R1 asks for tools/stale-instrument when an instrument improves. The draw
logger improved this iteration; all eight claims that <harness> killed are
about the SCREENSHOT harness -- polling cadence, x11grab latency, the
title/plate classifier -- and none of them ever used the draw logger, so
none re-open. Written down because 'ran it, nothing changed' and 'did not
run it' are otherwise the same absence.
Play-test finding 4 asked, in order: is there a pass, what is it, where do
its parameters come from, only then what curve. All four, from GPU state.
1. NO post-process pass. Over all 1 048 draws of frames 4..226 (both boot
splashes): rt0=[tile=0 fmt=0 exp=0] on 1048/1048, pitch=1280 msaa=0 on
1048/1048, edram_mode only ever kColorDepth or kCopy, resolve dests only
the two alternating front buffers, and NO texture base anywhere in the
capture equals a resolve destination. The only texture bound in the whole
splash region is the sprite page 0x11A50000. No blur, no bloom, no fade
quad over a resolved image, no tone curve, no resolve-and-resample.
2. What it is: per frame, a full-screen replace triangle (the clear), a
full-screen black quad through the ordinary blend, ONE batched sprite
draw carrying every visible element (indices 4/8/12/24), and the two
presentation resolves.
3. Where the parameters come from: NOT the constant banks -- the splash
pixel shaders read zero float constants, ps_c[n=0] on 1048/1048, taken
off each shader's own float_bitmap. NOT immediates. The fade is the
per-vertex k_8_8_8_8 colour in a vertex buffer the guest rewrites every
frame.
4. The curve falls out of 3 and is the corpus's existing 34/frame law,
reproduced on an independent capture. Not claimed as new.
And the composite is ORDINARY SOURCE-OVER, confirmed from the shader ucode
rather than inferred from the blend register: the register reads
ONE/ONE_MINUS_SRC_ALPHA, which looks premultiplied, and is -- because the
shader premultiplies. The two together are src*A + dst*(1-A). So the 'more
pronounced' fade is neither a blend difference nor a pass.
The likely mechanism instead: the developer splash submits SIX quads, three
logos plus three slightly-larger companions that lead them by 8 frames and
are gone 79 frames early. Two over-blended copies of the same art at
different scale is a halo, on screen only during the entry.
Refutation attempt, recorded: REFUTED.md's re-opened rest() pair states its
settling condition as 'a draw capture of the developer splash naming which
of the three glows is submitted at rest'. This is that capture. All three
companions ARE submitted in all 21 frames -- so no rule that hides one
describes this stream -- but they are NOT interchangeable: Q6 leaves the
plateau on its own -5.6/frame decay while Q4 and Q5 hold 255. The one-byte
sibling difference is drawn.
Trap recorded with the evidence: censusing the whole 600-frame log finds six
640x360 textures sampled ~330 times each, which reads exactly like a
half-resolution blur chain. They are the attract movie's chroma planes and
first appear at frame 234, after both splashes. Restricting the window is
what separates them.
Evidence: docs/re/data/splash-draw-pass-census.txt,
docs/re/data/splash-quad-timeline.txt, docs/re/data/shaders/*.ucode.frag.
Logger: canary sylpheed-re d90d14e02.
Both are pushed. The decoder's carries the R1 register reclassification and
tools/stale-instrument; the port's carries the two input fixes, verify-input
and BLOCKED H1-H3. Each branches from that agent's own tip, so it is a
fast-forward on the line they are already on -- and the port must merge before
touching input or it will re-derive a fix that is already asserted.
A human played the port on real hardware for the first time (2026-09-01) and
found four things. Two were port defects, fixed. Two are open and are now both
agents' focus: the PRESS (A) plate arrives late, and the splash fade/blur is
weaker than the game's.
Their verdict on method is the reason this is a brief change and not a ticket:
"the agents were essentially guessing and trying to copy what one would see,
but while they did get close it still is not quite right"
Close-but-not-right is the signature of reproducing APPEARANCE instead of
deriving MECHANISM. So the Decoder's focus block asks, in order: is there a
post-process pass at all, what is it, where do its parameters come from -- and
only then what curve. Both routes, dynamic (GPU state, shader constants, render
targets; add logging to Canary, it is theirs read-write) and static (.pe, the
DB, the paks), with each fact labelled by which produced it.
TEMPORAL-VERIFICATION.md is the other half, and it generalises past the
splashes. We have been photographing the game at time t, and t is never the
same twice: emulator speed varies with host load, Canary presents at ~28.1 fps,
the capture path costs a variable 0.1-10.8 s, and a long-lived x11grab stream
degrades and then freezes. The register already carries FOUR refutations of
exactly this shape. The replacement rule: record a film, not a photograph;
align by CONTENT, not by clock, and report the lag as a measurement rather than
minimising it away; prefer ordering, counts, durations and shape over any value
at a wall-clock instant; anchor on an event; report achieved fps against
requested fps.
