips/knees, shoulders/elbows/hands) replaces rigid capsules;
  the walk cycle bends knees and elbows and flees with a longer stride.
- Layered outfits (jacket/vest/coat/dress), extended accessories and hand items
  (bag, umbrella, phone, camera, clipboard, cup), face details and five hair
  silhouettes, all deterministic per profile seed.
- Idle behaviour layers (phone, clipboard, crossed arms, look-around), breathing
  and weight shift; escalation raises hands or points, and noticed NPCs turn
  toward the guard.
- Reaction symbols above the head (!!, ?!, !, ?), door-queue offsets assigned by
  GameManager, three LOD tiers with hysteresis and a billboard impostor.
- smoke_npc_budget.gd: 16 avatars = 534 meshes, ~6.9 ms average (50 ms budget).

Player movement
- Separate accel/decel, step-up assist for kerbs and the entrance steps, and a
  forward-axis fix: W was inverted (get_axis(forward, back) is negative).
- Head bob, landing dip and precision-walk FOV, gated by persisted head-bob and
  invert-Y settings; precision chip and tick; surface-aware footsteps and a
  landing cue forwarded to AudioFeedback.
- Gamepad support (sticks, deadzone, face buttons, bumpers), a control legend
  that follows the active device, and named actions for the remaining keys.
- Key/button remapping in Settings, persisted as input_bindings and applied by
  InputBindings (mouse and gamepad axes are never removed).
- smoke_movement.gd (windowed): climbs the steps, checks precision speed, chip,
  footsteps and landing; new 11-precision-walk capture and catalogue entry.

Verification: headless 208/208, Python tooling 56/56, all 11 smokes pass,
compare 11 good / 0 bad, movement judge match. Version 0.5.0. Only optional
Future ideas remain in TODO.

DONE.md

@@ -752,3 +752,65 @@ Completed 2026-11-01. Python tooling **56/56**, headless **188/188**, prop galle
       triangle/vertex budget in the pipeline docstring.
 - [x] README lists the gallery capture command and image; the pipeline docstring and audit docs
       describe the budget checks.
+
+## Better NPC Characters
+
+Completed 2026-11-01 (v0.5.0). Headless suite **208/208**; NPC budget smoke reports 16 avatars,
+534 meshes, ~6.9 ms average frame time; PLAN-verb, crowd, emergency, and timeline smokes pass.
+
+- [x] Replaced the rigid capsules with an articulated rig: hip -> thigh -> knee -> shin -> shoe and
+      shoulder -> upper arm -> elbow -> forearm -> hand, with knee/elbow pivots driven by the walk
+      cycle and the seated pose.
+- [x] Layered clothing (`layer_for`): jacket, hi-vis vest, coat, and dress over the base outfit,
+      with role-appropriate defaults and deterministic colourways.
+- [x] Extended accessories and hand items: bag, umbrella, phone, camera, clipboard, cup, plus the
+      existing cap/hood/backpack/sunglasses/lanyard. Hand items attach to the right hand socket.
+- [x] Face and hair variety: ears, brows, mouth, five hair silhouettes (long, bun, beard, bald,
+      short), height range, and deterministic per-seed appearance.
+- [x] Added idle behaviour layers (`idle_style_for`): breathing, weight shift, look-around, phone,
+      clipboard, and crossed arms; escalation gestures raise both hands (L3+) or point (L2), and
+      noticed NPCs turn their head toward the guard.
+- [x] Walk cycle now swings hips/shoulders, bends knees and elbows, and uses a faster, longer
+      stride when fleeing.
+- [x] Door queue staging: GameManager sorts waiting guests and assigns spaced `queue_slot_for`
+      offsets, so one person is at the door and the rest wait behind without overlapping.
+- [x] Reaction readability: a billboarded symbol above the head (`!!` panic, `?!` watching, `!`
+      blocked, `?` warned) updates from the reaction/escalation state.
+- [x] Three LOD tiers with hysteresis: full detail, simplified (props/shadows off), and a
+      billboard impostor; `apply_lod` is tested for the swap.
+- [x] Re-measured the live-NPC budget with the full rig (16 avatars, 534 meshes) and added
+      `smoke_npc_budget.gd`, which fails above the documented 50 ms frame budget.
+- [x] Tests: deterministic layers/hand items/hair, role layers, queue slot spacing, LOD
+      thresholds/hysteresis, reaction labels, articulated pivots, mesh budget, and the
+      walk-to-idle animation transition.
+
+## Better Player Movement
+
+Completed 2026-11-01 (v0.5.0). Windowed `smoke_movement.gd` passes; headless tests cover surface
+lookup, constants, gamepad bindings, and settings persistence.
+
+- [x] Split acceleration and braking (`accel` 22, `decel` 30 m/s²) so stopping is snappier than
+      starting, and fixed the inverted forward axis found while staging the movement smoke: W now
+      walks toward the camera's forward vector instead of moonwalking.
+- [x] Step-up assist (0.32 m) climbs kerbs and the entrance steps, with wall sliding left to
+      `move_and_slide`; the smoke walks the guard from the sidewalk onto the landing.
+- [x] Camera feel: speed-scaled head bob, a landing dip, and a precision-walk FOV change, all
+      gated by the new "Head bob and camera motion" setting; a motion-sickness toggle persists.
+- [x] Precision walk shows a HUD chip and plays a short tick when it engages, in addition to the
+      slower speed.
+- [x] Surface-aware footsteps (concrete/asphalt/stone) synced to stride distance, plus a landing
+      cue; both have observable counters for tests.
+- [x] Gamepad support: left-stick movement, right-stick look with deadzone, A/B/X/Y face buttons,
+      LB slow, RB wand; bindings are added at runtime and the control legend swaps to gamepad
+      hints when a pad event is seen.
+- [x] Moved the remaining hard-coded gameplay keys (Q/F/G/L/B/V, Tab cycle) onto named InputMap
+      actions, and the panel allow/deny keys onto movement actions.
+- [x] Key/button remapping in the settings panel: click a binding, press a key or pad button,
+      persisted as `input_bindings` through `Save`; `InputBindings.apply` rewrites only key/button
+      events and leaves mouse and gamepad axes alone.
+- [x] Added invert-Y and head-bob settings (with save/load round-trip tests) alongside the
+      existing look sensitivity.
+- [x] Tests: surface lookup, step/stride/precision constants, gamepad binding presence and
+      deadzone, remap descriptor/apply/labels, and settings persistence for camera and bindings.
+- [x] Added `smoke_movement.gd` (windowed) and `11-precision-walk.png` with a movement catalogue
+      entry, AI mockup, and compare coverage.