# Handoff — what the menu port needs, and where it stands

The single page the **port agent** reads. Everything here is produced by the
container agent's reverse engineering; nothing here is a design decision about
the port itself.

Keep it current. It is a summary with links into `docs/re/`, not a second copy of
the findings — but an answer that is not reachable from this page has not been
delivered.

## How to read an answer

Every row below is one of exactly three things, and the distinction is the point:

| | meaning | what the port should do |
|---|---|---|
| **decoded** | a field on the disc, with a disc-wide check | read it from the data |
| **measured** | not on the disc in any form we found, but the running game does *this* | hardcode it, and cite this page |
| **undecodable** | we looked in these places, it is not there, here is the reach of the negative | author it by hand, knowingly |

There is no fourth kind. If a row says *measured* or *undecodable*, the port is
**authoring** that value, not transcribing it — and it should be kept somewhere a
human can see it is a human decision, so that when it is later decoded the
authored version can be deleted.

## 🔴 2026-08-29 — A KEYFRAME'S TIME COMES BEFORE ITS POSE. Change `pose_at`.

**This is the one you said had a wide blast radius, and it is bigger than a
shift.** Read
[`ui-keyframe-record-layout.md`](../re/ui-keyframe-record-layout.md) before
touching `screen_view.gd`.

A placement group is an 8-byte header `{u32 element_index, u32 frame_count}`
followed by `frame_count` records of **40 bytes**, each `{u32 time; 36-byte
pose}`. The time word **precedes** the pose it belongs to. Our parser's window
opened at the pose — four bytes into the record — and then read the word at its
`+36` as that pose's time, which is the *next* pose's.

So neither of the two readings the corpus was arguing between was right:

* the old default (`+36` is this pose's time) is off by one;
* `SYLPHEED_KF_TIME_SHIFT=1` had the association right but left **pose 0
  untimed**, because it never asked what the group's "lead-in word" was. It is
  pose 0's time.

`SYLPHEED_KF_TIME_SHIFT` is gone. `SYLPHEED_KF_TIME_LEGACY=1` restores the old
reading if you want to A/B.

**Disc-wide, 33 archives, 13 991 groups, each test with a control:**

| | corrected | control / old |
|---|---|---|
| lead-in prepended to the shifted times is non-decreasing | **13 991 / 13 991** | — |
| a non-zero lead-in is strictly below the next time (5 058 of them) | **5 058 / 5 058** | another group's lead-in: 70.9 % |
| multi-segment alpha ramp runs at a constant `dα/dt` | **857 / 1 540** | old reading: **0 / 1 042** |

The last row is the one that cannot be argued with. Interpolation between
keyframes is linear; under the old reading **not one** multi-keyframe ramp on the
whole disc comes out at a constant rate.

### What it changes for you, by the list you sent me

* **`pose_at` (line ~184).** The comment *"a keyframe is the start of a ramp
  toward the next"* is still true as a statement about ramps. What changes is
  **which time each pose is at**: pose `k`'s time is the word before it. Every
  screen's build-in timing moves.
* **The final pose now has a time.** Anything you authored to cover "the last
  keyframe carries no time" — an exit ramp with no end, `exit_ramp_units = 24` —
  can come out and be read instead. `exit_ramp_units` is now a decodable number,
  not an authored one.
* **`settle_units` / `settle_time`.** `rest.t` still is not when a screen settles
  (`5b0a6e6` stands), but its *value* moves. Re-derive it.
* **`spin_period_units`.** The focus ring's first keyframe's declared `t=120` is
  now the time that pose is **reached**, not left. Check which end of the ring's
  group you were reading.
* **The `PRESS Ⓐ` plate.** `a=255` is at **`t=238`** — the corrected reading
  agrees with the old default here, not with the old shift's 236. Your `5b0a6e6`
  note is unaffected.
* **`ramp: "linear"` in `authored/timing.json` — KEEP IT.** Interpolation between
  two keyframes is linear, and this work reinforces that rather than touching it.
  ⚠️ But 44 % of multi-segment ramps still are not constant-rate under the
  corrected reading, and that is not a defect: authors shape a curve by placing
  extra keyframes unevenly. Your `_lerp_pose` is right; do not add an easing
  function.

### And it costs nothing on the static composites

This is the change the corpus previously declined to make. `SYLPHEED_KF_TIME_SHIFT=1`
moved `GP_TITLE` build 7 by 13.1 % of its pixels; with pose 0's time restored:

* all **12** `GP_TITLE` builds render **byte-identical** PNGs under both readings;
* over **217** builds in six archives, exactly **two** elements pick a different
  `rest()` pose — and both times the two candidates are equally invisible (α = 0),
  so no render changes.

So `screen render` is still the reference you diff against, unchanged. **If your
static screens move, that is your bug, not this change.**

## ✅ 2026-08-29 — `GP_TITLE` **entries 0, 1, 12, 15** are the LOADING SCREEN (your ask #2)

🔴 **Address these by PAK ENTRY, not by `is_build` ordinal.** The port raised
this and it is a real foot-gun: over the twelve bundles `is_build` accepts
(entries 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,12,15) the *ordinals* 10 and 11 are **entries 12 and
15**, while **entries** 10 and 11 are `palogo_sqex` and
`palogo_gamearts`/`seta`/`anima` — the two splashes. A key written `"10"`/`"11"`
from an ordinal therefore names the publisher wordmark and the developer logos as
loading screens, and everything still validates. The loading bundles are
**entries 0, 1, 12, 15** (= build ordinals 0, 1, 10, 11).

**Decoded** — the authors' own element names, straight out of the declaration
table. Every element of all four bundles is prefixed `pgloading_`: the 7-element
pair (entries 0/1) is the plain plate, the 10-element pair (entries 12/15) adds
`pgloading_eff00.prm`, `pgloading_loop5.rat` and `pgloading_baseeff.t32` over a
circuit-line background. `DELTASABER / SYLPHEED A.I.` is the caption art on
`pgloading_str.t32`, not the screen's identity.

⚠️ **Do not name them `LOADING` / `LOADING2` in an asset path.** The executable
does name five title-side screens — `TITLE_SCREEN`, `BUTTON`, `TITLE_MENU`,
`LOADING`, `LOADING2`, verified in the image at `sub_821C4EB0` — so there really
are two, but nothing observed says which bundle is which. 🟡 undecided.

🟡 **Which member of each pair is English: the first half of the data segment.**
All eight pairs put exactly one member in each half of `GP_TITLE.p00`, and all
three pairs whose language is visible (entries 4/7, 5/8, 6/9) put English in the
first. So **entries 0, 2, 4, 5, 6, 10, 11, 12 are English**; entries 1, 3, 7, 8,
9, 13, 14, 15 Japanese. 🟡 not
✅ — the three pairs this is *used* for are exactly the three no capture can
check, and nothing in the bundle bytes differs between those twins at all.
[`ui-title-build-map.md`](../re/ui-title-build-map.md)

## ✅ 2026-08-29 — the disc is back in the decoder container; the red banner that stood here is withdrawn

**This supersedes the "the decoder container has no disc" banner** written at
commit `b9aca6a` (10:42 UTC). That diagnosis was true for the container it was
written in, and a human has since fixed it: this container's PID 1 started at
**11:07:38 UTC**, 25 minutes later, and it has the disc mounted.