Also into both briefs: the input set. The port had no joypad binding for (A) or
(B) and nobody noticed for a whole milestone, because --script sends
InputEventAction, which BYPASSES the input map -- so every check asserted the
code below the map and nothing about the map. The Decoder is asked to DECODE
the full set the game reads rather than discover it by pressing buttons; the
Port is told input is verified at the device level or not at all.
And both briefs now point at the R1 register reclassification, because two of
the ten re-opened entries land on this focus: "the declared keyframe timeline
reproduces the captured splash" is 🟡 our-reader, and the rest() pair is open
in BOTH directions -- while the two splashes are the only screens that reach
that fallback.
Both agents asked for this and neither could do it: the register is the file
they both read to decide what NOT to try, so two agents agreeing is not the
authority for changing it (RETRO-2026-08-31-agreed §7.1).
R1: a refutation whose instrument is one of our renderers is not a refutation,
it is "our renderer disagrees" -- 🟡, not ❌. The motivating case was not
careless work. "Blending those sprites additively worsens every measure against
the capture" killed a real disc field for weeks, and read exactly like a
publishable negative; the renderer behind it had a stale keyframe association,
no leaf geometry and no rotation. Nothing in the entry could have told you.
All 222 entries now end with ⟨instrument⟩, read off each entry's OWN stated
evidence -- never inferred. An entry that states none gets `unrecorded`, which
is 83 of them.
Ten moved ❌ -> 🟡, each naming what would settle it: 8 render-vs-capture,
1 our-reader, 1 harness.
Three things the pass turned up:
* The rest() question is OPEN and had been reading as settled in both
directions -- "rest = last keyframe" was refuted by a sibling argument, and
that refutation refuted by correlating our render against captures. Both legs
are our renderer. Which one you believed depended on which entry you found
first, and it decides the pose every plateau-less element is drawn at.
* A withdrawal never reached its sibling: "2 391 frames, max glyph 0" was
withdrawn because a long-lived x11grab stream freezes and repeats a stale
frame; the 1 674-sample negative three lines above it, same probe, was left
standing as a reinstated measurement.
* 83 of 222 -- 37 % -- record no instrument at all. Not disputed, not safe:
unauditable, and larger than every other group combined.
tools/stale-instrument is the --stale query the rule needs, because a colour
alone re-opens nothing: the failure was that nothing re-opened a claim when the
instrument that killed it improved. Its own --check found a real bug on the
first run -- sys.exit("text") exits 1, so three faults documented as exit 2
were reporting the same code as an ordinary miss.
R1 is now standing text in PROTOCOL.md, with R5's exception: our tool is the
right instrument for a question about our tool.
The R11 self-catch existed only in a commit message and a script comment. §5's
own rule says the file carries the finding, so it belongs in the retro.
Writing the BLOCKED.md pointer, the obvious form -- git show || { echo missing;
exit 4; } -- prints "the file is missing" for a file it has just printed in full,
because piping into head closes the pipe and git dies of SIGPIPE. An error path
that fires on success is worth no more than one that never fires.
Same family as the port's MIX default and my vertex cap, with one difference
worth keeping: both of those needed an outside observer, and this one did not,
because all four paths were exercised rather than the happy one. A script with
three failure branches has three tests and they cost a line each.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
The Port's standing ask list is not in my loop brief, which BLOCKED.md itself
records as having cost three sessions. My brief does force HANDOFF.md open every
iteration and HANDOFF is mine to write, so the pointer lives there. One line in a
file I own; no brief change and no human needed.
R11 says a cross-agent pointer must fail loudly when it goes stale, because every
staleness incident here has been silent. peer_asks.sh exits 2, 3 or 4 with a
message for a missing remote, a renamed branch or a moved file, and lists the
branches it can see so the fix is obvious. A blank output is a failure, not an
empty ask list.
Its own first version was wrong in the way this retro is about. Written as
`git show ... || { echo missing; exit 4; }`, piping it into `head` closed the
pipe, git died of SIGPIPE, and the fallback printed 'the file is missing' for a
file it had just printed in full. An error path that fires on success is worth no
more than one that never fires. Existence is now checked with `cat-file -e` and
the content exec'd; all four paths were exercised before this commit.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
The human asked both agents for a critical retro; it reached me relayed through
sylpheed-port, and I am treating it as a message rather than as their word while
staying paused on RE iterations.
Worst failure first: I READ the refutation that mattered and routed around it
instead of auditing it. REFUTED.md killed the blend bit with our own renderer as
its instrument, and I quoted the 'a claim resting on our renderer is a claim
about our renderer' rule at the port in the same session while not applying it to
my own register.
Underneath it is the sharper one: I twice accepted render-derived labels for a
disc-side question. My 'no field separates them' negative was tested against a
partition that was wrong in six places, all six of which the oracle later called
additive.
