b28dfedf3548200cc7269b762a422e4c2adeaadd
110 Commits
| Author | SHA1 | Message | Date | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
sylph-decoder
|
b28dfedf35 | re: index and cross-references for the record layout and the loading screens | ||
|
sylph-decoder
|
33a15efa3c | handoff: the keyframe record layout, and the loading screens are named | ||
|
sylph-decoder
|
5b0a6e6666 |
re: the plate delay was on the disc all along -- my instruction is refuted
The port caught this with arithmetic off the disc, and it was right: build 2 has a keyframe group of its own, so "when build 4 has settled, wait 2.13 s, then composite build 2" puts the plate at settle + 2.13 + 3.97 s. Confirmed build 2's group here independently of their message: `ptbtn00.t32` reaches a=255 at t=238. The reconciliation needs no free parameter. Both builds run on ONE clock, started together, and the premise that fails is `rest.t`: rest.t is NOT when a screen settles. It is the last HOLD keyframe before the exit. ptlogo1 rests at t=251 and stops moving at t=42. The title's visible build-in ends at t=118, where pteff01, pteff02.prm and ptlogoall_eff end their ramps together. 238 - 118 = 120 units = 2.000 s, against a measured 2.138 and 2.132. So the interval the two runs agreed on to 6 ms was a DECLARED one and I handed over a wall-clock reading of it. That reading is 6.7% long, and the corpus already knew why: 120 units in 2.135 s is the game presenting at 28.06 / 28.14 fps against a nominal 30, and the idle title was independently measured at 28.5 fps before these runs. Corroborated from inside the same two runs -- first pixels -> settle is 1.643 s and 2.131 s, a 30% spread, while settle -> plate is 2.138 and 2.132. Frames are dropped during the build-in, not during the hold, which a change in the game's own timing could not do. So the port authors nothing here. What is unchanged: ScreenView still has to draw two builds at once and the boot's end state is still not plate-free. Not settled, and said so on the page: which reading of the keyframe times is right (it moves the plate by 2 units and I cannot separate them from these traces), and my settle landmark to better than +/-5 units. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_014voBspJ6kFncNErZJuZcLw |
||
|
sylph-decoder
|
c1f3608b07 |
formats: a music bank's third sub-wave was its own header
The port hit `sound_bank_riffs("BGM_103.slb")` returning three against a census
that says two, and refused to guess which to drop. It was our reader.
`to_xma_riffs`'s hybrid branch derives a leading packet stream's start as
`first_riff % XMA1_PACKET`. That is right only when the bank header is smaller
than one 2048-byte packet -- true of the voice banks the branch was written for
(1392/1468/1600/1728), false of a music bank, whose header is exactly five
packets. The modulus returned 0 and the whole 10 240-byte header was emitted as
sub-wave 0.
The header states its own length, so the guard needs no threshold: BE u32 0x800
at +0x18 with the bank id repeated at +0x00 and +0x20, header length in blocks at
+0x24. Disc-wide over sound.pak's 9 519 entries, 28 match at offset 0 -- every
music bank, ids 1001-1023 and 1101-1105 -- and on 28/28 the declared header ends
EXACTLY at the first RIFF. Zero have a gap, so a header and a leading packet
stream never coexist here; zero false positives among the other 9 491.
Controlled rather than argued: decoding the emitted region through the same
chain, on the same bank, in the same run gives 0.009 s of PCM where the bank's
real wave 0 gives 87.744 s against a declared 87.75. The region is also 99.1%
zero bytes. And the oracle had already said two -- the XMA probe at the main menu
saw exactly two streams, at BGM_103's two declared wave sizes.
BGM_106-109 are deliberately NOT in the 28: their entries start mid-bank, so they
have no header at offset 0 and their leading region is real audio. The
VOICE_D_453 recovery is untouched and its tests still pass, 10/10 green.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_014voBspJ6kFncNErZJuZcLw
|
||
|
sylph-decoder
|
fb536df8b4 |
re: the PRESS-A plate arrives 2.13 s after the title settles, measured twice
The one number the port said decides a structural question on its side: whether
`ScreenView` has to draw two builds at once. It does. The boot title shows
build 4 alone, and 2.13 s after build 4 stops animating it composites build 2
over it. Two independent boots agree to 6 ms (2.138 / 2.132), which is under one
sample interval.
Measure from SETTLED, not from first pixels. "First drawn -> plate" is 3.78 s in
one run and 4.26 s in the other, because the build-in animation itself ran 1.64 s
and 2.13 s -- that spread is the emulator's frame pacing, and it is exactly the
kind of number that looks like a measurement.
Ruled out before believing it: that the plate was pulsing all along, too dim for
a thresholded glyph counter. The counter reads EXACTLY 154 -- the committed
no-plate title's own value -- for every frame of a plateau nearly one full pulse
period long, with zero variation, and the surface mean is flat to +/-0.03 across
it. A cycling overlay moves both.
Also settled, and also not:
* the black hold between two screens is 0.14-0.30 s, which brackets the port's
authored 0.17-0.23 s and the file's declared 12 units. Their constant stands.
* the (A)->menu latency is STILL not available, and now the reason is known.
Both runs freeze one frame for ~1.4 s at surface mean 26.626 -- agreeing
between runs to six decimals, and reproduced in run 2 with stream restarts
disabled, so it is not the capture path. It is a guest load stall: the (B)
path, which loads nothing, has no freeze at all. Any figure from it would be
an emulator load time.
Refutation attempt, recorded whether or not it survived: navigation.md's "the
title is not input-ready for about ten seconds, and even then (A) registers
roughly half the time". At 7.29 s and 7.28 s after the title settled, (A) was
accepted first press in both runs, as was (B) on the menu. n=2 only makes "half
the time" unlikely (p ~ 0.25); it contradicts the ten seconds outright.
And the standing red banner is withdrawn: the interactive title IS reachable in
this container, twice, with no pad input, in ~3.5 minutes. Why it changed is NOT
established -- this container came up with no Xenia storage root at all, so run 1
created a profile -- and that is written as a correlation for the next session to
test rather than as a cause.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_014voBspJ6kFncNErZJuZcLw
|
||
|
sylph-decoder
|
66e74d49c8 | Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/main' into auto/no-disc-and-menu-captures | ||
|
sylph-decoder
|
9a10258738 |
re: the main menu has no idle self-return -- and four of my own durations were a backlog
Two results and one retraction, all from the same session. REFUTED: 'an ~8-10 s idle returns to the title' does not apply to the main menu. Held untouched it stayed put for >= 60 s, correlation never leaving 0.9245-0.9249. That timer is real but belongs to the TITLE. It was the only reason 'B leaves the main menu' was classed as authored, so Q5's B rule is upgraded to measured-ordering: B is delivered (canary logs vk=5801) and is the only input in >= 100 s before the return. The PRESS (A) plate: the boot title presents build 4 WITHOUT the plate first -- green-glyph 154, against 159 on the committed no-plate capture and 753/977/1493 on plate titles -- and the plate arrives after. That is the port's third option. RETRACTED: four durations taken the same day. classify_array costs 1503 ms per frame; running it per frame against an 8 fps x11grab drained the pipe at 0.64 fps, so every classified frame was stale and increasingly so. It manufactured 'plate 24.66 s after the title art', 'B->title 15.58 s', 'B->title 25.60 s' and 'A->menu 20.26 s'. The tell: a transition, a press and a fade do not share a duration, and the two B figures GREW across a longer run. A backlog preserves ordering and destroys durations, which is why the sequence results above stand and every timing does not. The ring's period is unaffected and that was checked, not assumed -- ring_period ran at 15.03 fps against a requested 15. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01KNR5Y79D1T4bBr6gJQaWFP |
||
|
MechaCat02
|
a8d2491366 |
audio: actually install the capture path I kept deferring
Some checks failed
The audio work was three parts and I shipped two. The transcode-fidelity method and the pinned 5.1 downmix landed; the null sink -- the only one that answers "what does the GAME play" -- I deferred to "the next natural rebuild window" and then rebuilt both images four times without doing it. pulseaudio-utils is now in both, with tools/audio-capture wrapping it: a null sink is a real device as far as an application is concerned, so Canary and Godot open it normally and parec records what they emit. This unblocks the decoder's Q8. The cue-to-event bindings are currently a name match against the authors' own identifiers -- a plausible guess, not a measurement -- and capturing what the game plays on a menu move converts them. `audio-capture run` reports the peak level and warns when the capture is silent, because silence is the failure that looks like success: a WAV of exactly the right duration, full of zeroes, because the application opened a different sink. A duration check alone passes it, which is how a confident wrong number gets made. |
||
|
sylph-decoder
|
7e20853592 |
re: withdraw the no-disc banner -- the disc is mounted, and both instruments that said otherwise were blind to it
The container was replaced at 11:07:38 UTC, 25 minutes after
|
||
|
sylph-decoder
|
b9aca6a2d9 |
re: the decoder container has no disc -- root-caused to the volume migration
find / -xdev turns up no ISO, no default.xex and no GP_TITLE.pak; /exchange is empty; SYLPHEED_DISC is unset; sylph-doctor agrees. Everything else in the container is healthy -- xenia_canary is built, :98 is up, screenshot works, Vulkan enumerates. There is simply no game to boot. The cause is in the launcher. Before |
||
|
MechaCat02
|
06676d3dc0 |
containers: each agent clones the monorepo into its own volume
Some checks failed
The last structural fix for the collision class that has bitten three times. Both containers now clone the repository into their OWN named volume instead of bind-mounting a human's working tree, so an agent's local git config cannot capture a human's commits, a credential helper cannot leak a container-only path onto the host, and a `git add -A` cannot sweep another party's in-flight files. Cloned once at startup and never auto-pulled: pulling under a running agent moves files out from under whatever it is mid-edit, which is the same bug again. Accepted knowingly: Claude Code keys per-project memory off the working directory, so moving off the host path starts that memory empty. The corpus in docs/ is the memory that matters and it travels with the clone. Other changes: * docker/agent -> docker/decoder; the launcher is sylph-decoder. Roles, not "the agent", now that there is more than one. * /reborn is gone -- one repository now, so the port reads HANDOFF from its own checkout rather than through a live read-only mount of someone else's tree. * Canary mounts separately at /canary; it stays a fork tracking upstream. * A shared `sylpheed-exchange` volume at /exchange, with tools/ on PATH so `share` is available in both. * The decoder's credential file gets the .host-copy treatment the port already had -- `credential.helper=store` rewrites by rename-over-target, which is EBUSY on a bind mount and reports a fatal that is not one. * Budget split deliberately: decoder 5 cpu / 6 GB, port 3 / 4, leaving room for the planned Referee. "Half the host" was right when there was one agent. Prompts move to docs/agents/ and are rewritten around the protocol: the oracle is the running game, dynamic RE stays with the decoder, each iteration must attempt to refute one claim of the other, and neither may verify its way out of its own role. |
||
|
MechaCat02
|
65cefa74c3 |
monorepo: one repository for the decoders, the port and the corpus
Some checks failed
Merges the Godot port into the reverse-engineering repository, preserving both
histories -- 1019 commits of corpus plus the port's 31, brought in by subtree
merge and then moved into place so git can follow each file across the rename.