Verified, not assumed:

| | |
|---|---|
| `/disc` | a real read-only bind mount on device 2050 (`/` is device 92), **6.2 GB**, 74 entries under `dat/`, `default.xex` present |
| `/iso/game.iso` | present, 7 835 492 352 B |
| end-to-end | `sylpheed-cli screen list $SYLPHEED_DISC/dat/GP_TITLE.pak` returns **12 screen builds**, matching [`ui-title-build-map.md`](../re/ui-title-build-map.md) |

⚠️ **`sylph-doctor` still reports "no ISO" and "no extracted disc", and it is
wrong.** It looks only under `/work` (`find /work -maxdepth 2 -iname '*.iso'`
and `-d /work/sylph_extract/dat`); it never consults `$SYLPHEED_DISC`. Do not
take its two ✖/! lines as evidence about the disc — the disc is at `/disc`
and works. Same trap for `find / -xdev`, which by definition cannot cross into
a bind mount on another device, and which is what the withdrawn banner ran.

**What that means for you:** the decoder can boot the oracle, run
`sylpheed-cli` against a pak, run the disc-gated tests and read the executable
again. New measurements are available; ask for them.

## ✅ 2026-08-29 — the "third sub-wave" on a music bank was OUR reader, and it is fixed

**You were right to refuse to choose which one to drop.** `BGM_103.slb` really
does return three from `sound_bank_riffs` — and the third is the **bank header**,
not a stem. Our own `to_xma_riffs` was emitting it.

The cause is arithmetic, not a judgement call: the hybrid branch derives a
leading packet stream's start as `first_riff % 2048`, which is correct only when
the bank header is smaller than one XMA1 packet. A music bank's header is exactly
**five** packets (10 240 B), so the modulus returned 0 and the whole header came
back as sub-wave 0. Voice banks are unaffected — their headers really are shorter
than a packet, which is why the branch looked right for two months.

Checked before believing it, three ways:

* **disc-wide** — of `sound.pak`'s 9 519 entries, **28** carry a header at offset
  0 (ids 1001–1023, 1101–1105 — every music bank), and on **28/28** the header's
  own declared length ends *exactly* at the first `RIFF`. **Zero** have a gap, so
  a header and a leading packet stream never coexist on this disc, and **zero**
  false positives among the other 9 491;
* **decode control, same chain, same bank** — the emitted region gives **0.009 s**
  of PCM; the same bank's real wave 0 gives **87.744 s** against a declared
  87.75. It is also 99.1 % zero bytes;
* **the oracle already said two** — the XMA probe at the main menu saw exactly
  two streams, of 3 876 864 and 3 930 112 B, which are `BGM_103`'s two declared
  wave sizes.

**What you should do:** bump your `sylpheed-formats` pin to the tag below and
delete the manifest warning's special case — `sound_bank_riffs` now returns
**2** for every music bank, and your "count != 2" warning becomes a real
invariant rather than a symptom. ⚠️ Do **not** apply a "drop the smallest
sub-wave" rule; on a voice bank the leading region is genuine audio and dropping
it is the `VOICE_D_453` bug all over again.

[`structures/slb-bank-header-not-a-wave.md`](../re/structures/slb-bank-header-not-a-wave.md)

## ✅ 2026-08-29 — the interactive title is reachable again, and the "emulator-blocked" banner in MISSION is withdrawn

Two consecutive boots reached the interactive title **with no pad input at all**,
passed through the attract loop in ~3.5 minutes, took Ⓐ to the main menu and Ⓑ
back. The standing negative ("three runs, two locales, two launch paths, ~35
minutes of emulator time, no interactive title") does not hold in this container.

❔ **Why it changed is not established.** The container came up with **no Xenia
storage root at all** — no profile, no `xconfig.settings`, no shader cache — so
run 1 created one with canary's `--create_profile_if_none`. That is a correlation
across two runs, not a cause, and it is written down so the next session can test
it rather than re-derive the reachability.
[`capture-harness-status.md`](../re/capture-harness-status.md)

**What it means for you:** the oracle is live. Anything you need timed or
observed on the five screens can now be asked for and taken, including the two
items MISSION parks as emulator-blocked.

## ✅ 2026-08-29 — three answers from one oracle session (the port's asks 1, 2 and 3)

* **1 — the focus ring SPINS CONTINUOUSLY. Period 2.18 s wall-clock; author it
  as 120 units = 60 frames = 2.00 s at 30 Hz.** It does not ramp once and stop.
  Measured with no angle estimated anywhere — the angular estimator written for
  this **failed its own control** (a synthetic 30° came back as 0°) and was not
  used. What settles it instead: total annulus brightness is conserved to
  **0.4 %** while individual angular bins swing by **24** — brightness moving
  *around* the ring, which excludes a pulse — and the profile's autocorrelation
  has **eight evenly spaced peaks, mean 2.177 s**, over nine revolutions.
  ⚠️ Do not read the committed 20 s mean image as a frame: the spin averages to
  a uniform circle, which is why it looks headless. Five single frames 4 s apart
  show the head at five different angles.
  [`focus-ring-spin-measured.md`](../re/focus-ring-spin-measured.md) ·
  [frames](../re/captures/focus-ring/ring-single-frames-4s-apart.png)

* ✅ **And the ring is the ONLY thing that moves on the settled main menu.**
  Temporal std over 20 s untouched is **exactly 0.000** on every unfocused
  button, on the labels and on the `ptmsg` footer. Static menu + spinning ring
  draws everything that moves.

* **3 — the idle timer that made your Ⓑ rule unprovable is REFUTED on the main
  menu.** Held untouched, the menu stayed put for **≥ 60 s** (49 samples, menu
  correlation never leaving 0.9245–0.9249), against the "~8–10 s idle returns to
  the title" this page carried. ✅ That timer is real but belongs to the
  **title**, not the menu — the corpus had it attached to the wrong screen.
  🟡 Ⓑ itself: delivered (Canary logs `vk=5801`), and in both runs the only input
  in ≥ 100 s, followed by the title. **Ordering measured, timing not** — keep
  Ⓑ→title, now better supported than authored.
  [`menu-idle-and-b-2026-08-29.md`](../re/menu-idle-and-b-2026-08-29.md)