Also recorded: the silent vertex truncation, a coverage claim written rather than
computed and wrong by four, a batching generalisation refuted by the log it was
written from, and navigation whose fix was worse than the bug.
Two additions to the port's list of shared costs: neither of us has ever given a
negative a positive control, so 'absent' and 'my search does not work' are
indistinguishable in every undecodable page I have written; and we keep
attributing a three-way residual to whichever leg we happen to be looking at.
Their eight proposals attacked one by one -- P2 sharpened into a
re-classification rather than bookkeeping, P5 pushed back on ('suppression
localises disagreement; only the oracle labels it'), the rest agreed with
amendments.
And the check the retro forced: my rival sweep covered the T8aD header and not
the 60-byte declaration entry, whose earlier hunt used the corrupted labels. Swept
properly, 16 of the 35 measured elements have no declaration entry at all and 0
declaration bits separate the other 19. The decode is not underdetermined -- run
because it could have gone the other way.
The PROTOCOL delta is presented, not applied.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
Delivered: T8aD +0x04 bit 0x02 selects additive, so the port derives the blend
instead of transcribing my table -- including for screens neither of us has
captured. With why I got it wrong first: the bit was already in REFUTED.md,
killed by a comparison of two renders made while our renderer had a stale
keyframe association, no leaf geometry and no rotation.
Their asks: pteff10 IS additive on the main menu, three sessions, every frame,
and my coverage table listing it uncovered there is corrected. The sweep ramp is
four leaf keyframes on the disc, with the oracle agreeing on sign and magnitude
and a second identification from the sub-128 alpha. And kind & 0x2 is not mine
to grant -- stated what the decode supports (0 violations in 15493 entries, and
it means the declaration marks the element focusable, not that the cursor can
reach it) and left the adoption to them.
ui-blend-mode-measured.md is superseded in its classification and keeps its
measurements, which are what the decode is fitted to.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
Reverses two of my own pages. t32-blend-mode-not-on-disc.md said the mode is not
on the disc; ui-blend-mode-measured.md classified it measured and told the port
that which field selects it was unknown. Both were honest and neither is current.
Bit 0x02 of +0x04 set means the game draws that sprite ADDITIVE
(RB_BLENDCONTROL0 = 0x01010101); clear means premultiplied alpha-over.
Fit: 35 elements over three screens, 16 set/additive and 19 clear/alpha-over,
zero errors, every label read out of the guest command stream rather than off a
render.
Control: of every bit of the first twelve header words, exactly one separates
those 35 without error. Nothing ties with it -- which is precisely what the
+0x08 = 0x8050 candidate failed.
Within-pair: ptbtn00 0x0110 alpha-over against ptbtn00f 0x0112 additive, same
screen, same bundle, adjacent draws, one bit apart. And other f variants are
bit-clear and alpha-over, so it is not 'focused variants are additive'.
Out of sample: a prediction committed at bbd85e9, before its capture, on a
different archive -- GP_OPTIONS entry 19, 3 additive of 16, falsified if any
other element drew additive. The game drew exactly po_menu_eff01/02/03 additive
and nothing else.
This revives a claim REFUTED.md killed. The refutation said blending those
sprites additively worsens every measure against the capture -- a claim about
our renderer, made while that renderer had a stale keyframe association, no leaf
geometry and no rotation. Recorded as a revival with its evidence;
check_refuted.py passes with 0 unmarked assertions.
Two other readings of the same bit stay refuted and are explicitly not revived:
'the name contains eff' and 'premultiplied storage'. Those were the bit's
meaning; this is its effect.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
The port asked for the sweep strips' vertex alpha as a function of position. It
is not a runtime curve to sample: ptloop01/ptloop02's nested leaves declare four
keyframes each, with x, alpha, rotation, scale and time.
pteff03 loop 600u x -639 -> 1521, alpha 255 -> 128 -> 255, rot +30, sy 600 %
pteff03a loop 720u x 1721 -> -839, alpha 0 -> 128 -> 255, rot -45, sy 800 %
Checked against three sessions of GPU draws: both signs right every time, and
magnitudes within ~15 % of the declared slopes.
The independent bit worth having: across sessions the measured alpha spans
45..242, and only pteff03a declares alpha below 128 -- pteff03's ramp never
leaves [128,255]. The strip measured at 45 is the 1303-tall one, which the AABB
geometry says is pteff03a for a completely different reason. Two identifications
agreeing.