The reason is not tidiness. The two-repo split forced the exporter to depend on
the decoders by pinned revision, and that created a whole class of failure that
now disappears: a sha reachable only from a topic branch, orphaned by a
squash-merge, breaking a fresh checkout silently at build time. It also forced a
live read-only mount of one agent's working tree into another's container, which
is why a contract file could move mid-iteration. With a path dependency, a
decoder change and the exporter change it requires land in the same commit or
not at all.
Canary stays separate: it is a fork tracking upstream.
New structure for the long term:
docs/game/ how the game is NAVIGATED -- menus, modals, prompts, alerts,
and in-game flight. Written so nobody rediscovers it. Mostly
open questions on purpose; the in-game tutorials are the
resource for the flight half.
docs/port/MODDING.md
modding as a constraint on the exporter TODAY, not a later
feature: one logical asset in one file (the disc splits nearly
everything, and resolving that is the exporter's job), names a
person recognises, PNG/OGG/OGV/JSON only, base-and-overrides so
re-exporting is always safe, provenance in every file.
data/base + data/mods
generated tree and drop-in overrides, both gitignored
exchange/ transient inter-agent files, deliberately outside history
docs/agents/ the team protocol
Both the README and the navigation doc lead with the correction that cost the
most: the oracle is the real game under Xenia Canary. Reborn's renderer is a
hypothesis under test, it has been wrong, and treating it as ground truth
propagated into three documents and both agents before a human caught it.
Scripted modding stays possible without being built: no screen name is hardcoded
in GDScript and there is no native code in port/, which is what Godot Mod Loader
needs to be able to substitute behaviour later.
|
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
26b5afeaa3 |
agent: tag the decoder states the port pins, and stop leaking credential config
Two fixes to push-work and the policy that goes with them.
**Tags.** The port's exporter depends on sylpheed-formats BY REVISION, so a
commit of ours is part of its build -- and the commit it pinned lived on one
auto/* branch and nowhere else. Deleting that branch orphans it; squash-merging
it is worse, because squash creates NEW commits, so main appears to contain the
work while the pinned sha becomes unreachable and the port stops building for a
fresh checkout. Silently, at their build, long after the breakage.
push-work now pushes with --follow-tags, which publishes annotated tags
reachable from the pushed commits, and MISSION.md says to tag whatever the port
needs. formats-pin-2026-08-29 at
|
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
9ca1eb50fd |
re(ui): answer four of the port's five asks -- splash, fade-out, focus, gamma
1 SPLASH ADDRESSING (was blocking P3). No content predicate exists: design size fails (every extra composable bundle sampled is 1280x720, like every screen) and element count fails (fragments run 2..15, the splash halves are 3 and 7). But GP_TITLE needs none -- `--all` adds exactly four bundles there and all four are real screens, with the --all index equal to the pak entry index 1:1. And there are TWO splash screens: 11/14 are the developer logos, 10/13 are the SQUARE ENIX publisher wordmark, which the port did not have and which the boot shows first. 2 FADE-OUT (was blocking P3). It is (a), and it is bigger than the fade quad. Every element ends on exactly ONE untimed keyframe, which rules out (b); that block is where the screen plays out -- quad to a=255, buttons/labels/glows to a=0, frames hold. (c) is refuted by a null test that discriminates: a black quad alone holds the button/background brightness ratio constant, and through the fade it falls 6.50 -> 1.94, 3.4x monotonic. 3 FOCUS (saves P5 rework). Over-vs-instead is unobservable -- the focused sprite covers the base at 100.0% of base-visible pixels on three pairs once aligned (true offset (7,7); the centre alignment reads a misleading 78-84%), and compositing both ways differs by RMSE 1.1 inside the button rect. The real defect is the focus record's SECOND element: ptbtn0Nf.rat declares ptbtneff01.t32 (a 42x46 glowing ring, focus only) plus the bright label, where the base declares one sprite. That ring is the marker the port draws nowhere. 5 GAMMA. The capture is not neutral: capture ~ 255*(render/255)^g, g ~ 1.34-1.49, and the chain says it is a ramp the GAME installed, not a capture artefact. So RMSE against captures has a floor. Reach stated: the flat patches are all dark (render ~0-60), so midtones and highlights are unconstrained. 4 ROTATION is a human's call and is recorded in MISSION, not acted on -- the port rotating while the reference renderer does not would make verify-screen report a large diff meaning "the port is right". The RE half is answered: rotation is about the declared pivot, measured against a GPU capture. The focus record's +20 element-count word is marked 🟡 not ✅ -- read on GP_TITLE's ten button records only; the disc-wide check is written and still running. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
f817dd5939 |
re(ui): the 60 nameless RATC children are frames, not children -- .tan decoded
Closes the reach caveat the `opt ` name fix left behind: 60 of 18 002 RATC children carry no `opt ` block, and it was not established whether they lack one or sit past our 128-byte window. Neither. They are not children. `examples/ratc_optless_children.rs` re-runs `ratc::parse`'s own guards over the disc and reports which one fired: all 60 are "tag beyond the window", none is rejected by length, gap or charset, none is child #0, and all 60 live in six bundles of one archive. Within a bundle the distances back to the nearest tag are an exact arithmetic progression, step 60 600 -- ten different records finding the SAME tag, because there is only one. Reading a bundle directly: children 1..10 are equal-size T8aD blocks under a single `opt ` name, `pb_f15_eg_anm.tan`. `.tan` is a FRAME SEQUENCE. One block declares the resource; its payload is a run of T8aD frames. Disc-wide, over all 18 718 `opt ` names in all 33 paks: a RATC bundle names exactly six kinds of resource -- `.t32` 14 756, `.rat` 3 311, `.prm` 367, `.tbm` 224, `.sbo` 54, `.tan` 6. Six `.tan`, ten frames each = 60, the entire population with nothing left over. The negative is closed, not narrowed. Consequence recorded but deliberately not fixed: `ratc::parse` over-reports there, listing a `.tan`'s frames as anonymous children. Nothing in the menu milestone reads a `.tan` -- it occurs only in GP_READY_ROOM, which S1 ruled out -- so no screen the port draws changes. Also a METHOD entry for this container OOM-killing `slb_leading_segment_disc` under default test parallelism (SIGKILL, no assertion; 8/8 pass with --test-threads=1). |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
56cc7acfc3 |
re(ui): a RATC child's name is stated, not inferred -- and it was hiding every menu background
`ratc::parse` named each child by scanning backwards for the last printable run of bytes before its magic. The format states the name explicitly instead, in an `opt ` block: `"opt " | BE32 len | name | NUL | 3 bytes | magic` -- the same block `ui_layout::opt_link` already read for a button's focus link. The scan agrees with it 17 918 times out of 17 942 and is wrong 24 times, every one the same failure: the 3 trailing payload bytes are themselves printable and beat the real name. For `pteff05.t32` those bytes are `38 41 58` = `8AX`, so the full-resolution background of all five menu screens registered under a name no element declares, resolved to no sprite, and `compose` dropped it through an early `continue` that -- unlike the two arms above it -- records nothing. The screen lost its background and `screen render` still reported "all resolved". `8AX` was never a name. Docs that treated it as one are corrected here. Disc-wide, and the control is the 17 918 the scan already got right: the `opt ` reading reproduces every one of them. Effect on the five screens is the signature of the same art at twice the resolution -- mean brightness unmoved, high-frequency detail x1.15..x1.30 -- which is what the separately-measured `ui-8ax-fullres-background` result said the game draws. Also closes a long-standing dangling reference: `pmbase.t32`, recorded as "on the disc nowhere", is the `GP_STAGE_CLEAR` child the scan called `8AX`. RATC sibling references now resolve 10 148 of 10 148. Verified: 114/114 sylpheed-formats unit tests (including two new ones pinning the `8AX` case byte for byte and the no-block fallback), and every disc-gated integration suite in sylpheed-formats/sylpheed-cli. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
7a4e4333f4 |
docs: withdraw yesterday's "paint order is a sequence" -- wrong source
Last iteration I claimed the splash's measured_paint_order [0,2,4,6,1,3,5]
records, between its glow and logo halves, the temporal order they were
seen in rather than depth -- because the halves never share a frame.