* **Your new #1 — the boot title shows build 4 FIRST, and the plate arrives
  after.** It is your third option, not the first two. Green-Ⓐ glyph count on the
  boot title went **154 → 781**, and 154 is the same reading the committed
  `live-title-build4-no-plate.png` gives (159) while plate titles give
  753/977/1493.
  ✅ **So `ScreenView` does have to draw two builds at once, and your `--boot`
  end state is NOT plate-free** — that is the structural answer you said this
  question decides, and it is unchanged.
  🔴 **But my INSTRUCTION was wrong and you refuted it — do not author a delay at
  all.** I said "when build 4 has settled, wait 2.13 s, composite build 2". Build
  2 has a group of its own, and starting that group at settle puts the plate at
  settle + 2.13 + 3.97 s. **Correct instruction: run build 4 and build 2 on ONE
  clock, started together, and play both groups from their own keyframes.** The
  plate then arrives at its declared `t=238` with nothing authored.
  🔴 **The premise that broke it is yours and it will bite again: `rest.t` is NOT
  when a screen settles.** It is the last *hold* keyframe before the exit.
  `ptlogo1` has `rest.t = 251` and stops moving at **`t=42`**. The title's visible
  build-in is over at **`t≈118`**, where `pteff01`, `pteff02.prm` and
  `ptlogoall_eff` all end their ramps together — and `238 − 118 = 120 units =
  **2.000 s**`, which is the 2.13 s I measured. The number was on the disc.
  ⚠️ **If you author a gap anyway, author 120 units, not my 2.13 s.** 120 units in
  2.135 s is the game presenting at **28.06 / 28.14 fps** against a nominal 30 —
  and the corpus had already measured the idle title at **28.5 fps**,
  independently and before these runs. My wall-clock was this emulator's frame
  rate baked into a game constant; a port at a true 30 Hz would be visibly late.
  ✅ That it is presentation rate and not the game is checkable in the same two
  runs: *first pixels → settle* is 1.643 s and 2.131 s (a 30 % spread) while
  *settle → plate* is 2.138 s and 2.132 s. Frames are dropped during the
  build-in, not during the hold.
  Pulse the plate at ≈ **2.24 s** (four intervals: 2.12 / 2.19 / 2.34 / 2.31),
  which replicates the corpus's ≈2.3 s rather than replacing it.
  [`title-plate-delay-measured.md`](../re/title-plate-delay-measured.md) ·
  [figure](../re/captures/ui-timing/plate-onset-two-runs.png) ·
  [run 1](../re/data/plate-timing-run1.tsv) · [run 2](../re/data/plate-timing-run2.tsv)

* 🟡 **Your black hold survives a real clock — keep 0.17–0.23 s.** Measured on
  the Ⓐ path in both runs, the frame is pure black (surface mean 0.070) for
  **0.14–0.30 s** and **0.14–0.27 s**. At an 0.125 s sample interval that is as
  tight as this instrument goes, and it brackets both your authored value and
  the file's declared 12 units (0.20 s). It is the one authored constant you
  ship that a measurement now agrees with.

* 🔴 **The Ⓐ→menu latency is STILL not a number you may have, and now I know
  why.** Both runs contain a **frozen frame** on the Ⓐ path — 14 frames (1.53 s)
  and 12 frames (1.39 s) held at surface mean **26.626**, agreeing between two
  independent runs to six decimals. Run 2 had stream restarts disabled for the
  whole window, so it is **not** the capture path: the guest starts the fade,
  re-presents one frame for ~1.4 s, then shows the full title again and fades
  properly. That is a **load stall**, and the Ⓑ path — nothing to load — has none.
  So any Ⓐ→menu figure from this harness is an emulator load time. Your
  zero-dwell sequencer is the right call; do not add one.

* 🔴 **Four durations I took the same day are WITHDRAWN, including the plate
  delay.** `screen_match.classify_array` costs **1503 ms/frame**; a probe running
  it per frame drained an 8 fps stream at **0.64 fps**, so its frames were stale
  and increasingly so. It manufactured "plate 24.66 s after the title art",
  "Ⓑ→title in 15.58 s", "Ⓑ→title in 25.60 s" and "Ⓐ→menu in 20.26 s". The tell:
  a transition, a press and a fade do not share a duration — a backlog does.
  A backlog **preserves ordering and destroys durations**, which is exactly why
  the sequence results above stand and the timings do not. Fixed (`fast=True`,
  38–75 ms, re-controlled 8/8 on both paths, agreeing to ±0.005); the ring's
  numbers are unaffected and that was checked, not assumed.
  ✅ **One of the four is now re-taken properly** — the plate delay, above. The
  probe that took it costs **8.7 ms/frame** (173× cheaper) and both runs sampled
  at **7.97 / 7.98 fps against a requested 8**, so there was no backlog to
  destroy them.

## ✅ 2026-08-29 — the paint-order tie-break costs your screens ZERO pixels (Q3 closed for you)

You challenged the advertised blast radius of the unknown tie-break and were
right; the census that came back said **24 overlapping tied pairs** and admitted
nobody had measured how many of them *change a pixel*. Measured now.

**Overlap was an upper bound and it was loose.** Each bundle was rendered twice,
once in the derived order and once with one tied pair swapped, and diffed —
elements sharing a layer key are contiguous in the derived order, so a swap
paints nothing else in between. Every entry ran a **control** first: a swap of an
overlapping pair with *different* keys, which must move pixels (it moved 36 305
to 771 479 px, max Δ 254). Where no control was available the page says so.

* ✅ **On `EXTRAS` (entries 6/9) and the main menu (5/8): 0 px.** The tied
  `ptframe` pairs each ink ~3 600 px and **share 0**. The bounding-box overlap
  was an artefact of approximating an element's rect as pivot × 2. Layers that
  never touch the same pixel cannot be mis-ordered under *any* blend, so this
  does not depend on our compositor being right.
* ✅ **The splashes have no ties; the title and developer splash use a measured
  order.** So across all five screens the tie-break's cost is **zero**, not "one
  drawable pair, consistent with a capture".
* 🔴 **A claim of ours is withdrawn.** This page's source said a wrong tie-break
  "can be wrong by a whole layer", from the geometry that `ptlogo_back2eff5`
  *fully contains* two other glows. Rendered, that swap moves 6 390 px by a
  maximum of **Δ2 out of 255**. The glows are near-transparent; containment is
  not occlusion. Nobody had rendered it before asserting it.
* 🟡 **Outside your set**, the worst tie-break cost anywhere in `GP_TITLE` is
  **Δ3/255** (the Japanese title, entry 7). ⚠️ Those Δ figures *do* assume our
  alpha blend — what they rule out is a structural error, a layer appearing or
  vanishing, not a shading one.

[`ui-paint-order-derived-check.md`](../re/structures/ui-paint-order-derived-check.md#-what-the-tie-break-actually-costs-in-pixels-2026-08-29) ·
[data](../re/data/paint-order-tie-pixel-cost.txt) ·
tool `cargo run -p sylpheed-formats --example tie_break_pixel_cost -- dat/GP_TITLE.pak`

## 🟡 2026-08-29 — your voice-region third chunk is NOT the BGM bank-header case

You asked me to look rather than take your word, so I did, disc-wide rather than
on the asset that raised it. **The two 2+1 signatures are different structures**,
and the discriminator is mechanical — [`voice-region-leading-chunk.md`](../re/structures/voice-region-leading-chunk.md),
census at [`data/voice-region-chunk-census.txt`](../re/data/voice-region-chunk-census.txt).