Stated as limits rather than buried: this cannot separate the two declared
slopes, which are 25 % apart against a quantisation of 6.4 px and one alpha
level over 3-4 frames; and absolute phase is unchecked because the AABB-left to
element-x mapping under rotation and pivot is not established.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
sweep_leaf_ramp dumps the nested ptloop01/ptloop02 leaf keyframes -- position,
alpha, rotation, scale and time -- which is where the ramp the port asked for
actually lives.
sweep_positions now also pools alpha against position per strip and prints the
slope, with the quantisation stated: NDC prints to two decimals, so one frame's
dx is 6.4 px and alpha is one level, and at three or four frames the two
declared slopes (+0.0814 and -0.0651) are inside that noise. It is a direction
and magnitude check, not a discrimination.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
options_draw_capture.sh counted three DOWNs. A dropped press lands the cursor on
TUTORIAL, whose (A) starts the tutorial. My two attempts to avoid counting were
both worse: 'press until the cursor stops moving' is unreachable on a wrapping
menu, and an earlier version of it read the same row twice after a lost press
and pressed (A) on NEW GAME.
The wrap is the landmark. Press down until the row DECREASES -- the cursor is
then on item 1 whatever it started on -- and take three steps, retrying any
press that does not move the cursor, aborting rather than pressing (A) if one
never lands. Needs the row to be monotone in the item, not calibrated.
Also: 1200 s title deadline, and the emulator is killed at the end.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
REFUTED.md kills this claim: 'T8aD +0x04 bit 0x02 selects an additive blend ->
mine, and refuted. Blending those sprites additively worsens every measure
against the capture.' That refutation rests entirely on our renderer, which the
corpus's own rule calls a hypothesis under test. The blend is now measured off
the GPU, so the claim can be tested against the oracle.
35 elements over three screens, every label an RB_BLENDCONTROL0 value read from
the command stream: 16 bit-set and additive, 19 bit-clear and alpha-over, zero
false positives, zero false negatives.
The control that makes it a decode rather than a coincidence: of every bit of
the first 12 header words, EXACTLY ONE separates those 35 elements without
error. Nothing ties with it. A perfect partition on a small sample is worthless
if half the header partitions equally well, which is the mistake +0x08 = 0x8050
was.
And the pair no confound survives: ptbtn00 = 0x0110, ptbtn00f = 0x0112 -- the
PRESS (A) plate and its own highlight, same screen, differing in exactly this
bit, drawn alpha-over and additive respectively.
Committed alongside is a PREDICTION for GP_OPTIONS, written before the capture
that tests it: a different archive, a different element set, and a MIXED
prediction -- po_menu_eff01/02/03 additive, 592 elements alpha-over. Falsified
if those three draw alpha-over or anything else draws additive. The developer
splash was considered first and rejected as a test: both its elements predict
alpha-over, so it can fail but cannot discriminate.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
The UI draw capture printed 8 vertices = two quads per draw, so a batched draw
dropped the rest silently. Four EXTRAS elements therefore appeared in no draw on
any screen, which reads as 'the game does not draw these' -- and the port spent
an iteration measuring them as the worst on the screen and asking about them.
When an instrument says an element never appears, check its limits before
believing the game.
And 'press down until the cursor stops moving' is not a stop condition on a
menu that WRAPS: it was unreachable, the loop only exited by exhausting its
budget, and it landed on EXTRAS because a dropped press cancelled one lap. An
earlier version of the same loop pressed (A) on NEW GAME after two identical
readings caused by a dropped press.
What held throughout is the part worth keeping: verify the state you measured,
never the actions you took.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
ptframe4, pteff21/22/23 and pteff10 are ADDITIVE, measured. They were missing
because Canary's vertex dump was capped at two quads, not because the game does
not draw them.
The title: everything alpha-over except the sweep strips and ptbtn00f, the PRESS
(A) plate's focused variant, whose base is not -- which is what the pulse is made
of. And ptlogo_back2 / ptlogo_back2eff are alpha-over despite having every
surface property the ptframe* elements have, so the obvious generalisation is
refuted on the one screen that could test it.
The sweeps are on screen on the main menu and move between frames, in two
sessions at different phases.
And the coverage claim they checked was wrong -- five elements, not one -- with
the correction and their 'every button' point both recorded.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
The four elements the port measured as the worst on EXTRAS, and which appeared
in no draw, were in a draw all along: the 24-index additive batch holds six
quads and Canary printed the first two. Cap raised to 64, screen re-captured,
all six named. Same draw as ptframe3, whose state was already measured -- the
one-way implication doing real work.
pteff10 is identified too, and it needed the resting SCALE: it ships as 409x144
and is drawn at 200 % x 500 % = 816x720. The matcher's 'try 1x and 2x' rule
could not name it at any scale and reported a near miss against something else,
which is a failure wearing the clothes of an answer. Candidates are now the
declaration's pivot*2 scaled by the resting keyframe as well as the texture at
1x and 2x, and the tolerance is the log's own NDC print quantisation rather than
a chosen number.
Flagged rather than buried: pteff10 measuring additive is in tension with the
port measuring it nearly exact under alpha-over. Both can be true for a dim
semi-transparent glow over a dark background, and it is the one row a rendering
check does not corroborate.
