Measured, not argued: command a 45-degree-off-the-nose error and watch whether it
shrinks, both axes, both sides, two pulse widths, with the opposite sign as a
control. Yaw's sign is correct (45 -> 11.3/32.7 at 0.6 s, 41.6/33.8 at 1.2 s).
Pitch's is inverted - the pilot's own sign GREW the error every time
(48.3/55.6/70.7/91.7) and the opposite shrank it every time (30.7/41.5/15.7/9.6).
A method artefact is recorded because it gave the opposite answer first: a 3 s
full-deflection pulse overshoots a 45-degree error so far that BOTH signs look
wrong (45 -> 164 and 45 -> 178). A long pulse cannot answer a sign question.
Verified against the game rather than by inspection. Before: fire=1 in 0 of 13521
samples, |aim yaw| pinned at 90.0, target 36-43 km away. After: 43 of 1732, aim
down to 2.3 degrees, range median 6.3 km, and the HUD's own ammunition counters
moving - NOSE BM 06000 -> 05723, MAIN MPM 00300 -> 00298.
Also fixed a leftover of the same FIFO era: pilot.py called pad.f.write("tap A
90") for the target-select double tap, which raised AttributeError once Pad
stopped having an `f`. Pad gained tap()/dpad(); ctrl_probe.py and target_probe.py
still use pad.f and now say so in place.
Still open: YOU KILLED is 0000 after 250 s of firing and REMAINING OB is still
012. The craft shoots, closes and selects; whether it destroys anything is next.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01PMRJjbxLqZtsb5Vb7KunPE
Three measurements, then a pilot built on them.
* Hull is position+0x154. Found by anchoring on a field the definition
already had solved (HP = 1500) rather than scanning for a value that
falls: an undamaged craft must contain its own definition's number.
Confirmed by the trace across a death -- 30/60/90 per hit, negative
at 0, GAME OVER on screen.
* RT accelerates, LT brakes, and the throttle is a persistent setting
(488 -> 1510 -> 174 units/s, measured as displacement per second of
the craft's own position, so no speed field was needed). This
overturns the earlier "RT is not the throttle", which came from
assuming the control and hunting for a field.
* Shield is probably position+0x430 (== definition MaxValue 400), not
yet confirmed live -- nothing had damaged it.
pilot.py is a state machine on damage (ENGAGE / EVADE / RETIRE) that
treats turrets as keep-out zones instead of targets. It flew Stage 02
for 300 s with the hull untouched at 1500/1500 and took the first
confirmed kill (WARPLANES 0001); every run the day before was dead
inside 35 s.
Two bugs the live run exposed and this fixes: gating the guns on the
commanded direction keeps them cold whenever avoidance is steering
(gate on the target instead), and an orbit-plus-brake rule made it
circle one attacker for 40 s outside its own firing cone.
Also: boot to in-flight is now ~100 s unattended, because
wait_flight.sh waits for the HUD's own shield bar instead of a fixed
75 s sleep that lavapipe does not honour; entities2.py picks the
attitude block by matching the measured flight path (taking the first
orthonormal block gave a bone/camera frame); and the entity-heap scan
is numpy instead of a per-word Python loop.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