The no-overlap measurement is right (glows f94-115, logos f116-211). The
inference is wrong, on two independent grounds:
* Wrong source. That vector is not a read of the draw capture. It is a
read of the live screen object's CHILD ARRAY -- ui-screen-runtime.md
records it literally as "paint order (child slots)". A child list has
a definite order whether or not its children are ever drawn together,
so co-occurrence does not bear on it. The capture was the CHECK.
* The order is in the file anyway. paint_order_audit on GP_TITLE entry
11: derived == measured, 0 inverted pairs, 0 same-layer-key ties. The
glows and logos carry distinct T8aD keys (0xa100 < 0xa110), so the
file orders the halves statically, no capture involved.
I asked the question that started this iteration -- do the title and menu
orders have the same problem -- and the answer is that none of the three
does, for the same reason.
What survives is narrower and now recorded with numbers: how much of each
order its capture actually cross-checks. The title capture is stable (8
draws / 12 quads / 5 textures, identical in all five captured frames
across two logs) and confirms 7 of 24 positions; the menu capture is not
(texture 0x11C30000 present in frame 0, gone by frame 3); the splash
capture cannot cross-check its middle at all.
A counting trap worth the tool: count QUADS, not draws. The menu's draw 9
is indices=24 -- six quads batched from one texture. Counting draws reads
9 where 16 are on screen, and an earlier pass of this analysis briefly
"found" three quads for six declarations that way and concluded elements
were missing. They were batched.
METHOD: check what a "measured" value was measured FROM before reasoning
about its limits. The co-occurrence rule is real, and it is specific to
orders read from draw captures.
|
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
2532c056be |
docs: the splash .prm measured -- and its paint order is a sequence, not depth
ui-prm-primitives recorded that where a .prm paints on a screen without a measured order is unsolved. For the developer splash it is now measured. Every frame opens with two full-screen draws before any sprite. The second is untextured in all 212 frames with a constant vertex colour of FF000000 -- opaque black -- matching palogo_eff0.prm's declaration exactly: kind 0x10, pivot (640,360) -> 1280x720, one keyframe, a = 255. So the splash backdrop is an opaque black full-screen quad from the bundle itself, painted behind every sprite, which is why a splash render needs --black rather than the default backdrop. Not a general rule, and said so: the measured main-menu order puts pteff02.prm at position 4 and pteff00.prm LAST, the latter being the screen-transition fade. And a correction to an existing row. measured_paint_order returns [0, 2, 4, 6, 1, 3, 5] for the splash, described as "the .prm, then all three glows, then the three logos". But the glows and the logos never appear in the same frame -- 0 overlapping frames in 235 -- and two elements that never co-occur have no observable relative depth. Between those halves the vector records the order they were SEEN IN, not a front-to-back relationship. That does not make the render wrong, and element 0 is a real depth observation since the .prm co-occurs with everything. But the type of the claim matters: reading the vector as depth invites compositing all seven elements at once, which is exactly what does not reproduce the screen. METHOD: two things that never co-occur have no observable relative order; when recording an order, note which pairs actually appeared together. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
7988f52ce7 |
re(ui): deliver the measured splash sequence the port has to author
The activation decision is code, and MISSION already says the port authors the sequence -- so the useful move is to hand over the sequence measured rather than chase the code. From the 235-frame draw capture, at 1 frame = 1/30 s (2 units/frame, 1 unit = 1/60 s, both settled in Q1): publisher: SQUARE ENIX logo f1-90 90 frames 3.00 s+ at 0.00 (gap, nothing drawn) f91-93 3 frames 0.10 s at 3.00 developer: both glows f94-115 22 frames 0.73 s at 3.10 developer: both logos f116-211 96 frames 3.20 s at 3.83 Three limits, stated with the numbers rather than after them. The capture opens with palogo_sqex already at a=255, so the publisher phase began before the window and 3.00 s is a FLOOR -- every "starts at" is relative to the capture, not to boot. palogo_anima and palogo_anima_eff get 0 draws in all 214 frames, so a third pair's phase is not in this measurement. And it is one capture, one run: the glow->logo switch being a single frame boundary with no overlap is a strong shape, but each duration is one sample. What is solid is the part that matters: the 0.73 s and 3.20 s phases are each within 2% of their element's declared span, so the durations are the bundle's own and only the ordering is authored. That is the difference between a port transcribing timing and inventing it. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
7156591654 |
re(ui): re-establish selective activation by killing the alternative statically
Last iteration I withdrew "a bundle is a palette" because the evidence did not choose between selective activation within one bundle and two compositions shown in sequence. The alternative can be killed from the disc, which I had not tried. Hypothesis 2 needs a bundle declaring the GLOWS WITHOUT THE LOGOS. There is none. Every GP_TITLE entry carrying palogo elements: 10, 13 (publisher twins) palogo_eff0.prm, palogo_sqex, palogo_sqex_eff 11, 14 (developer twins) palogo_eff0.prm + all three logos + all three glows Four entries, and each developer entry declares the complete set of six. So whichever bundle was active across frames 94-211 -- entry 11, entry 14, or both in turn -- it declared the logos and the glows, while the game drew two sprites at a time in disjoint phases. Therefore only a subset of a bundle's elements is drawn at any moment, whatever the bundle-loading story is. The conclusion no longer depends on resolving how many bundles are involved, which is why the texture-base test's failure stopped mattering. So the claim is reinstated -- this time by eliminating the alternative rather than by assuming it away. What worked was not a better capture but asking what the competing hypothesis would REQUIRE on the disc and finding it absent. METHOD: a hypothesis that predicts an artefact can be killed by looking for the artefact, which is often far cheaper than measuring the behaviour. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
2a086051b3 |
re(ui): withdraw the mechanism -- "palette" was an explanation, not a finding
Last iteration I wrote that a bundle is a palette whose elements are
selectively activated. The disjoint glow/logo phases have two
explanations and I asserted one:
1. one bundle, some elements run then others;
2. two bundle-loads shown in sequence (entries 11 and 14 are twins
declaring identical sprites).
The draw log's tex[base=...] looked like it would separate them. It does
not, and the control is in the same table:
publisher splash f1-90 0x11C30000, 0x10000000
glows f94-115 0x11C30000, 0x10000000
logos f116-211 0x11C30000, 0x10000000
The publisher splash is certainly a DIFFERENT bundle from the developer
splash, and it uses the same base. So 0x11C30000 is a reused upload slot,
not a bundle identity, and the test cannot choose between the two
hypotheses.
Survives: a bundle's declared elements are not what gets drawn.
palogo_anima and palogo_gamearts carry byte-identical keyframe times and
in the same run one is drawn 95 frames and the other none -- and
whichever twin was active declares both. The phases are strictly disjoint
(0 overlapping frames in 235).
Withdrawn: the mechanism. The practical consequence is unchanged --
compositing every element of a bundle does not reproduce what the game
shows over time -- but the why is not established and I stated it as
though it were.
What would separate them: a per-draw capture recording the bundle each
draw came from, or a file-IO log showing whether a second RATC entry is
read between frames 115 and 116.