Also stated: the three full-screen alpha-over draws are NOT individually
identified -- four elements declare 1280x720 -- so the label on those rows is a
candidate, not an identification.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
sylpheed-port checked the coverage claim element by element and it was wrong.
The page said everything on the two screens was covered but for pteff10; on
EXTRAS, ptframe4, pteff21, pteff22 and pteff23 were also in neither the per-draw
log nor a prose row -- and they are exactly the four the port measures as the
worst elements on that screen.
The result rows were never wrong. The claim about what they covered was, and it
is the kind that reads as reassurance.
Also flagged, and fair: 'every button' is a class generalisation in the page
whose own instruction is to read it as per-element facts. It came from one
element on the main menu. Now stated as such.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
Two more emulator runs close two of the three reach limits on the blend page.
THE TITLE (entries 4 + 2 composited). Everything alpha-over except the two
rotated sweep strips and -- the finding -- ptbtn00f, the PRESS (A) plate's
focused variant, which is ADDITIVE while its own base ptbtn00 is not. That is
what the documented plate pulse is made of, and a port drawing both alpha-over
cannot reach the pulse's peak by any pacing.
And ptlogo_back2 / ptlogo_back2eff are ALPHA-OVER. They are frame-shaped, large,
dark and 94 %/87 % transparent -- every surface property the menu's ptframe* have
-- so 'frame-shaped and mostly transparent implies additive' is refuted on the
one screen that could test it.
THE MENU replicates draw for draw in two further sessions; the one-session
caveat is retired.
THE VERTEX CAP was 8 = two quads, so a batched draw reported its first two
elements and dropped the rest. Raised to 64. This is why ptframe4, pteff21,
pteff22 and pteff23 looked like elements the game never draws: EXTRAS' 24-index
additive draw holds six quads and the log printed two.
THE SWEEPS are on screen on the main menu in every captured frame, stepping
~0.03 NDC per frame in opposite directions with their vertex alpha ramping, at
different phases in two sessions. The leaf group runs on the menu. What that
does not say is how much they contribute.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
'Press until the cursor stops moving' broke on its first comparison: one DOWN
was dropped, the row read the same twice, and it concluded the cursor had
stopped while sitting on the first item. It then pressed (A) on NEW GAME. No
harm this time -- neither press registered and the screen stayed put -- but that
is luck, not the design.
A stop test that cannot distinguish 'at the end' from 'the press was lost' is
the press-counting bug wearing a different hat. Now: a non-move ends the walk
only after at least one move has been observed, four consecutive dropped presses
abort, and (A) is pressed only if the cursor demonstrably moved.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
The blend map reports a quad's SIZE, which identifies an element and says nothing
about whether it is visible -- a parked quad is still a draw call. This prints
the NDC x/y range and per-vertex colour of every additive draw, per frame, so
movement between frames and overlap with the [-1,1] box are readable directly.
Written because sylpheed-port flagged exactly that conflation in my blend page:
the blend and the visibility arrived in the same artefact.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
menu_blend_capture.sh counted two DOWNs to reach EXTRAS, which is wrong twice
over -- EXTRAS is the fifth item, and on 2026-08-31 four DOWNs landed on OPTIONS
because one press was dropped. It now presses until the cursor stops moving,
which needs no item count and no row calibration. Its title deadline follows the
same change as title_blend_capture.sh, 1200 s not 420.
ui_blend_map.py takes a comma-separated build list, because the live title is
TWO builds composited -- 4 draws the art, 2 draws the PRESS (A) plate -- and a
one-build size table cannot name the elements of a title capture.
frame_alpha_census takes its builds from argv for the same reason.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
I wrote that yesterday in HANDOFF, the finding page and INDEX. It is false: in
one main-menu frame, draws 5, 6 and 7 are three separate additive draws --
consecutive, identical blend state, not merged.
Only the one-way implication holds: elements inside one draw share a blend
state; sharing a state does not put elements in one draw. The wrong version
would have licensed the port inferring a mode for an element nobody observed,
which is the one thing that page must not do. The ptframe4 conclusion is
unaffected -- it is in the same DRAW as ptframe3, not merely the same mode.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
The declaration entry's kind word (+0x28) and its focus/nav index (+0x2C) are the
same fact twice: kind & 0x2 is set iff the focus index is >= 0. Checked over 24
UI paks and every parseable build in each -- 1062 focusable elements, 14431 not,
zero exceptions. The test is two-sided, so it would fail if any focusable element
lacked the bit or any non-focusable element carried it.
Consequence: kind == 0x3002 is not the test for a button. It catches 778 of 1062
and misses 284 (26.7 %) at 0x2, 0x2002, 0x3003, 0x73002, 0x73003 -- including
ptbtn00.rat on GP_TITLE's PRESS (A) plate, which is 0x73002. And 0x3000, 817
elements, looks like a button and is not focusable.