Over all **95** English movie-voice regions the manifest binds:

* **78** open with a **bank header** — `bank_header_len` fires, 10 240 B = 5
  packets exactly, every time. That is the BGM case and it is already consumed.
* **17** open with a **leading headerless stream** — `bank_header_len` is `None`,
  and **all 17** have a length ≡ **1392 (mod 2048)**, the disc's own derived data
  offset. That is a whole number of XMA1 packets after a 1392-byte preamble.
* **0** begin at a `RIFF`.

⚠️ **Counting chunks cannot tell you which case you are in.** Eight bank-header
regions *also* yield three chunks. Test `bank_header_len`, not `riffs.len()`.

🔴 **And "it is the previous cue's audio" fails a test.** Take each leading span
and ask whether any other resolved region covers it: **0 of 17**, 0.0 % on every
one. The test can find overlaps — the regions themselves have 16 overlapping
pairs and 60 exactly-adjacent boundaries, and 73 of 78 bank-header regions start
exactly where another region ends — it just finds none here.

✅ **RESOLVED, same day, by your own suggestion — and my leading hypothesis was
wrong.** You said: widen the enumeration past the 95 manifest-bound movies and
the byte-span test settles it with nobody listening. It does. Scanning the stream
for **every** trailer descriptor (287 found in a 116.2 MB window; all 287 carry
an id the 4 280-name registry names) gives the complete cue partition, mission
lines included.

🔴 **The leading chunk is the MOVIE'S OWN dialogue — 17 of 17.** Every leading
span is bracketed by `desc(N-1) .. desc(N)` where `desc(N)` is that movie's own
cue id (`ADV` → 1600 `VOICE_ADV`, `S00A` → 1501 `VOICE_S00A`, …). **Zero** are
in-mission `VOICE_D_*` lines. So "drop it, it is somebody else's audio" is dead.

✅ **And the mechanism is a guard in our own resolver.**
`resolve_movie_voice_region` takes the predecessor trailer as the region start,
guards it with `end - start < 1_500_000`, and falls back to the `.slb` anchor
when that fails. Cues with a true span ≥ 1.5 MB: **17, of which 17 are
stream-opening.** Cues under it: **78, of which 0 are.** Perfect discrimination
both ways. A long cue's region starts mid-cue, at the anchor, and the bytes from
there to the next `RIFF` become the leading chunk.

⚠️ **But do NOT turn that into "the export truncates N seconds".** Your own
decode has `ADV`'s region at 359 s against a 137 s movie — it over-covers, so the
byte↔time mapping is not linear and I will not convert 504 464 B into missing
dialogue. I have no XMA1 decoder here to check.

✅ **CLOSED, later the same day — and here is the confirmation you asked for
before acting.**

**Yes: drop the leading chunk. It is a DUPLICATE, not a truncation.** Your
exporter's current behaviour is right, and now for a stated reason rather than a
hedge — make the manifest note cite
[`voice-region-leading-chunk.md`](../re/structures/voice-region-leading-chunk.md).

Your correlation result and a structural check of mine agree by independent
routes. Mine used byte rates and no decoder: the full leading stream for `ADV` is
504 464 + 808 304 = **1 312 768 B**, and at chunk 0's byte rate (9 559.7 B/s) that
is **137.323 s** against chunk 1's measured **137.324 s** — 1 ms over 137 s.

✅ **And the byte structure settles the shape disc-wide.** Counting stream starts
inside every cue's true span: **258 spans hold 1 stream, 28 hold 3, and nothing
holds 2 or any other number.** All 20 spans ≥ 1.5 MB are 3-stream. So:

| your 95 regions | cue shape | chunks you get |
|---|---|---|
| 70 | 1-stream | 1 |
| 8 | 3-stream, short | 3 (bank header) |
| 17 | 3-stream, long — our guard clips it | 3 (headerless leading) |

`359 s = 84.55 + 137.32 + 137.32`. **The 2.6× is three presentations of one
take**, one clipped by our own guard. That was the last open one and it is shut.

🔴 **One change you have NOT made yet and should: stop summing chunk 1 and chunk
2.** They are the same take, not two stems — `ADV` chunk 2 is 0.60 × chunk 1
(residual 26.8 dB down), `S00A` chunk 2 is digital silence. Summing a take with a
scaled copy of itself adds ~4 dB and colours it. **Take one stream.**

🔴 **Which stream — my instruction was self-contradictory and you were right to
flag it.** I wrote "the highest-rate, highest-gain one (chunk 1)". Those two
criteria select *different* streams: on `ADV` chunk 1 is 0.0 dBFS at 1 118 268 B
and chunk 2 is −8.3 dBFS at 1 171 516 B. You implemented "highest rate"
faithfully and got the quieter one — the opposite of what the parenthetical
meant. Withdrawn; keep it as an authored 🟡 exactly as you have it.

✅ **What I can decode is the rate, and only the rate.** The `fmt ` chunk is a
32-byte `XMAWAVEFORMAT`; `+0x20` is a declared `PsuedoBytesPerSec` — 8 142 and
8 530 for `ADV`'s two, matching the computed rates to 0.02 %, and 48 000 Hz at
`+0x24`. ❔ **But `wEncodeOptions` (`0x10d6`), channel count and channel mask are
byte-identical across the presentations.** Nothing in the header ranks them. Your
"more bytes is consistent with a better encode and also with the opposite" is
exactly right and the file will not adjudicate it.

🔴 **Your dual-mono explanation does NOT generalise — but your decision survives
it.** Checked disc-wide over all 28 three-stream cues
([`data/voice-three-stream-sizes.txt`](../re/data/voice-three-stream-sizes.txt)):
if stream 3 were systematically the same take with its channel duplicated, its
size ratio to stream 2 would be tight. It runs **min 0.0778, median 1.2565, max
2.9163, sd 0.5057**, with only **12 of 28** within 15 % of 1.0 — a 37× spread.
Declared rates scatter with them (`S06A` 5 661 vs 16 513 B/s). ✅ Your `ADV`
channel measurement stands and **your choice of "loudest" is untouched**, because
it is a per-asset content measurement rather than a structural rule. What must
not harden is the *explanation*: "more bytes means a duplicated channel" is true
of `ADV` and is not a fact about the format.
⚠️ Two curiosities: `S12B`'s three streams are **byte-size identical** (14 396
each), and `BIRD_224` is 3-stream while being a **non-movie** cue.

⚠️ Also: **do not trust `sylpheed-cli audio info` on these.** Its "16 channels /
4310 Hz / 2-bit" is `wBitsPerSample`, `wEncodeOptions` and the channel fields
read at wrong offsets. Its reader is misaligned for XMA1.

❔ *Why* the disc stores three presentations is not answered.

⚠️ On your offer to convert the 504 464 B constant: **don't spend the decode.** It
is structural, not proportional — identical on all 17 despite differing
durations. `ADV`'s proportional prediction lands within 8 bytes of it, which is a
coincidence (`S00A`'s is 4 305 B out) and I nearly built on it.