METHOD: a shared resource address does not identify the resource's owner;
and state the mechanism as a separate claim from the observation, or the
weaker one inherits the stronger one's evidence.
|
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
baed44a9ea |
re(ui): the sequencing survives refutation -- and a bundle is a palette
Two checks on last iteration's "sequential, not simultaneous" reading. First, the phases really are disjoint. If glows and logos ever shared a frame the claim would be wrong. Across all 235 captured frames the count of frames containing both is ZERO, and the switch is a single clean boundary -- f110-115 draw 1280x720 + 262x108 + 525x90, f116 onward 1280x720 + 243x86 + 499x72. Two sprites either side, no transition frame. Second, and larger: a third of the bundle is never drawn. Entry 11 declares three logo/glow pairs and only two appear. palogo_gamearts / _eff 95 / 22 frames palogo_seta / _eff 95 / 22 frames palogo_anima / _eff never palogo_anima declares the SAME keyframe times as palogo_gamearts. Two elements with byte-identical data, 95 frames and 0 frames in one run. Reach: the capture covers frames 1-214, so this is "never in the window". So a bundle is a palette, not a script. Its elements say what to draw and for how long; which of them run, and when each starts, is decided outside the placement data. That is the same conclusion the boot-order work reached from the other end -- the driver is code, not data -- now with a per-element measurement behind it. For the port, concretely: compositing every element of a bundle does not reproduce what the game shows over time. It is the right thing for a static screen that settles, and it is not a timeline. METHOD: two elements with identical data and different outcomes is the strongest possible evidence that the decision is elsewhere. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
7fb6bdfad8 |
re(ui): a group's duration is in the data, its start time is not
Tested whether the splash timeline, played, reproduces the capture -- the last gap in the animation model. Half of it does. Durations match. At 2 units/frame under the shifted reading, from the 235-frame draw capture of the developer splash: glows drawn f94-115 (22 frames = 44 units) declared ~0..45 = 45 97.8% logos drawn f116-211 (96 frames = 192 units) declared 15..210 = 195 98.5% Each element is on screen for its declared span to within 2%. Starts do not. Every glow declares the same times 15,30,45 and every logo the same 15,30,190,194,206,210, so on one clock they would overlap almost entirely -- and they do not overlap at all. The glows run 94-115 and the logos 116-211, strictly sequential, the logos starting the frame after the glows end. Fitting one origin needs f0 ~ 93.5 for gamearts_eff and ~103 for gamearts, about 19 units apart, and aligning one throws the other off by ~9 frames at both ends. The obvious candidate is refuted. parse_placements reads each group header as (element index, keyframe count) plus one undecoded LEAD-IN WORD -- exactly where a per-group start offset would live. It is 0x00000000 for all seven elements, glows and logos alike. Reach: not the keyframe times (identical within each family), not that word (zero), not declaration order (which interleaves logos and glows where the observed sequencing groups them), not the RATC child order. What remains is that the sequencing is code-driven, which agrees with what the boot-order work concluded independently. For the port: a group says how long an element animates and what it does, not when it starts relative to its neighbours. The observed order on the developer splash -- both glows, then both logos -- is measured for one screen, not a decoded rule, so the sequencing has to be authored. METHOD: when a model reproduces durations but not positions, the missing piece is an origin, not a rate. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
1f2b469f7e |
re(ui): a static composite is only meaningful for a screen that settles
The model's sharpest prediction, tested with its control. The draw log says that on the developer splash the _eff glows are drawn on frames 94-115 and the logos on 116-211, so at the moment the reference capture was taken EVERY glow is already finished -- including the two that have plateaus and which rest_plateau therefore renders visible. Suppressing them should help on the splashes and hurt where a screen genuinely settles. publisher splash +0.9604 -> +0.9982 +0.0377 developer splash +0.9659 -> +0.9980 +0.0321 title (control) +0.9500 -> +0.9480 -0.0020 main menu(control) +0.9460 -> +0.8544 -0.0916 EXTRAS (control) +0.9440 -> +0.8370 -0.1070 Both splashes jump to about 0.998; all three persistent screens get worse. The control is what makes this a finding rather than a coincidence: the same edit helps exactly where the model says it should and hurts exactly where it says it should not. So rest_plateau is not over-drawing in general -- it over-draws on TRANSIENT screens. A plateau mid-animation means the element is held at that point in the timeline, not that it is on screen once the screen has settled. Where a screen settles, the held pose IS the settled pose and the rule is measurably right. And that answers the question left open several iterations ago -- what "rest" means for a transient element. It does not mean anything: the splashes never rest. A static composite of them can match a chosen frame, and about 0.998 is what these captures' frame is worth, but the format does not answer a question the screen never poses. For the port: play the timeline for the two splashes, which the settled keyframe timing now supports, and composite statically for title, main menu and EXTRAS. METHOD: an edit that improves one set of cases is only interesting once you have shown it damages the cases where it should. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
458585d136 |
re(ui): the structural case for last -- 2 293 of 2 305, checked disc-wide
The weakness in the rest-rule finding was that `last` had been SCORED on only two elements. It cannot be scored on more -- only two ambiguous elements sit on a screen with a live capture -- but the entry -> hold -> exit model makes a prediction that can be checked on all 2 305: what does each element's FINAL keyframe look like? final keyframe invisible (a = 0) 1 618 transient: gone at rest final keyframe visible, at max alpha 675 faded in and stopped final keyframe visible, BELOW max alpha 12 genuinely unclear Of the 687 that end visible, 472 have monotonically non-decreasing alpha -- a plain fade-in that stops, [0, 255] over two keyframes in the commonest case (pjex_eff.rat, pghud_speed_cut.t32) -- and another 203 end at their maximum after dipping. So `last` is structurally defensible for 2 293 of 2 305 (99.5 %), against a dwell rule that returns a mid-movement frame by construction. Observed correct for 2, structural for 675, model-consistent for 1 618, unclear for 12. The assumption carrying the 1 618 is stated rather than buried: that a plateau-less element's animation has finished by the time the screen is settled. The draw log establishes exactly this for the two splash glows (drawn frames 94-115, logos 116-211) and establishes nothing for the rest. Default still unchanged. The case is now observational, structural and model-based rather than two data points, but it would move 1 896 elements and the decision belongs with whoever owns the renderer. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
4012d5b555 |
re(ui): why rest_plateau is right -- and last is right only for a transient
The shifted keyframe-time reading looked like it implied something simple: the final pose is reached at a definite time and nothing follows, so rest should just be the last keyframe and the plateau heuristic could go. Tested by applying it to EVERY element: title +0.9500 -> +0.6819 -0.2681 main menu +0.9460 -> +0.6416 -0.3044 EXTRAS +0.9440 -> +0.5745 -0.3695 publisher splash +0.9600 -> blank (zero variance, corr undefined) developer splash +0.9643 -> blank Refuted, and the failure supplies the model. A group is entry -> hold -> exit, and the exit is the screen's DISMISSAL. While a screen is displayed it has not reached its last keyframe; it is sitting at the hold. So rest_plateau is the correct primary rule, and the last keyframe is the post-exit state -- correct only once the screen is gone, which is why applying it everywhere blanks the splashes. This does not contradict the shifted reading. That reading says when each pose is reached; it says nothing about the group being played to completion while the screen is still up. The step between them was mine. And it explains why last wins for the two plateau-less elements: an element with no hold is a transient, it flashes and is over, and at any settled moment it is gone -- which is its last keyframe. The draw capture says the same independently: on the developer splash the _eff glows draw on frames 94-115 and the logos on 116-211, so the glows are already finished when the logos are up. Three independent observables -- animation timing, static composites, and the per-frame draw log -- now agree on one rule: plateau where there is one, last keyframe where there is not. METHOD: a blank render is a NaN correlation, not a low score, and that NaN was the strongest form of the result; and when a model predicts something the measurement refuses, suspect the step you supplied between them. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
515456c59a |
re(ui): quantify what changing the rest rule would do disc-wide
The open question was whether "last keyframe" holds beyond the two
elements I could score against a capture. It cannot be scored disc-wide --
only two ambiguous elements sit on a screen with a live capture -- but the
blast radius can be measured, and it argues the same way.
genuinely ambiguous elements 2 305
the two rules AGREE on 409 (17.7 %)
they DIFFER on 1 896 (82.3 %)
dwell (current): invisible pose 1 711 (74.2 %), zero-scale 195 (8.5 %)
last : invisible pose 1 618 (70.2 %), zero-scale 43 (1.9 %)
Two things follow. It is not a marginal choice: the rules disagree on 82%
of the affected elements, so "either is fine" is not available. And the
current rule produces 4.5x more degenerate poses -- a zero-scale pose is
collapsed to nothing, i.e. an element's PRE-ROLL before it has grown in,
which is definitionally not a rest. 195 elements currently rest at a frame
they are only passing through, against 43 under last.
That is an argument from the data's own structure rather than from the two
captures, and it points the same direction.
Kept honest: it is indirect. Fewer degenerate results is not the same as
more correct results, and last still returns an invisible pose 70% of the
time -- right for a transient element, wrong for a persistent one. The
default stays put; the numbers are in HANDOFF for whoever decides.
|
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
93e9b185ea |
re(ui): the rest fallback fires on 2 elements, and "last keyframe" wins there
Scored candidate rest-pose rules by rendering and correlating instead of
arguing, and both results correct something I had published.
First, the exposure. The guessing fallback is reached only by an element
that is plateau-less AND multi-keyframe -- a single-keyframe element
short-circuits at `match len { 1 => first }`. Per screen:
title (4) 24 elements 2 plateau-less 0 reach the fallback
main menu (5) 16 5 0
EXTRAS (6) 18 5 0
publisher splash (10) 3 2 1
developer splash (11) 7 2 1
So on the three screens the port cares most about, rest() never guesses.
That is why three different rules render builds 4/5/6 to identical
correlations -- the code is unreachable there, which I nearly read as
"the choice does not matter".
Second, where it does fire, the last keyframe is markedly better:
publisher splash dwell +0.9600 last +0.9982 maxalpha +0.9600
developer splash dwell +0.9643 last +0.9758 maxalpha +0.9643
That refutes my own earlier refutation. I had killed the last-keyframe
rule by arguing it makes palogo_anima_eff invisible while its two
siblings stay lit, which looked like an artefact. The capture says
otherwise: making it invisible is what improves the match. The sibling
symmetry was my expectation, not evidence.