This is also the refutation attempt on sylpheed-port's kind census. Their claim
-- every decoration 0x0, every button 0x3002 -- is exactly right on the two
screens they checked, reproduced here independently, and fails one build over on
the title they have not run yet.
The other kind bits are reported as observed structure and explicitly not
claimed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
Completes the reach of ui-blend-mode-measured.md, which was explicitly two
screens and one session and explicitly not the title.
Three things it does differently from menu_blend_capture.sh, each one paid for
yesterday: a 1200 s title deadline instead of 420 (the 420 fired while the game
was minutes from the settled title); the title arm is gated on the plate pulse
because build 2's PRESS (A) plate is part of what is being measured; and on
timeout it leaves the emulator up and says to attach rather than reboot.
Committed before it is run, per METHOD.md.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
0x8050 dies disc-wide (38 sprites, high byte tracks the archive) and again on
EXTRAS, where pteff21/22/23 share it with the frames.
The port's 'neither frame has a fully-opaque pixel' is true and is not the
discriminator: pteff10 has max alpha 130, no opaque pixel, and they measure it as
nearly exact. Their direction survives -- the draw path did answer -- so what is
refuted is the reason, not the conclusion.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
Two traps this run paid for.
ring_row.py's ROW0/SPACING are x11grab constants. On a /sylph-home/re/shots/shot-0001.png grab of the
same live main menu the rows read 180.5/419.5/502.0 -- ROW0 is 45 px out, 0.57
of a step. The module refused rather than naming the wrong item, which is the
good failure, and is_main_menu() therefore returned False ON A REAL MAIN MENU. A
run gated on it would conclude 'not the menu' while sitting on the menu. Not
recalibrated: three rows from one session are not a calibration and other tools
share the constants; the module now says so where the numbers are.
menu_draw_capture.sh's 420 s title deadline fired, and the emulator left running
was at the settled title minutes later, took one A, and reached the menu first
try. A timeout is a measurement of the timeout. Leaving the emulator up after a
failed script rescued this run for one minute against a twenty-minute reboot.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
HANDOFF gets the measured table, the two controls, the three caveats that travel
with it (src=ONE is not evidence of premultiplied textures; the frames share a
draw call so ptframe4 comes free; read it as per-element facts because the
selecting field is still unknown), and the correction to the port's own
sharpener -- 'neither frame has a fully-opaque pixel' is true and is not the
discriminator, because pteff10 has none either and renders accurately.
t32-blend-mode-not-on-disc.md keeps its negative and its reach and loses its
conclusion. INDEX gets the row.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
Closes the one route t32-blend-mode-not-on-disc.md left open: the executable's
draw path. Canary's UI draw capture now logs RB_BLENDCONTROL0 per draw, and the
game was driven to the main menu and to EXTRAS with F10 at each.
The title-side UI uses two blend states and ONE pixel shader:
0x07010701 src=ONE dst=1-SRC_ALPHA alpha-over (premultiplied)
ptbase, pteff05, the fade quad, ptmsg, ptmsg2, pttitle, buttons
0x01010101 src=ONE dst=ONE ADDITIVE
ptframe1, ptframe2, ptframe3, pteff20, both rotated sweep strips
Two controls, both run before the result was read:
* the NDC->pixel conversion that identifies a draw by its quad size reproduces
1134 and 1303 px for the two rotated sweep strips -- numbers measured by a
different tool in a different session -- on BOTH screens. The tool prints
PASS/FAIL and disclaims its own output on FAIL.
* pixel shader 0xE59B2B3DA4AA9008 is used with BOTH states, 12 draws additive
and 18 alpha-over. ptframe1 and ptbase run the same shader; only the blend
register differs. So this is a blend result, not a shader result.
This confirms the port's independent measurement -- it solved the composite per
pixel from two backgrounds and found additive halves alpha-over's error on both
frames -- by a route with nothing in common with it.
So the blend is no longer authored: 'any blend you choose is authored' was true
of the disc and is not true of the game. What is still unknown is which field
selects it; elements sharing a mode are batched into one draw call, so the
selection happens before the draw.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
Identifies each draw by the pixel size of its quad -- NDC extents times the
1280x720 surface -- matched against sprite dimensions read off the disc, since
the log names no elements.
Carries its own control: build 5 draws two rotated sweep strips whose heights
were measured independently at 1134 and 1303 px in
docs/re/data/title-sweep-drawn-at-rest.txt. If the conversion does not reproduce
those, every size it prints is wrong and it says so.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
CONTAINER-NOTES said a Canary source change costs a full reconfigure against
/canary and a full compile, and told the reader to budget a session for it. It
was right about the defect -- the warm build tree at /sylph-home/re/canary-build
is configured with CMAKE_HOME_DIRECTORY=/work/xenia-canary, which does not exist
here -- and wrong about the consequence.