🔴 **And the reason I gave for not concatenating was WRONG — withdrawn the same
day.** I wrote that chunks 1 and 2 are "the two-stem pattern, not consecutive
segments". That claim was yours, I adopted it on equal duration alone, and you
then refuted it by decoding: `S00A` chunk 2 is **digital silence** (peak −∞) and
`ADV` chunk 2 is **0.60 × chunk 1**, residual 26.8 dB down. Equal duration was a
shape match, and Q10's *music* census should not have been carried across to
voice on it. ✅ Do not concatenate — that part survives, measured (359 s against a
137 s movie) — but not for the stated reason, and ❔ what `ADV` chunk 2 actually
is stays open and is mine.

⚠️ Worth naming the failure mode: this was asserted in one place, adopted in a
second, and the second citing the first would have made it look corroborated by
two documents. It was caught only because you measured your own claim.

## ✅ 2026-08-29 — `settle_time()` MEASURED. Stop pacing off `rest.t`.

Your top ask, from one cold boot — container had no Xenia storage root at all, so
this is a fresh profile with **no shader cache**, the slowest case.
[`boot-settle-times-measured.md`](../re/boot-settle-times-measured.md) ·
[frame log](../re/data/boot-settle-run1.tsv) · `tools/re-capture/settle_analyse.py`

**Classification: measured.** None of it is on the disc as a settle time; you are
authoring these from this page.

| | measured | |
|---|---|---|
| title build-in (first ink → art fully drawn) | **0.23 s** | 1.63 s if you start from where the crossfade begins |
| **title settled → `PRESS Ⓐ` plate on** | **2.247 s** | matches the disc's declared **120 units** |
| plate pulse period | **≈2.37 s** | |
| **main menu build-in** | **0.531 s** | |
| **Ⓑ → title** | **0.482 s** | |
| Ⓐ → menu | 3.763 s | 🔴 **do not author** — contains a 1.53 s emulator load stall |

🔴 **`rest.t` is confirmed to be the wrong landmark, with the number you need.**
The title's `rest.t` is 251 units = **4.183 s**; its art is finished at ~2 s and
the plate is on at **2.247 s**. Your sequencer holds the title about twice as
long as the game does. That is the defect you described, measured.

**Instrument controlled first**: 9/9 on the content classifier including the
movie-frame and difficulty-screen negatives, 4/4 on the plate detector; the run
sampled 7.99 fps against a requested 8 with an independent grab cross-checking
every 20 s, so this is not the backlog mode that voided four durations before.

🟢 **A refutation attempt of mine that FAILED, and you should know it failed.**
The probe's own marks gave a plate delay of **3.203 s** against the corpus's
2.13 s — a 50 % disagreement I expected to be a real cold-cache effect. It was my
instrument. The plate **pulse period** is an internal clock for presentation
rate, and it measures 2.369 s here against the corpus's ≈2.3 s, so the run is not
slowed; re-measured from content, the delay is **2.247 s**. ⚠️ The cause is worth
your knowing: the probe's `title_static` mark fires during the **crossfade out of
the attract movie, before the wordmark has drawn** — glyph was still 0 when it
fired. Do not use `title_static` for a duration.

🟢 **And your load stall reproduces a third time, on a cold cache** — 13 frames,
1.53 s, surface mean 26.631, against the earlier 14/1.53 s and 12/1.39 s at
26.626. So it is not a warm-cache artefact, and "do not author an Ⓐ→menu dwell"
stands. ⚠️ Honest qualification: the earlier pair agreed to six decimals; mine
agrees to three.

⚠️ **Reach: one run — and 🔴 one of my two arguments for trusting it is
withdrawn.** I said the plate *pulse period* proved the run was not slowed. That
estimate rests on **one interval** at a 125 ms sample interval (±6.7 %), and
re-running the trough-picking gives 2.628 s rather than the 2.369 I quoted —
**+17.3 % against the corpus's 2.24 s**, not agreement. It cannot resolve a
real-time factor below ~7 % at all and should not have carried the argument.
✅ The conclusion survives on the other leg: the content-measured **2.247 s**
agrees with three independent prior readings (2.13 / 2.132 / 2.138), and both its
landmarks are sharp content transitions. A 17 % slowdown would have put it at
2.49 s.

⚠️ **What that means for you concretely:** this run carries an **unmeasured
real-time factor of up to ~7 %**. The plate delay is anchored by agreement with
prior runs. **The menu build-in (0.531 s) and Ⓑ→title (0.482 s) are anchored by
nothing** — a few per cent of emulator slowdown sits inside them undetected.
That is now the *second* reason they are provisional. **The plate delay and the
load stall are cross-checked against independent prior evidence.** 🟢 Re-take offered and **declined** — you author neither, you are
within ~0.1 s of both from the disc's own keyframes, and a one-run measurement
over a decoded value gains nothing. Left provisional deliberately.

⚠️ **And the generalisation is narrower than your red flag was.** You measured
your own boot the way I measured the game and found the sequencer *not* late —
publisher 4.25 s against 4.297 / 4.604 / 4.370, developer 3.50 s against 3.508 /
3.503 / 3.366. What this page supports is **`rest.t` is the wrong landmark for
the title**, where it overstates 4.183 s against ~2 s. It does **not** support
"everything paced off it is late", and the 0.6 s you were about to chase was
arrival-to-arrival timestamps compared against visible spans — the plate-delay
trap in a second place. Recorded on my side too.

## 🔴 2026-08-29 — THE GAME DECODES ALL THREE VOICE STREAMS AT ONCE. "Take one" is withdrawn.

**This overturns an instruction of mine that you implemented.** Full page:
[`voice-three-streams-are-concurrent.md`](../re/structures/voice-three-streams-are-concurrent.md) ·
[probe log](../re/data/voice-three-streams-runtime.txt)

Booted with `--xma_param_probe=true` — the cvar whose own comment says it exists
to reveal *which* sub-wave of a movie's `.slb` the game decodes. It does not
decode one. It opens **three XMA contexts and decodes all three concurrently**:

| ctx | packets | `byte_size` | ch | rate | disc stream |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 632 | 1 294 336 | 2 | 48 000 | `ADV` stream 1 |
| 1 | 546 | 1 118 208 | 2 | 48 000 | `ADV` stream 2 |
| 2 | 572 | 1 171 456 | 2 | 48 000 | `ADV` stream 3 |

Byte-exact against the disc (RIFF size − 60). Only those three contexts appear.

🔴 **Withdrawn: "three presentations of one take"**, and **"take one stream, do
not sum"**. A consumer picking one discards two thirds of what the game mixes.
⚠️ **That does not make summing right either** — an equal-gain `1/n` sum of
channel pairs is not a downmix and your 6.02 dB complaint was real. **Neither
rule is established. You are authoring, and the manifest should say so.**

🟡 **Three concurrent stereo streams is six channels**, and N stereo streams is
how XMA carries multichannel on the 360. It would also explain the census
dichotomy already on record — spans hold **1 stream or 3, never 2** (258 and 28),
with the missing 2 being the missing 4-channel config. ⚠️ **Not established**:
all three `fmt ` chunks declare `ChannelMask = 0x0002` identically, which is not
what distinct channel roles look like. Hypothesis, with its counter-evidence.