Caveat kept in front: both captures are single frames of a transient
animation, so this fixes which pose matches THOSE frames, not which is
canonically at rest. Default unchanged -- better on both screens where it
fires and identical on the other three, but it would move 2 305 elements
disc-wide on two measurements. Reachable via SYLPHEED_REST_RULE=last.
Also confirmed: all 195 zero-scale rest poses are inside the corrected
2 305 ambiguous population; none is a single-keyframe element.
METHOD: score a rule where it can differ, or you measure nothing; and an
argument from symmetry is a prediction, not a refutation.
|
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
0265da31a1 |
re(ui): refute my own fix for rest(), and correct the defect rate by 65%
Two corrections from one experiment.
A keyframe group is entry -> hold -> exit, and the exit ends invisible:
on the five port screens the final keyframe is invisible for 21/24
(title), 8/16 (main menu), 12/18 (EXTRAS), 2/3 and 6/7 (splashes). So the
screen as seen is the HOLD, which is why rest_plateau is the right
primary rule and why "rest = last keyframe" would empty every screen.
That suggested a fix: an element with no hold has no representative pose,
so draw nothing rather than guess an endpoint. Tested through compose's
visible mask and correlated against the live captures:
title +0.9500 -> +0.6839 -0.2661
main menu +0.9460 -> +0.9037 -0.0423
EXTRAS +0.9440 -> +0.9094 -0.0346
Refuted on all three, and the reason invalidates a number I published. An
element with a SINGLE keyframe has no adjacent pair, so the plateau test
marks it plateau-less -- but its one pose is unambiguously its rest.
Suppressing those removes backgrounds and full-screen layers, which is
the title's -0.27.
no plateau (as published) 3 807 (24.57 %)
... single-keyframe 1 502 trivially at rest, not a guess
genuinely ambiguous 2 305 (14.88 %)
So rest() guesses for 2 305 elements, not 3 807 -- the figure I gave the
port overstated the defect by 65%. Corrected in HANDOFF and the page.
METHOD: a predicate over adjacent PAIRS silently misclassifies a
one-element list; and acting on a claim is a better test of it than
re-reading it -- this flaw survived a census, a write-up and a handoff
row, and died the moment the rule was used to change a rendering.
|
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
60285a6ead |
re(ui): replicate the keyframe-time shift -- three elements, two screens
The case for reading +36 as "the time the NEXT pose is reached" rested on one element's fade-out shape, then on one element's hold duration. Both splash halves supply more, and they agree. element screen observed hold as decoded shifted palogo_gamearts developer splash 83 f 8 f 80 f palogo_seta developer splash 83 f 6 f 80 f palogo_sqex publisher splash >=77 f * 6 f 102 f * the capture opens mid-hold at frame 1, so 77 is a floor. The readings predict opposite structures. For palogo_gamearts, as decoded: hold 8f, in 80f, hold 2f, out 6f, out 2f -- an eighty-frame FADE-IN and a two-frame hold. Shifted: in 8f, hold 80f, out 2f, out 6f, out 2f. The capture shows an 83-frame hold and no fade-in at all. The elements that cannot discriminate are not contradicted: palogo_gamearts_eff observed in 7f / hold 7f / out 8f, and both readings give 8f phases -- with four blocks the shift only relabels which phase is which. So the glows, which is where Q1's linear law was measured, say nothing either way rather than arguing against. The decoder's default is still unchanged, and the reason is now articulated rather than assumed. The single thing opposing the shift is rest() on ptlogo_eff3, where the shifted reading makes the longest-dwell fallback return the bloom's 200% peak. That fallback is unsound whenever it runs -- it returns an endpoint of a movement, neither of which is held -- and checked: the shift does not fix it either. So the objection was never evidence about the times. Timing had three discriminating measurements; pose selection had a heuristic guessing. For the port: animation timing should use the shift; static composites are unaffected and the five screens' correlations stand. Classified measured, not decoded -- three elements in one screen family, not a disc-wide check. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
fb6376a548 |
docs: one page saying how good the five screens actually are
The answers for the port's five screens were spread across a dozen documents and none of them said how good the result IS. Measured: screen build drawn corr vs capture alignment title 4 15/24 +0.9500 dy=0 dx=0 main menu 5 11/16 +0.9460 dy=0 dx=0 EXTRAS 6 13/18 +0.9440 dy=0 dx=0 publisher splash 10 2/3 +0.9600 dy=0 dx=0 developer splash 11 6/7 +0.9643 dy=0 dx=0 Every one aligns at exactly zero offset over a +/-2 px search in both axes, so placement and scale are right and the residual is tone and detail rather than geometry. The drawn/total counts are not slack. Each undrawn element has a reason already documented: kind & 0x4 ghost instances (4 on the title), .prm primitives off by default (2 per menu, 1 per splash), loop* animations off by default and off-screen at rest (2 per menu screen), and the 8AX name mismatch (1 per menu screen) whose art reaches the screen anyway via ptbase. 4+2+2+1 = 9, 2+2+1 = 5, 1. Nothing unexplained. The residual is ranked for a consumer: tone first (gamma 1.34-1.49, the game's own display ramp), then 8AX resolution, then one drawable paint-order tie on EXTRAS alone, then rotation-decoded-but-not-rendered which does not affect these five at rest. Reach stated: these are static composites at the resting pose against single frames, so nothing here speaks to animation, and a whole-frame correlation is a sanity figure rather than a per-element check. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
714a26769d |
re(ui): premultiplied alpha refuted for bit 0x02; parking the field
A per-sprite premultiplied-vs-straight-alpha flag would matter a lot to a port and has a sharp static signature: premultiplied means RGB <= A everywhere. Over the 170 decoded GP_TITLE textures that pair to a flag word: bit SET n= 61 mean %(RGB>A) 55.52 median 52.52 bit clear n=109 mean %(RGB>A) 33.66 median 30.17 Premultiplied requires ~0% for the flagged group. Both groups are far from it and the flagged group violates MORE -- the opposite of the hypothesis. Refuted. What remains is a weak association: flagged sprites carry more bright-RGB/low-alpha pixels, which is what glow art looks like. But the best single threshold classifies 76.5% against a 64.1% base rate -- a 12-point lift with badly overlapping distributions. A tendency, not a rule, and reported with its base rate so it cannot read as more. Noted for whoever returns: "0x02 selects an additive blend" was refuted by blending those sprites additively and finding every measure worse against the capture -- but that ran through a title render since fixed twice (rest_plateau, and the 8AX background the composer drops). The refutation may well stand; it was measured through a renderer with known other errors, so it is worth one re-run if blit ever gains additive blending. Parking the field. Four candidate meanings are dead -- additive blend, eff name in both directions, transient element, premultiplied alpha -- none produced a positive account, and the bit blocks nothing: the port's screens composite at 0.947 correlation against a capture without it. The negative space and the sound attribution method (child order, not size) are written down so a later attempt starts here. METHOD: report a classifier's lift over its base rate; and park a field after N failed hypotheses, saying what was eliminated. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
489ea12759 |
re(ui): the eff-name implication for bit 0x02 is refuted disc-wide
Last iteration I killed the biconditional and reported that the one-way
reading survived: all 10 bit-set sprites on GP_TITLE build 4 are eff
names, so "bit set => eff name". Checked over the disc, that is false.
sprites with a resolvable preceding name 14 709
bit SET & name has 'eff' 2 338
bit SET & name lacks 'eff' 2 657 <-- counterexamples
bit clear & name has 'eff' 1 399
bit clear & name lacks 'eff' 8 315
P(eff | set) = 0.468
P(eff | clear) = 0.144
The implication fails more often than it holds. What survives is an
association -- 3.3x enrichment -- and build 4's 10/10 was a local naming
habit in an 18-element bundle, not a format rule.
The counterexamples are the useful part: pv_loading_ring0,
pv_loading_light0-3, pv_loading_line, px_bunk_line, px_top_extra. Rings,
glows, lights, thin lines -- effect-like artwork that does not carry the
eff naming convention. Consistent with the bit marking effect sprites by
authoring intent rather than by name, which is a description and not a
decode, and is labelled as such.
Names here come from the string immediately preceding each T8aD,
validated 17/18 on build 4 against the RATC child order; the single
mismatch is the known pteff04.t32 -> registered as 8AX case, so this is
the element (opt) name rather than the sprite's registered name. That
mismatch is itself an independent confirmation of the 8AX finding,
reached from the opposite direction.
METHOD: a pattern perfect on one screen can be near-chance on the disc;
and when an association survives a refuted implication, the
counterexamples are the finding.
|
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
5f701db588 |
re(ui): kill two candidate meanings for the T8aD 0x02 bit, and fix attribution
The bit at +0x04 was recorded as a real field with its meaning "not
diagnosed", noting ptlogo_back2eff is 0x8830 "despite its name". That note
rested on a size match -- and its size is ambiguous, which is the trap
this corpus already records.
