From 3e067deceff31da985db3d3c71f8a56112f56b06 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001 From: sylph-decoder Date: Tue, 1 Sep 2026 19:44:33 +0000 Subject: [PATCH] re: the clock origin is blocked -- a 600-present boot capture has no title in it The clock origin is the last surviving candidate for finding 3, and now that the clock is known to advance 1 unit per present it is directly measurable as a count: observe the plate at a known declared alpha, count presents back to the title's first draw, and the difference is the title's clock value at its own first draw. No capture I have contains the title. Three captures agree on what the boot does: publisher splash (219/228/244 presents), developer splash (186/185/204), then the attract movie at 422/429/463. Two splashes, then the movie. There is no title segment. This re-frames an old blocker as expected rather than mysterious. The corpus records "three runs, two locales, two launch paths, ~35 minutes of emulator time, no interactive title" as unexplained. MISSION's own boot order is splash -> intro video -> title, ADV.wmv is 137.7 s from the disc, and 600 presents at ~50/s is ~12 s. The title is on the far side of a two-minute movie; a capture that never reaches it is behaving correctly. Two ways to settle it. Tapping A skips the movie but risks the save-data probe that crashed the guest on 2026-08-18, per the capture script's own header. Capturing through the whole movie needs ~6900 presents against the 600 used here, needs no pad input and cannot crash the guest, so that is the one to run. Not run this iteration, deliberately: I would rather pre-register the origin prediction than start a long capture at the end of an iteration. The prediction is stated on the page so the next run is not exploratory -- the plate's a=17 must land 215 presents after the title's first draw if the clock starts there, and any shortfall is the offset in units. Reach: the negative is specific. Within the first ~460 presents of boot the title does not draw. It says nothing about after the attract movie, which is where the answer is. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Jc4pciRArGHfxGGhEbwp5t --- .../clock-origin-blocked-boot-has-no-title.md | 81 +++++++++++++++++++ 1 file changed, 81 insertions(+) create mode 100644 docs/re/clock-origin-blocked-boot-has-no-title.md diff --git a/docs/re/clock-origin-blocked-boot-has-no-title.md b/docs/re/clock-origin-blocked-boot-has-no-title.md new file mode 100644 index 00000000..c5328e65 --- /dev/null +++ b/docs/re/clock-origin-blocked-boot-has-no-title.md @@ -0,0 +1,81 @@ +# ❔ The clock origin is not measurable from a boot capture — the title is not in one + +**Status: ❔ blocked, with the reach stated.** 2026-09-01. Instrument: ⟨capture⟩ ×3. +Recorded rather than worked around, per *"do not improvise around a blocker"*. + +--- + +## What I set out to do + +The clock **origin** is the last surviving candidate for play-test finding 3. +Every quantity in today's account is a ratio or a count, and **a common offset +survives all of them** — if the port's clock starts at a different moment from the +game's, every interval matches and the screen still arrives late. + +Now that the clock is known to advance **1 unit per present**, the origin is +directly measurable as a *count*: observe the plate at a known declared alpha +(the `214 → 236` ramp gives `t` to within one unit), count presents back to the +first present on which the title draws anything, and the difference is the title's +clock value at its own first draw. Zero means the clock starts when the screen +does; anything else is the offset a port must author. + +**No capture I have contains the plate, or the title at all.** + +## What the boot actually does, measured three times + +| capture | publisher splash | developer splash | first movie frame | +|---|---|---|---| +| boot 1 | presents 1…219 (**219**) | 224…409 (**186**) | 422 | +| boot 2 | 1…228 (**228**) | 234…418 (**185**) | 429 | +| `--framerate_limit=30` | 1…244 (**244**) | 250…453 (**204**) | 463 | + +**Two splashes, then the attract movie. There is no title segment.** The two +UI-drawing segments are the publisher and developer splashes — identified by +their quad rects and by dwells matching `boot-order-and-splash-dwell.md` — and the +next thing to draw is the movie's luma plane. + +📌 **This is not a new failure; it re-frames an old one as expected.** The corpus +records *"three runs, two locales, two launch paths, ~35 minutes of emulator time, +no interactive title"*, and treats it as an unexplained blocker. The reason is +plainer than it looked: `MISSION.md`'s own boot order is **splash → intro video → +title**, `ADV.wmv` is **137.7 s** ⟨disc⟩, and a 600-present capture at ~50 +presents/s is **~12 s**. The title is on the far side of a two-minute movie. A +capture that never reaches it is behaving correctly. + +⚠️ These runs use `NOTAP=1`, which is what the splash work needed and is exactly +what prevents skipping the movie. + +## What would settle it, and neither is free + +1. **Tap Ⓐ to skip the movie, then capture the title.** `ui_draw_capture.sh` + already taps while a movie plays when `NOTAP` is unset. The risk is documented + in that script's own header: a stray Ⓐ on the *title* sends the guest into the + save-data probe, which crashed it on 2026-08-18. +2. **Capture through the whole movie** — ~137 s at ~50 presents/s is **~6 900 + presents**, against the 600 these runs used. `FRAMES` and `MAXDRAWS` both scale; + the log would be ~15 MB, which is fine. + +Option 2 needs no pad input and cannot crash the guest, so it is the one to run. +I did not run it: it is a single capture but a long one, and I would rather +pre-register the origin prediction first than start a 3-minute capture at the end +of an iteration. + +## The prediction, so the next run is not exploratory + +Under `1 unit per present`, if the title's clock starts on its first drawn +present, then the plate's `a = 17` (first ramp step, `t = 215`) must land +**215 presents** after the title's first draw, and `a = 255` at **236**. Any +consistent shortfall is the origin offset, in units, directly. + +⚠️ And there is a second reading to keep open: the corpus's two 2026-08-29 runs +measured *settle → plate* at 2.13 s with the title persisting long enough to show +it, which these untapped runs do not. Whether the boot title and the post-movie +title are the same screen with the same clock is **not established**, and the +origin may differ between them. + +## Reach + +⟨capture⟩ ×3, one machine, English locale, `NOTAP=1`, 600 presents. The negative +is specific: **within the first ~460 presents of boot, the title does not draw.** +It says nothing about what happens after the attract movie, which is precisely +where the answer is.