✅ **Everything byte-level survives** — the leading chunk being stream 1 clipped
by our 1.5 MB guard, the 70 + 8 + 17 decomposition, the bank-header
discriminator. Those are about bytes and did not depend on the framing. Your
`S00A` silent-stream and `ADV` 0.60× measurements survive too, and now read as
measurements *of channels*.

⚠️ **Reach: one cue, one boot.** That 28 cues are 3-stream is decoded from the
bytes; that all three decode concurrently is measured on `ADV` alone.

## ✅ 2026-08-29 — the fifth and sixth streams were `BGM_102`, and you can now get BGM durations off the header

[`bgm-102-decoded-during-boot.md`](../re/bgm-102-decoded-during-boot.md)

The take-2 boot decoded **five** XMA streams and I could only account for three.
The other two — 1 150 976 and 1 269 760 B — are **`BGM_102.slb`'s two stems**,
found by searching every `sound.pak` entry for those payload sizes (one entry
carries *both*, which is the two-stem shape, not two coincidences) and recovering
the hash `9799c546` by candidate enumeration. So the boot was `ADV`'s three voice
streams plus one music bank, and nothing is unexplained.

🟡 **Do not read that as "`BGM_102` is the attract music."** The window ran launch
→ t=253 s with the title at t=262 s, and the probe fires on *first decode* with no
timestamp on its line — a **title** BGM loaded moments before the title appears
fits the evidence equally. Cue 1103 is already your main menu, so 1102 as the
title is a live hypothesis, not a result. If you ever want it settled, say so and
I will timestamp the probe.

✅ **Useful to you now: `sylpheed-cli audio info` gives BGM durations with no
decoder**, via the corrected XMA1 `PsuedoBytesPerSec`. Both stems of a bank agree:

| bank | stem 0 | stem 1 |
|---|---|---|
| `BGM_102` | 37.487 s | 37.487 s |
| `BGM_103` (your menu track) | **87.750 s** | 87.749 s |
| `BGM_001` | 173.821 s | 173.821 s |

🔴 **My explanation of the `BGM_001` gap was wrong and you corrected it.** I said
declared 173.821 s vs decoded 167.663 s meant "declared includes trailing
silence, decoded is where the audio stops". A full decode yields **173.809 s of
PCM** — so declared and decoded **agree to 12 ms**, and 167.663 s is the
*fade-out*, sitting inside the decode. Cross-checked on three banks now:
`BGM_103` 87.750 declared / 87.744 decoded, `BGM_102` 37.487 / 37.482,
`BGM_001` 173.821 / 173.809 — **5–12 ms**.

⚠️ **The conclusion is unchanged and is the useful part: trust it for lengths,
not for musical boundaries.** A declared length includes whatever silence the
encode carries, so it is not a loop point. For `BGM_001` the music stops at
167.663 s, 6.1 s before the stream ends — **measure a loop point from the audio.**

🟢 **Refutation attempt on this page's own `BGM_103` claim: it survived.** The two
declared waves read 3 876 864 / 3 930 112 B off the disc — exact.

## ✅ 2026-08-29 — THE VOICE DIALOGUE IS IN THE CENTRE CHANNEL

Yours, measured against a clean capture of the game's own output — recorded here
because it closes the last open question and my pages carried the hypothesis it
settles:
[`voice-three-streams-are-concurrent.md`](../re/structures/voice-three-streams-are-concurrent.md).

Streams 2 and 3 both hit **+0.305 / +0.307 margin on FC, `r = 0.989`**, above
your known-present control (+0.248), while stream 1 sits in the noise on every
channel. The bed mirrors it — FL/FR/RL/RR at 0.76–0.84, **FC 0.317**.

✅ **The 5.1 reading is now measured, and the header could never have given it:**
`ChannelMask` reads `0x0002` on all three streams. It is not merely unhelpful,
it is misleading — declining to call it 5.1 from the file was right.

⚠️ **Three limits, as you stated them and which I am not softening:**
1. Streams 2 and 3 are **indistinguishable** to this instrument (+.305 vs +.307),
   so **no rule for choosing between them is vindicated** — only that whichever
   is chosen is the dialogue.
2. 🔴 **The "1 of 3 streams" warning stands.** Its *character* changed, not its
   colour: from "one of three, contents unknown" to "the centre-channel
   dialogue, plus two streams whose relationship to it is measured and whose
   role is not."
3. Reach: **59.7 s of a 137 s movie, one run, one asset.**

❔ **The capture that would strengthen it most is `S00A`, and I have not taken
it.** Its second full-length stream is digital silence where `ADV`'s is a 0.60×
copy, so it is structurally different — if FC still carries dialogue there, the
finding stops resting on one asset. ⚠️ It needs a **driven, rendered** run
(`S00A` starts ~4.5 s after Ⓐ on the save slot), so no `--gpu=null`, and its
capture will carry the ~10 % additive padding. `tools/re-capture/newgame_path.sh`
drives to `SELECT DATA` and would need one more Ⓐ.

## ✅ 2026-08-29 — `BGM_103` confirmed from the RUNTIME, a third independent leg

"The menu's music is `BGM_103`" rested on two legs: `GamePart_Title`'s
`sub_821C5580` playing cue 1103 (static code), and the bank's two declared wave
sizes matching what an XMA probe saw (disc census). It now has a third, from a
direction neither could reach.

On a driven boot, **`BGM_103`'s two waves — 3 876 864 / 3 930 112 B — were
handed to the XMA decoder at the moment the main menu appeared.** Not inferred
from a cue table, not matched by size after the fact: observed being decoded, on
arrival at the screen. Recorded in
[`s00a-drive-blocked-by-focus.md`](../re/s00a-drive-blocked-by-focus.md), where
it turned up incidentally.

## ✅ 2026-08-29 — your `title` 1.82 % is the ROTATED QUADS, not a blend mode

You asked whether there is a blend field, and whether `_eff` layers draw
additively. **No on both, and the real cause is already decoded** —
[`structures/ui-keyframe-rotation.md`](../re/structures/ui-keyframe-rotation.md)
and [`ui-title-build-map.md`](../re/ui-title-build-map.md).

🔴 **Additive blending is REFUTED, specifically and by measurement.**
`T8aD +0x04` bit `0x02` as an additive-blend selector was tested: *"every measure
worsens"* against the capture. And **the export carries no blend field because no
blend field has been found** — the per-draw capture records primitive type, index
count, shader hashes, texture bindings and vertex attribute 0, but **no
`RB_BLENDCONTROL`**. Reading real blend state needs a Canary change, which is
blocked here (`build-canary` targets a source root that does not exist).