First, a sound attribution. T8aD headers appear in the bundle in RATC
CHILD ORDER, verified on GP_TITLE build 4 against an independent property
-- each header's decoded dimensions versus the dimensions the named child
should have: 18 of 18 match, 0 mismatches. Two of those eighteen share a
size (ptlogo_back2eff and ptlogo_back2eff5, both 1133x280), so a size-keyed
lookup cannot separate them; ordering can. Index 12 is back2eff5 (0x8832,
bit set), index 14 is back2eff (0x8830, bit clear). The documented
counterexample is real and correctly attributed -- now on evidence.
Two candidate meanings tested and refuted:
bit <=> name contains "eff" REFUTED: ptlogo_back2eff is an eff
name with the bit clear. All 10
bit-set sprites are eff names, so
the implication holds one way only.
bit <=> the element is transient REFUTED: pteff03/pteff03a carry the
bit and run to t=250, ramping to
a=255 and holding.
Up close, the exception pair differs in two header words: +0x04
0x8832/0x8830 and +0x08 0x8083/0x8081 -- layer keys 32899 and 32897. They
are NOT duplicates: their alpha summaries agree to one decimal (4.5%
opaque, 86.7% clear, mean 19.3) but a pixel compare gives max abs diff 21.
Two renditions of one image at one size, which is why the summaries were
not trusted.
Still not diagnosed, and said so -- but the search space is two smaller
and the attribution beneath it is now sound.
METHOD: T8aD headers sit in child order, use that not the size; and
identical summary statistics are not identical data.
|
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
421c61a517 |
re(ui): close the gamma chain from canary's defaults -- the game writes a ramp
Continues the previous iteration, where the game was measured calling VdGetCurrentDisplayGamma at video init. The remaining link -- does it then WRITE the ramp -- is a GPU register operation (XE_GPU_REG_DC_LUT_RW_INDEX in CommandProcessor::WriteRegister), unlogged and invisible to kernel logging. Two facts from the source close it without instrumenting. 1. The swap-path gamma stage is a PURE LUT. apply_gamma_table.xesli is the whole transform: index by input*255, fetch from a 256-entry ramp buffer, output. No sRGB encode, no second transfer function. 2. The table DEFAULTS TO IDENTITY. CommandProcessor::Initialize fills it with value = i * 0x3FF / 0xFF, and its own comment says the linear default is "what games set when starting with the sRGB (return value 1) VdGetCurrentDisplayGamma". An unwritten ramp is a no-op. So the only transform is a LUT, the LUT is identity unless written, the game queries the display gamma at init, and the capture differs from our composite by gamma 1.34-1.49 -- which identity cannot produce. The guest wrote a non-identity ramp. Labelled an inference, with its weak joint named: it assumes our composite reproduces the PRE-RAMP framebuffer, which it does not exactly. What carries it is the shape -- a systematic ~1.4 fitted on flat patches across three screens is not a compositor bug. The obvious alternative, a fixed sRGB stage in the presenter, fits neither direction: an encode (^0.45) brightens and we measured darkening; a decode (^2.2) darkens far more than 1.4. Direct observation remains available and cheap, and needs the emulator only to boot: a GPU trace records gamma ramps as their own command type, or one log line at the DC_LUT register write would settle it outright. Not done. METHOD: a default value is evidence; and name the weak joint of an inference in the same breath as the conclusion. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
c6ce000002 |
re(ui): the game does query the display gamma -- measured, with its control
Last iteration's corrected experiment, run. Boot with --log_mask=12 --log_level=3 (Kernel logging on, Cpu/Gpu off), which changes nothing about the output and so cannot perturb the capture harness the way the gamma-cvar experiment would have. VdGetCurrentDisplayGamma is called once, at video init: d> VdGetSystemCommandBuffer(701CF830, 701CF804) d> VdGetCurrentDisplayGamma(701CE1F8(00000000), 701CE1F0(0)) d> VdSetDisplayMode(40000000) d> VdGetCurrentDisplayInformation(701CF110) The control is in the same log: 359 VdRetrainEDRAM and 358 VdGetSystemCommandBuffer lines, so an absent call would have been visible. Per the export's own comment the returned type is "used in D3D SetGammaRamp/SetPWLGamma" -- the game asks the question a ramp-builder asks, at the moment one would ask it. Still open, and stated: whether it then WRITES the ramp, and whether the measured gamma 1.34-1.49 is that ramp. The write is a GPU register operation (DC_LUT), invisible to kernel logging; a GPU trace records gamma ramps as a command type (TraceWriter::WriteGammaRamp), which is where to look next. Worth its own METHOD line: this had been parked behind "needs the emulator to reach a menu" for several iterations, and it needed the emulator only to BOOT -- video init happens in the first seconds. A blocker that stops one experiment does not stop every experiment in the same area. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
93b0a6b20f |
re(ui): the gamma confound is refuted from source -- canary applies none of its own
I had parked the tone-curve finding behind "this may be the emulator, not the game: canary applies kernel_display_gamma_type = 2 (BT.709) on output", with a planned run setting it to 0 and re-fitting. Reading the source kills both the confound and the experiment. VdGetCurrentDisplayGamma_entry is a kStub GETTER the guest calls (xboxkrnl_video.cc). Its own comment: "Used in D3D SetGammaRamp/ SetPWLGamma to adjust the ramp for the display." The cvar is a value REPORTED TO THE GAME, which then builds its own ramp. Canary's role is downstream: the guest writes DC_LUT, command_processor.cc reads it into gamma_ramp_256_entry_table_, and the swap path applies it via swap_apply_gamma_pipeline_layout with apply_gamma_table.ps / apply_gamma_pwl.ps compiled in. So there is no emulator-side BT.709 post-process to subtract, and any gamma in a captured frame is a ramp the game installed. What is NOT established, and the reach is stated: that this game installs a ramp at all, or that the measured 1.34-1.49 is it. The run logs cannot say -- kernel exports log at Debug and this harness masks Kernel logging (log_mask = 13, per boot_menu.sh's own comment), so their silence is guaranteed regardless of what the game did. The planned experiment was wrong in design: changing the cvar changes what the GUEST is told and therefore which ramp the GAME builds, so it could never isolate a stage that does not exist -- and it perturbs the capture harness, since skip_intro classifies movie-vs-static on an absolute rmse threshold that a brighter frame biases. The right run changes nothing about the output: LOG_MASK=12 LOG_LEVEL=3 and look for the call and the DC_LUT writes. Also for the port: the ramp depends on the display type the game is told, and canary hard-codes TV/BT.709 where hardware uses a console setting. So this is a display profile, not a fixed property of the game. METHOD: read what a cvar does before building an experiment around it; and an absence in a log is only evidence if the log would have shown it. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
3490fba9e3 |
re(ui): settle 8AX vs ptbase statically -- the game draws the full-res one
I had parked this as "needs a per-draw capture recording texture base addresses". It did not. 8AX (1280x720) and ptbase (640x360 at 200%) are the SAME artwork at two resolutions, which is exactly why comparing either against a capture is inconclusive -- and why comparing their DIFFERENCE is not. Compute 8AX - upscale(ptbase), the detail only 8AX has, and ask whether the capture contains it. Both candidates are first mapped into the capture's tone domain with the measured gamma; without that the residual is dominated by the tone difference and the test is blind. main menu corr +0.0475 controls +0.0032 shift, -0.0075 flip 68% of ceiling title corr +0.0634 controls +0.0095 shift, +0.0086 flip 68% of ceiling Two independent screens, both at 68% of the theoretical ceiling (sd of the 8AX-only detail over sd of the capture residual), 7-15x their matched controls. The controls preserve spatial correlation and destroy only alignment, so they are what "no signal" looks like. So the recommendation changes: resolve the name and draw 8AX at 1:1. Upscaling ptbase 2x is wrong, not merely softer. Still do not draw both -- an opaque layer over an identical one costs fill and hides later changes, and ptbase's element is the one carrying the keyframes, so a consumer needs its timing with 8AX's pixels. Also recorded and withdrawn: a cruder pixel-pair test gave 0.00-0.72 for upscales, 0.98 native and 1.01 for the capture -- apparently decisive. Additive noise raises both terms of that ratio equally and drives any value toward 1; fitting a noise term, both "native + noise" and "bilinear + noise" reproduce the observed numbers. The conclusion is right, that test does not establish it, and it is in REFUTED because the number looks conclusive and is not. Not shown: whether ptbase is also drawn underneath. 8AX is ~86% opaque and carries the same art, so it would hide it either way. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
7373035868 |
re: the port was still being told SE audio is undecodable -- it is not
A resolve-check on HANDOFF's own rows. Q8 read "SE audio is undecodable
from the disc -- no XACT container exists anywhere". menu-audio-cues.md
retracted exactly that ("### Retracting 'cannot be extracted'") and
locates three cues in Static.slb that decode to PCM: d-pad move 0x1ec0
(4 packets), (B) back 0x0ec0 (2), (A) confirm 0x5d6c0 (6), all mono
48 kHz. The retraction landed in docs/re/ and the page the port reads
kept the superseded text -- the fourth time in this corpus.
Writing the rule down has not worked, so there is a tool now.
handoff_lint.py flags every HANDOFF line making a strong negative claim
that links a doc containing retraction language. First run: found the Q8
row, plus one benign false positive (Q3 links a doc whose retraction is
about a sprite count, not about the tie-break -- checked, and HANDOFF
repeats none of the retracted figures). The lint also caught its own bug
first: it reported existing docs as missing because it joined a guessed
repo root, so it now resolves links relative to the file as markdown does.