Symlinking /work/xenia-canary -> /canary restores the path the tree was
configured with. A one-file edit to command_processor.cc then rebuilt and
relinked xenia_canary in under 10 minutes at -j4, exit 0, no reconfigure and no
OOM. This is how the blend-state logging in the same session got built.
The symlink is untracked inside the repository, so the note also says to remove
it afterwards.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
Canary's CaptureUiDrawForRE now logs RB_BLENDCONTROL0, RB_COLORCONTROL and
RB_COLOR_MASK per draw, raw and decoded, alongside the shader hashes and bound
texture it already logged. This script drives the game to the main menu and arms
it there.
Unlike menu_draw_capture.sh it does NOT pass --log_ui_draws: Canary's own source
records that arming is unconditional now and that launching with the flag
correlates with the title refusing (A), 0 of 7 runs against 4 of 5 without.
Committed before it is run, per METHOD.md.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
The port measures four elements as rendering too dark against the capture --
ptframe1/2 on the main menu, ptframe3/4 on EXTRAS -- with the shortfall
correlating +0.77/+0.80 with the BACKGROUND and only +0.24 with the element's
own contribution. That is the signature of a blend that scales what is already
there. It asked whether the disc selects one.
Three examples, one negative, wider than the one I gave last iteration:
* frame_alpha_census -- every T8aD sprite on builds 5 and 6 by alpha. It
REFUTES the port's own sharpener: 'neither frame has a single fully-opaque
pixel, against ptbase's 99.1 %' is true, and pteff10 (max alpha 130, 100 %
partial, no opaque pixel) is measured by the port as NEARLY EXACT. So being
wholly semi-transparent is not what makes the frames special.
* frame_vs_accurate_words -- all 12 T8aD header words for both screens, plus a
per-BIT sweep of +0x04 and +0x08. NO word and NO bit puts the four frames on
one side and pteff10 on the other. It also kills my own remaining candidate a
second time: +0x08 = 0x8050 is shared with pteff21/22/23 on EXTRAS.
* frame_keyframe_unknowns -- the keyframe record's fade, tint, rotation and its
two unexplained signed words. unknown_4 and unknown_8 are ZERO on every
keyframe of both screens, so they carry nothing here; no frame takes a value
of any field that another element does not.
Reach: the 60-byte declaration entry, the T8aD header word-wise and bit-wise,
and the keyframe record. Four elements, two screens. Not the executable's draw
path, which is the next commit.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
Answers the port's ask about ptframe1/ptframe2, whose residual is uniquely higher on
flat pixels than edges and signed one direction -- a body-intensity difference.
Prior work covers .prm primitives and a refuted T8aD +0x04 bit; neither covers a
.t32 element. All 15 words of the 60-byte declaration entry are read: 3 are the
name, 8 constant, the rest kind, focus index, position and pivot. The frames are
kind 0, identical to every other plain sprite.
One candidate found and refuted by myself: T8aD +0x08 is the only word where both
frames agree uniquely on that screen, at 0x8050 -- but 38 sprites carry it
disc-wide, only 8 named frame, and the high byte tracks the archive. It is an
atlas/format word, not a mode.
Also records a false positive of my own test: +0x00 and +0x08 first read as
'separating the frames' because those words are the name string.
So any blend the port picks is authored. Reach: not looked at the executable's draw
path, where a mode selected in code rather than data would live.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
sylpheed-port mapped the menu's edge residual at 64 px tiles and handed over
coordinates without names, which is the division I proposed: the map is theirs, the
element inventory is mine.
Under the hot band at x 384..704, y 64..256 sit ptframe1.t32, ptbtn01.rat (the NEW
GAME button) and pteff12.t32, an effect element -- all three hot under BOTH
coordinate readings, so the answer does not depend on whether their tiles are in
design or capture space. ptbtn02 is hot in design space only.
So the hot region is not one element but three of different kinds overlapping, which
is consistent with their null: they looked for two families of tile and found one
continuous population, so the region has no character of its own.
This names what is there, not what is wrong -- their map already excludes local
displacement in these tiles. Also records their control limit: a +2 px displacement
reads back +0.839 because the slope saturates, so any slope they report is a floor
on the displacement and never a ceiling.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
sylpheed-port ran the signed-edge discriminator I proposed but could not execute --
it needs their render beside the capture. Recorded as their measurement, with their
tool and commit.
Controls against deliberately damaged copies of their own render: a known +1 px
shift reads back as +0.938 px, a known blur as r -0.896 on the laplacian, neither
leaking into the other's channel. The menu against the capture gives -0.010 px
horizontal, -0.009 px vertical, laplacian r +0.103 -- and the weak blur term is the
opposite sign to the blur control.
So global misregistration and blur are both excluded, and of the three candidates I
named the misplaced soft element is the only one left.