⚠️ **And one of your three eliminations is overturned — it was `ptloop` after
all.** You ruled them out as *"399×180 at (441,270), and their exported keyframes
hold position constant"*. That is the **unscaled, unrotated** geometry. Measured
off a GPU draw capture, the live title submits **two rotated quads**:

| quad | element | sprite × declared scale | size | rotation | centre |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | **`ptloop01.rat`** | `pteff03.t32` 399×180 @ 100 %, **600 %** | 400.1 × 1076.3 | **+30.26°** | (992.0, 359.1) |
| B | **`ptloop02.rat`** | `pteff03a.t32` 399×180 @ 100 %, **800 %** | 400.2 × 1444.5 | **−45.28°** | (467.2, 360.0) |

Two quads at centres x ≈ **467** and x ≈ **992**, one leaning left and one right,
each ~1080–1440 px tall. **That is your signature**: darker centre-left, brighter
right, nearly cancelling whole-frame. Our own renderer shows the same residual
from the same cause — tiles running **−38.6 then +33.8 across the band and
cancelling** — so this is a *shared decode gap*, not a defect in your compositor.

✅ **The rotation itself is DECODED**: keyframe block **`+12`, degrees,
clockwise-positive in screen space**, confirmed against a framebuffer capture
rather than against our renderer. `+4` and `+8` remain 🟡 unexplained.

🔵 **So your biggest oracle gap and the rotation question you raised for the
human are the same item.** `sylpheed-cli screen render` deliberately does not
rotate, which is why *both* renderers show it. That decision is still the
human's, and it is in MISSION under "Needs a human decision — rotation".

## ✅ 2026-08-29 — the leaf/parent alpha rule you asked for: THE LEAF WINS, do not multiply

You said you would not guess it, which was right. Measured against the GPU draw
capture, not against our renderer —
[`ui-leaf-vs-parent-alpha.md`](../re/structures/ui-leaf-vs-parent-alpha.md).

**Draw the leaf on its own timeline. Do NOT multiply the parent's alpha in.**

The capture's vertex colours on the `ptloop` draw are `C3FFFFFF` / `B6FFFFFF` —
alpha **195** and **182**. Fitting *only those two numbers* against the two leaf
ramps gives one consistent time, **t = 355**:

| | leaf at t=355 | observed |
|---|---|---|
| quad A alpha | **194.8** | **195** |
| quad B alpha | **182.2** | **182** |
| parent alpha | **0** | — |

🔴 **Multiplying is refuted**: the parent has expired by t=355 (0 at t=250, and a
group holds at its last keyframe), so `leaf × parent / 255` predicts **zero** and
the sweeps would be invisible. They are drawn.

✅ **The position check was predicted, not fitted** — no x entered the fit, and
the same t places the quad centres at **981** and **478** against **992.0** and
**467.2** measured off the capture. Four quantities, two differently-shaped
ramps, one time.

⚠️ **This is not a universal precedence rule, and your button case is the
opposite one.** Here the parent is a container with **no sprite**. For a button,
a base record's leaf *duplicates* the parent and the **parent wins**
(`ui-button-focus-record.md`) — which `screen.rs` already knew. **The
discriminator is which record actually carries the geometry.**

❔ Not established: whether parent alpha would multiply in during a window where
it is non-zero. Every observation here has parent = 0, so "leaf wins" and "parent
ignored because it draws nothing" are not separated. A capture during t=100…238
would separate them — say the word if that distinction ever costs you something.

🟡 **And your `title_jp` `ptlogo_eff2` lead is a good one**, but I have not
tested it: if its two-element leaf carries the geometry the same way, the 125 %
scale may be the parent's and the leaf's real scale something else. That is the
same shape as this finding and worth checking before authoring around it.

## 🔴 2026-08-29 — your leaf `x = −324` is the OLD keyframe association

Not a geometry question, and nothing to do with pivots or rotation. Your stated
pairing is *"t=150 at x=−639, t=540 at x=−39"*. On the disc:

| pose x | its time | the time it takes under the OLD association |
|---|---|---|
| −639 | **0** | 150 |
| −39 | **150** | 540 |
| 1521 | **540** | 600 |

**Your pairing is the right-hand column** — each pose taking the *next* pose's
time. That is the association this page's red banner is about: **a keyframe's
time comes BEFORE its pose**. Feeding it into the same interpolation reproduces
**−324** exactly.

✅ **Corrected**, t=355 gives top-left **781** and centre **980.5** for the
399-wide sprite, against **992.0** measured off the capture.

⚠️ **So the leaf path still carries the pre-fix association even though the
top-level one was corrected.** A leaf is `parse_build` on a sub-slice — anything
reading leaves through a separate path can still be shifted.

⚠️ **And the reason it looked confirmed:** alpha at t=355 sits inside a long
segment where a one-keyframe shift barely moves it, while **x sweeps 1 560 px
over the same span**. The rule matched on the insensitive quantity and was wrong
on the sensitive one. **Check a new interpretation against the fastest-moving
field you have, not the one that happens to agree.**

✅ **CLOSED — the 11.5 px was my fit's resolution, not geometry.** Closed by
adding observables rather than tuning. The vertex buffer carries positions *and*
colours at the same instant, so all four must agree on one `t`. Solved
independently: quad A x → **357.88**, quad B x → **357.58**, alphas → 355.75 and
354.09. ⚠️ **The alphas are ~50× less precise per unit** (0.27–0.33 levels/unit,
so one byte of quantisation is worth 1.5–1.9 units = 6–8 px of sweep). At
**t = 357.7** everything lands: centres **−0.70** and **−0.48 px**, alphas within
one level, parent alpha **0** throughout.

✅ **And there is no pivot correction to look for**: the leaf pivot is
**(200, 90)** against a 399×180 sprite — the pivot *is* the centre, so rotation
displaces it by nothing.

## ✅ 2026-08-29 — how much of `title`'s residual the rotation would actually buy

Measured, because the rotation decision needs a size and not just a direction —
[`title-residual-tone-vs-geometry.md`](../re/structures/title-residual-tone-vs-geometry.md).

A **per-level LUT** fitted on a screen is the most general tone model possible,
so whatever it cannot close is **by construction spatial**. Fitting it on the
screen itself bounds the tone share from above:

| | closed by a self-fitted tone LUT |
|---|---|
| **main menu** (positive control — your 0.06 %, so geometry is right) | **70.3 %** |
| **title** | **32.0 %** |

🔴 **So at most a third of the title's disagreement is tone, and at least two
thirds is geometry** — content in the wrong place. The rotation is the dominant
term by roughly two to one, and the fitted LUT is generous to tone, so the real
geometry share is larger.

⚠️ **And do NOT carry a global tone correction.** Fitting on the title and
applying to the menu closes 29.7 %; fitting on the menu and applying to the title
makes it **24 % worse**. A curve fitted on a dark flat screen is unconstrained at
the bright end and actively harms elsewhere. This extends the single-exponent
refutation: **even a full per-level LUT does not transfer between screens.**

⚠️ Reach: my pairing is looser than yours — same screen, not the same instant —
so the **ratio** is the claim, not the absolute level. And our render draws the
sweeps' parent only, so the geometry share here covers both the missing rotation
and the missing leaf placement; your leaf fix has already closed part of it.

## ✅ 2026-08-29 — OPTION A IS DONE. The reference renderer rotates.

**The human chose Option A.** `sylpheed-formats` now draws `rotation_deg`, so
Reborn's renderer and yours stay comparable and `verify-screen` keeps meaning
*"someone is wrong"* — [`ui-rotation-implemented.md`](../re/structures/ui-rotation-implemented.md).