Separately, EXTRAS's paint-order risk narrows twice more. Of its 15 tied
pairs only 2 overlap, and of those, ptloop01 x ptloop02 are loop*
animations compose skips by default -- so exactly ONE tie can be drawn:
ptframe3 x ptframe4, overlapping 102x132 px. Against live-extras.png that
contested region correlates +0.9622, better than the whole frame (+0.9440)
and inside the range of regions where order cannot matter (+0.8502 /
+0.9903). Consistent with our order, not proof: correlation cannot see a
swap between locally similar art.
15 -> 2 -> 1 -> consistent is now the whole paint-order risk on the five
screens, and HANDOFF says so.
|
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
f7f9b555f6 |
re(ui): the paint-order tie-break is undecodable from the bundle
Q3 was delivered as "decoded: a u16 layer key at +0x0A". The audit last
iteration showed the key does not fully order a screen -- elements
sharing a key are tied, and on the title that tie-break decides two total
occlusions. This searches for what breaks the tie, and closes it as a
negative with reach.
The game paints the five tied ptlogo_back2eff glows in the order
eff1, eff2, eff5, eff3, eff4. Three static structures were searched:
1. The declaration table. Entries 14-18 are byte-identical apart from the
pivot, which is only half the sprite's own size.
2. The T8aD headers. All five carry identical +0x04 (0x8832) and
identical +0x08/+0x0A (32899, the key itself), differing only in
position and tile count. Searched exhaustively -- every offset
0x00-0x7f, u8/u16/u32, ascending and descending:
fields sorting to the MEASURED order: 0
fields sorting to the DECLARATION order (control): 64
The control is the point: 64 fields can be found that reproduce a
known ordering, so the scan finds ordering fields when they exist. It
finds none for the order the game uses.
3. The RATC child order -- a genuinely different permutation on other
screens -- gives eff1..eff5 here, declaration order again.
All three static orderings give eff1..eff5; the game gives eff1,2,5,3,4.
That agrees with ui-screen-runtime's conclusion from the other direction:
the game builds a reordered child list at load time and paints that.
Q3 now reads honestly: the layer key is decoded and orders 4 of the 5
measured bundles exactly; the tie-break within a key is undecodable, and
a consumer must use a measured order or accept declaration index as an
arbitrary stand-in. The port's exposure remains 2 overlapping tied pairs
on EXTRAS.
METHOD: an exhaustive field search needs a positive control, or "found
nothing" is worthless.
|
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
ba47bdebe8 |
re(ui): measure the paint-order hedge -- exact on 4 of 5, and bound the rest
`compose` claimed the derived paint order "reproduces both measured orders up to ties". That sentence was never measured and was stale by one: there are three measured orders, not two. examples/paint_order_audit.rs checks it. main menu (entries 5, 8) derived == measured 0 inverted pairs developer splash (11, 14) derived == measured 0 inverted pairs title (entry 4) DIFFERS 8, all same-key ties So the claim holds and the exception is entirely ties -- but two of those ties are total occlusions, not near-misses. The tied family is the five ptlogo_back2eff glows (key 32899); back2eff5 is 1133x280 and FULLY CONTAINS back2eff3 (82,824 px^2 = 100% of the smaller) and back2eff4 (152,047 px^2 = 100%). Derived paints it on top of two glows it entirely covers; the game paints it underneath. A tie-break by declaration index can therefore be wrong by a whole layer. The title itself is unaffected -- it has a measured order. The port's actual exposure, per screen: title, main menu and developer splash all use MEASURED orders; the publisher splash is derived but has ZERO ties, so it is fully determined; EXTRAS is derived with 15 tied pairs of which only 2 OVERLAP. Two element pairs on one screen is the whole risk, and that is what HANDOFF now says -- not the raw 15, which would have overstated it 7x. Reach stated: this compares the derived order against orders measured from the game, not an independent derivation, so where no measured order exists only the tie exposure can be checked. Overlap uses pivot*2 as the element size at its resting placement. Stale comment in compose corrected. METHOD: a hedge in a code comment is an unmeasured claim; and count the cases that can bite, not the ones that match the pattern. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
c3cf3c2e81 |
re: a title negative that survives its own cross-check
Three earlier "the title never appears" claims came from instruments later found broken -- a stale pixel oracle, a 41 s sampling interval, a freezing stream. This one carries its own evidence. title_probe_xchecked.py restarts its capture stream every 30 s AND prints its reading beside an independent `import` grab every 60 s: 1851 frames in 560.2 s = 3.30 fps cross-checks 9, disagreements 1 max glyph 0 t= 62s stream 6.05 | import 0.07 disagree (a fade, logos mid-transition) t=123s stream 7.40 | import 7.49 agree t=183s stream 8.18 | import 8.29 agree t=243s stream 0.23 | import 0.10 agree t=311s stream 89.68 | import 89.51 agree t=371s stream 80.97 | import 81.58 agree t=426s stream 117.43 | import 117.72 agree t=487s stream 77.71 | import 76.25 agree t=546s stream 70.43 | import 70.55 agree Eight of nine agree within 2%, fps held at 3.30 with no collapse to 1.60, and the surface moved through dark and bright phases. So the frames were live: over 560 continuous seconds from launch, sampled 3.3 times a second, the interactive title's green (A) plate never appears while the game renders throughout. The final frame correlates 0.0145 / -0.0047 / 0.0102 with our title / main menu / EXTRAS renders -- attract-movie content, not a UI screen. Why remains unknown. live-title-press-a.png with its 753 glyph pixels proves the title was reachable from this container on 2026-08-28, and clearing the shader cache fixed the black surface but not this. The two emulator-side questions (gamma control, 8AX vs ptbase) are therefore blocked on a characterised failure rather than a suspicion. Neither blocks the five menu screens, so I am returning to static work; the probe is committed for whoever picks it up. METHOD: a probe that cross-checks itself turns "no result" into a result. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
e9924ff9e8 |
re: build the fast probe -- and it refutes the diagnosis that motivated it
Last iteration I blamed four failed runs on the probe sampling every ~41 s, slower than the title screen lasts, and withdrew three earlier conclusions on that basis. Building the fix tested the claim and killed it. The speedup is real and control-verified. One long-lived ffmpeg x11grab stream, raw RGB, glyph counted in numpy -- no per-sample process startup, no PNG encode, no convert -crop: wrapper `screenshot` 3.98 s per sample (emulator running) import -window root -> PPM 1.20 s long-lived x11grab stream 0.29 s 13.7x The counter is byte-identical to is_title.py: 753 on the committed title capture, 327 on the main menu. Pointed at a running game it says the opposite of what I expected: 332 frames in 85.3 s = 3.89 fps; max glyph 0 1674 frames in 420.0 s = 3.99 fps; max glyph 0 1674 consecutive samples over seven unbroken minutes, four per second, zero green-(A) pixels. Sampling rate was a real defect that happened not to be the cause. So "neither locale reaches the interactive title without a pad press" -- withdrawn last iteration for want of evidence -- is reinstated, now as a dense measurement, with its reach stated: a MID-RUN window only, silent about the boot title. Leading hypothesis, unconfirmed: the PRESS (A) plate appears only in the boot title window and the attract loop's title carries none, which is exactly what title_states_capture.sh was written to test. The experiment is to start the fast probe from t=0 rather than attach to a run already in progress. METHOD: fixing the instrument is how you test the explanation that blamed it -- a plausible mechanism is a hypothesis, and the fix is its experiment, not its proof. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
cc4e5e04a7 |
re: the boot harness was blinking slower than the title -- diagnosed
Four consecutive runs failed to reach the interactive title, across two locales, two launch paths and two display-gamma settings. I attributed it in turn to a stale oracle, to the locale, and to the attract loop. It was none of those. one `screenshot` call, emulator running: 10.8 s one `screenshot` call, emulator killed: 0.117 s 92x, measured at a 1-minute load average of 1.80 -- so it is contention with the emulator through the X server, not background load. skip_intro.sh takes two grabs per iteration plus a numpy import, giving a median sampling interval of 41 s in the last run (38/82/41/20/30/30/35/ 47/46/45/44/43/21/19). The title lasts "a few seconds" before the attract loop reclaims it -- wait_title.sh's own header says so. The harness was sampling slower than the event it was waiting for. That also explains why runs at 16:43-18:05 the same day succeeded. Withdrawn as CAUSES, though the observations stand: "the JP run never reaches the interactive title", "neither locale reaches it without a pad press", and "the game sat in the attract loop for 604 s". The English control did control for locale -- it just shared the same defect. Also recorded: I set kernel_display_gamma_type = 0 for the gamma control run, which brightens the frame (mid-attract mean 122.8 vs 52.5/82.8 at type 2) -- and skip_intro classifies movie-vs-static on an ABSOLUTE rmse threshold, so the gamma change biased the very classifier the run depended on. Changing a display setting and a capture behaviour in one run confounds both. Config restored to type 2. The fix is not applied: make the probe cheap enough to outpace the title window (small region, no convert round trip, one long-lived process). Every remaining emulator-side question is waiting on that. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
ee73de50be |
re(ui): put a number on the render-vs-capture tone difference
Closes an observation I left dangling last iteration ("the capture is ~4x
darker than the render") and puts a figure on the ❔ INDEX's texture row
already carried: exact gamma/sRGB fidelity untested because a hue
comparison cannot see it.