Reach is the whole reach: a whole-frame fit excludes a global translation, not a
local one, since one misplaced element is a small share of 38752 edge pixels. The
next test is local and needs the residual map, which is theirs.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
sylpheed-port found that my control's premise misreads their figure. The 0.06 %
counts pixels surviving -threshold 25%, differing by more than ~64 levels -- a
gross-displacement detector, blind to sub-pixel offsets and antialiasing, which are
exactly what a per-level LUT also cannot close. It says no gross displacement, not
geometry is right, and I read one as the other.
Their direct measurement, attributed and not reproduced here: after the LUT the
menu's residual is 6.94 on edge pixels against 2.20 on flat, with a known negative
leaving 0.00. So the menu carries spatial error and is not a geometry-free control.
The 32/68 result does not rest on it -- 'whatever a fitted per-level LUT cannot
close is not a per-level effect' is the method's own basis and is self-standing.
What the control shows is narrower than claimed.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
The ja capture of DIFFICULTY is taken. EN and JP differ in 1.82 % of pixels, in four
bands and nowhere else: the heading (DIFFICULTY -> 難易度選択), a 2 px ring shift, the
BACK label (-> 戻る) and the footer. EASY/NORMAL/HARD do not appear in the differing
set -- the Japanese release leaves the three difficulty names in Latin script.
So 2/3 are a language pair, and the disc agrees quantitatively: 2.77 % of bytes
differ against 1.82 % of pixels on screen. This closes the item left open when I
withdrew 'an EN/JP pair' as a bare assertion, and it is now measured rather than
inferred from the disc's convention.
The JP screen also opens on NORMAL like the English one, and the sweep reproduced
the reset finding in Japanese.
Reach: one JP boot, one screen. It does not generalise -- GP_TITLE 4/7 is already
known to differ by more than text.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
The ja DIFFICULTY capture failed because focus_persistence.py's round trip --
menu, B to title, A back -- did not return, leaving the game off-menu, and the
sweep that followed timed out with nothing to work with. Arriving at the menu is
the cheap part; the round trip is that probe's own experiment and is not every
caller's.
--reach-only stops once the menu is reached, and the session script passes it
through REACH_ONLY.
Committed before running.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
sylpheed-port checked the JP layout from their export: the disc declares identical
button rows for EN and JP on main_menu and extras. Recorded separately rather than
merged with mine, because they are different quantities -- their rows are declared
rest positions, my 225.5 is a runtime ring row on a surface offset ~65 px from
design space. Either could have disagreed, which is what makes them independent
legs, after a week of finding legs that were not.
Neither is evidence for GP_DIALOG 2/3; both are about GP_TITLE.
Also records the mid-run substitution: I diagnosed a detector failure from a log
line showing glyph 11654 when the capture was one read away and showed the detector
working. A log line is a summary someone wrote, and reading it as the observation is
the same substitution as trusting a harness note.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
The run was launched to settle whether GP_DIALOG 2/3 are specifically EN and JP. It
did not reach DIFFICULTY: the reach probe's round trip failed at the final A, the
game sat off-menu at glyph 11654, and the sweep then timed out without pressing NEW
GAME.
Not a detector problem, which is what I assumed while watching. The JP menu detects
perfectly at glyph 320 against English's 327, both inside the 250..420 band; the
11654 is a later phase.
What it did establish: the locale took, and this is the first JP main-menu capture
in the corpus. JP initial focus is 新規 -- NEW GAME, top item, ring y 225.5, the same
item and row as six English boots. And the ring rows match English exactly, so the
JP build places its buttons where the English one does. That is language-pair
structure at the MENU, which is not the dialog pair the question is about.
Locale restored and verified at language = 1 by the trap, on a failing exit.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
sylpheed-port found this in their own §6 and it is in mine identically. I stated the
pass condition as 'exit 0' but left the command silent, so a reader running it as
written sees an empty line and cannot tell success from failure. Worse than a number
without a pass condition, because there is no number.
Now carries '; echo $?' and says why.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
The byte comparison showed 2/3 differ in 2.77 % while sharing every element name --
what a language pair looks like -- but that they are ENGLISH and JAPANESE rested on
the disc's convention rather than on this screen. This captures it in ja.
Reuses submenu_focus_sweep.py with SWEEP_TARGETS=0 rather than a new probe, so the
JP capture is taken by the same navigation that produced the English one. The locale
is restored on ANY exit including a crash, and the probe never presses A inside a
submenu, so it cannot reach SELECT DATA and the guest throw.
Committed before running.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
sylpheed-port's standard, applied here: a documented command nobody has executed is
the same class as a control that does not execute. Mine did execute, but they were
published without expected outputs, and a command with no pass condition is half a
check -- a reader gets a number and no way to know whether it is the right one.
Each command now carries its pass condition, the placeholders are real shell
variables rather than <branch>, and the last run's results are recorded: 330, exit
0, 0, 1.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