Geometry first: cross-correlating the main-menu capture against our
render over +/-6 px puts the best alignment at exactly dy=0 dx=0,
correlation 0.9466. Only the tone differs.
Two methods failed before one worked, and both failures are recorded.
Three dark patches gave "4x darker" -- the whole-frame best linear scale
is 0.914, so three patches from one region are not a transfer curve. A
pixel-wise fit over 854,685 pixels then produced a NON-MONOTONIC transfer
(render 96-127 mapping brighter than render 128-159) with mean abs error
10-14 for every candidate model. That is edge misalignment, not a tone
curve: at correlation 0.947 a bright pixel routinely lands on a dark one.
Flat patches fix it -- 16x16 blocks with std < 8 in BOTH images, a
threshold chosen from the counts (0/83/404/1055/1788 at std<3/5/8/12/20):
main menu 404 patches gamma 1.491 err 0.28 (best linear 0.276, 0.34)
EXTRAS 382 patches gamma 1.493 err 0.22 (best linear 0.273, 0.28)
title 506 patches gamma 1.338 err 1.08 (best linear 0.842, 9.02)
Reach, stated because it is narrow: those patches span only render values
~0-60, where gamma and a plain scale are nearly indistinguishable -- the
two menus decide nothing (0.28 vs 0.34, 0.22 vs 0.28) and only the title
separates them. Nothing constrains midtones or highlights.
The held-out control FAILED TO DISCRIMINATE and is reported as such: the
splash's 2918 flat patches are pure black (render 0-4), so every model
scores ~0.00. That is a test with no power, not corroboration.
Confound left open: this compares our composite to what canary DISPLAYS,
and canary applies kernel_display_gamma_type = 2 (BT.709). The exponent
may be its output stage. The discriminating run -- set it to 0, recapture,
refit -- needs one emulator session reaching the main menu and was not
done.
Classified measured, not decoded; HANDOFF says plainly that a port
applying it is authoring.
|
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
2b4ec20f00 |
re(ui): a full-screen element is dropped on three port screens -- do not "fix" it
Audited what `screen render` silently omits on the port's five screens,
since an element the game draws but we skip is the one defect class the
port agent has actually hit. Everything is accounted for -- kind & 0x4
ghost instances, .prm primitives, loop* animations -- except pteff04.t32
on the title and pteff05.t32 on both menus. Those are kind 0x0, one
keyframe, rest a=255, pivot (640,360): full-screen and opaque.
Cause: the element declares pteff05.t32, but the T8aD behind its `opt `
link is registered under the name 8AX, so build.sprites.get() misses and
compose hits a silent continue. Bytes at 0x0e2035 of GP_TITLE entry 5:
opt ... 70 74 65 66 66 30 35 2e 74 33 32 00 38 41 58 54 38 61 44
p t e f f 0 5 . t 3 2 \0 8 A X T 8 a D
8AX is 1280x720 and present in all six title-family bundles; it is a
sprite in builds 4/5/6 and never an element.
It does not currently show, and that is the useful half. ptbase.t32 is
640x360 drawn at 200% and carries THE SAME ARTWORK: its 2x upscale
differs from 8AX by mean abs diff 2.05 (max 80), and our rendered
background is pixel-identical to 8AX in every patch sampled. So resolving
the name and drawing it in addition would double-draw an opaque
full-screen layer -- invisible as a doubling, which is worse than a
visible bug. Written into HANDOFF as a do-not-do.
The free win, offered and not taken: use 8AX at 1:1 and drop ptbase
instead of upscaling a half-res copy. That is a rendering choice and
ptbase's element carries the keyframes, so it is the port's call.
Not established: which of the two the game actually draws. Both carry the
same art, so pixels cannot separate them; it needs a per-draw capture
recording texture base addresses, since the two differ in size.
|
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
7d07eb945f |
re: the title capture is not reachable here either; stopping this line
Run 3 used the proven path rather than my own probe: launched exactly as
boot_menu.sh does (DISPLAY=:98, --apu=sdl, /dev/shm/xenia_* cleared, the
existing profile signed in) and drove skip_intro.sh, the detector that is
documented to work and that is stricter than mine (glyph >= 800 AND a
static frame).
It classified every one of 20 samples over 604 s as "movie", waited them
all out, and timed out. A direct check at 604 s says it was right: zero
green-glyph pixels, screen_id = other, warm mean (69,53,40), correlation
0.09 with build 7. The game really was playing attract movies for ten
minutes.
Three runs, two locales, two launch paths, ~35 minutes of emulator time,
no interactive title. Either the attract loop is far longer than the
600-780 s windows tried, or something regressed since
live-title-press-a.png was captured -- that one came from a pad-driven
boot (
|
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
8783adda14 |
re: the English control removes the locale from the title-capture problem
Two iterations framed the JP title capture as possibly locale-specific. It is not. Same flags, same oracle, English locale: 75 samples over 734 s, every one glyph = 0. The English boot does not present the interactive title either. Canary was alive throughout, polling XamInputGetKeystrokeEx (1801 calls); the frame at 734 s has content but correlates 0.15 with build 4's render and 0.05 with the main menu -- an attract-movie frame, not title art. So neither locale reaches the interactive title in ~12 minutes without a pad press. What is actually untested is the pad: pad.py and nav_to_flight.sh exist, and title_states_capture.sh reaches title states with a flag set this probe did not replicate (--log_ui_draws --ui_draw_capture_frames, plus xdotool window focus). It is a capture problem, not a locale one. MISSION.md updated. Also resolved a caveat I had given the port agent without checking it: "rotation is decoded but not rendered" does NOT affect their five screens at rest. Title, main menu, EXTRAS and both splash halves have ZERO top-level elements with a non-zero rotation. The only rotations on any of them are the title's two nested ptloop records (r = 30 and -45), and at rest those sit at x = 1521 and x = -839 -- a 399-wide sprite entirely off both edges of a 1280 screen. The caveat now applies only to animating the title build-in, where the sweeps cross the screen rotated. Two METHOD lines: run the control before theorising about the difference, and log every sample so a failure is a measurement rather than a silence. Emulator stopped, lock cleared, locale English. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
f10edf1e79 |
re: fix wait_title.sh's stale oracle; the JP title still is not reached
Last iteration's "never reached the title in 787 s" was a broken tool reporting on the world. wait_title.sh was still sampling the single pixel (625,618) that is_title.py had already been written to replace -- its docstring says why: a 1280x720 coordinate sampled against the 1279x675 game surface, so it always reads the copyright line. The replacement sat in the same directory. wait_title.sh now delegates to it. is_title.py passes its own controls before being trusted here: 753 green-glyph pixels on the committed English title capture, 327 on the main menu, threshold 400. Re-ran with the working oracle and the profile flag the English captures use. The game STILL did not present the interactive title -- but that is now a measurement rather than an artefact: not one frame showed a single green-(A) glyph pixel, and content correlation against either build-7 render never exceeded 0.22. Canary was alive and polling XamInputGetKeystrokeEx (601 calls), sitting in the attract movie. So the open question narrowed again, and is written into MISSION.md: whether the attract loop returns to the INTERACTIVE title without a pad press. title_states_capture.sh claims it does on the English boot with no pad input; if that holds, the difference is the locale. Nothing decided about the keyframe-time association or the rest() rule. Emulator stopped, lock cleared, locale restored to English. |
||
|
Sylpheed RE agent
|
0f1c0f4e14 |
re: the JP-locale capture is not blocked -- I stopped one grep too early
Last iteration I wrote into MISSION.md that a Japanese-locale capture is impossible here, because user_language is DECLARE_int32 at four call sites with no DEFINE and no entry in xenia-canary.config.toml. That is true, and it was not the question. The language is PERSISTED: kernel_state.cc builds XConfig over <storage_root>/xconfig.settings, SetDefaults() only supplies a value when the file has none, and the file is writable. Checking where a setting is stored rather than where it is configured turned "blocked, needs a human decision" into a two-line edit. Withdrawn from MISSION.md; METHOD and REFUTED lines added. The field is located from struct landmarks rather than a hard-coded offset, and the check re-runs on every invocation so it fails loudly if the layout moves: music_volume 0.7f at User+449 -> BE float at 2727 -> User base 0x8e6 language at User+44 -> reads 1 (kEnglish) at 0x912 country at User+64 -> reads 103 (US) at 0x926 XLanguage::kJapanese = 2 (xbox.h:307). set_console_language.py wraps it with a backup and a --restore. The capture itself is still NOT taken, for a smaller reason than I claimed. A run with the locale set to Japanese booted fine but never reached the title in 787 s: wait_title.sh's green-(A) oracle never fired and burst-sampling found no frame correlating above 0.18 with either build-7 render -- the run sat in the attract loop. So it needs a longer or pad-driven run, not a rebuilt emulator. Emulator stopped, lock cleared, locale restored to English. Nothing is decided about the keyframe-time association or the rest() rule; this only changes what standing between us and deciding them. |