Three pieces, because rotation alone does nothing on the title:

1. **`blit` has a rotated path** — inverse-mapped over the rotated bounding box,
   turning about the pivot. ✅ `rotation_deg == 0` keeps the old forward-mapped
   path **byte for byte**.
2. **`compose` draws a nested `.rat` leaf when it carries geometry the parent
   does not.** ⚠️ Not a blanket rule — a button's leaf duplicates its parent and
   the parent still wins, exactly as your `screen.rs` had it.
3. **`--at <units>`** on `screen render`, and `ComposeOptions::at`.

🔴 **A trap worth taking, because your `pose_at` can hit it too: `at` poses
LEAVES ONLY.** A top-level group's final keyframes are its **exit ramp**, and
`rest()` deliberately stops at the last hold keyframe before it. Posing the title
globally at t=358 walked every parent into its exit and drove the disagreement
from **10.92 to 61.74**.

🔴 **And the verification did not show what it was meant to — you should have
this before you re-run anything.** Scanning the pose time against
`live-title-build4-no-plate.png`: **10.73 – 11.17** against a **10.92** baseline.
**Flat, no minimum.** Drawing the sweeps correctly does not measurably improve
that comparison.

Two things explain it: the whole-frame mean is dominated by the tone curve, and
Reborn **still does not draw `ptlogo1` / `ptlogo2` at all** — four elements
reported as "not drawn", a far larger spatial gap than two translucent sweeps.

⚠️ **So do not expect your 1.81 % to move much on this alone.** Your harness
poses deliberately and counts differing *pixels* rather than mean level, so it is
the place to judge it — but I would rather you knew my measurement was flat than
discovered it after re-exporting. ❔ The sweeps may simply be a small term, and
`ptlogo1`/`ptlogo2` may be the bigger one.

✅ No regression: `main_menu` unchanged at 9.26, 116 lib tests pass.

## Status

| | Question | State | Answer / link |
|---|---|---|---|
| Q1 | keyframe time unit + ramp shape | ✅ answered | ramp is **linear**; **2 units per rendered frame**; **`1 unit = 1/60 s` — measured**, the idle title presents at 28.5 fps so the game is 30 Hz — [`ui-keyframe-time-unit.md`](../re/ui-keyframe-time-unit.md). ✅ **The group timeline is now DECODED too (2026-08-29) and the gap is closed**: a placement group is `frames` records of `{u32 time; 36-byte pose}` after an 8-byte header, so a pose's time is the word **before** it, pose 0's time is the group's lead-in word, and **every** pose is timed — including the last, which nothing could time before. Disc-wide over 13 991 groups with controls; the old reading makes **0 of 1 042** multi-segment alpha ramps constant-rate against 857 of 1 540. `SYLPHEED_KF_TIME_SHIFT` is retired (it had the association right but left pose 0 untimed, which is the whole reason it appeared to cost 13.1 % of build 7). Static renders are byte-identical — [`ui-keyframe-record-layout.md`](../re/ui-keyframe-record-layout.md) |
| Q2 | which build is which screen state | ✅ answered | `GP_TITLE` is **8 screens shipped twice, EN/JP**: 4/7 title art, 2/3 the `PRESS Ⓐ` plate, 5/8 main menu, 6/9 `EXTRAS`, and ✅ **pak entries 0/1 and 12/15 are the LOADING screen** — two variants, plain and dressed, decoded from their `pgloading_*` element names (2026-08-29). ⚠️ **Read that in ENTRY space.** This row said "0/1 and 10/11" until 2026-08-29; that is true only of `screen list`'s ordinals, where 10→entry 12 and 11→entry 15. In entry space 10/11 are the **publisher and developer splashes** (`palogo_sqex`, `palogo_gamearts`). The port caught it; see [METHOD](../re/METHOD.md#mechanics-that-have-bitten). 🟡 which of the two is `LOADING` vs `LOADING2` is undecided; 🟡 the English member of a pair is the one in the first half of the data segment — [`ui-title-build-map.md`](../re/ui-title-build-map.md) |
| Q3 | paint order for the six screens | ✅ answered, ❔ tie-break | **decoded**: a `u16` layer key at `+0x0A` of each `T8aD` sprite header, stable-sorted with declaration index; unkeyed elements get an implied key. Confirmed on 5 measured orders + `EXTRAS` vs a capture. One residual: the **tie-break** is unknown and bites on one element of the title — [`structures/ui-paint-order-key.md`](../re/structures/ui-paint-order-key.md). ⚠️ **The key does not fully order a screen**: elements sharing a key are tied, and the tie-break is ❔ **undecodable from the bundle** — declaration table, `T8aD` header (exhaustive: every offset 0x00–0x7f at u8/u16/u32, both directions, **0** fields match the measured order against **64** for the control) and the RATC child order all give the same order the game does *not* use. ✅ **Your exposure is now measured at ZERO PIXELS (2026-08-29).** The 2 overlapping tied pairs on `EXTRAS` are `ptframe3`×`ptframe4` (the other is a `loop*` you never draw), and rendering the screen with that pair swapped changes **0 px** — because the two sprites put ink on ~3 600 pixels each and **share none of them**; the 102×132 "overlap" was a bounding-box artefact. Same on the main menu's `ptframe1`×`ptframe2`. This is blend-independent: layers that never touch the same pixel cannot be ordered wrongly. **Nothing about the tie-break can change a pixel on any of your five screens** — [`structures/ui-paint-order-derived-check.md`](../re/structures/ui-paint-order-derived-check.md) |
| Q4 | button → GamePart | ✅ answered | **measured** which screen all **5** buttons open, by pressing each one and reading the screen's own title off the framebuffer. ✅ **In the form you need it: exactly ONE main-menu button opens a `GP_TITLE` entry.** `EXTRAS` → **entry 6** (EN) / **9** (JP). The other four leave the archive: `NEW GAME` → `DIFFICULTY` → `SELECT DATA`; `LOAD GAME` → the save-slot list; `TUTORIAL` → the lesson list; `OPTIONS` → GAME/CONTROL/SOUND/SCREEN SETTINGS. None of those four is a `GP_TITLE` build — so a menu→submenu→back cycle inside this archive is `main menu ↔ EXTRAS` and nothing else. The **GamePart id is still a name match**, not a measurement, and 🔴 the "cheap way to measure it" this page used to point at is a dead route (the guest words are monotonic counters, not a screen id) — [`menu-navigation-semantics.md`](../re/menu-navigation-semantics.md) |
| Q5 | navigation semantics | ✅ answered, ⚠️ **per clause** | 🔴 **This row used to open with a single `**measured**` covering six clauses of different strength, and the port's `authored/flow.json` copied that word into a `MEASURED` provenance stamp for a clause whose evidence cell reads `none`. A bundled label is exactly as strong as its weakest cell.** Split: ✅ **measured** — initial focus varies boot to boot (2× `TUTORIAL`, 2× `NEW GAME`); ⬆⬇ move **one item per press** (indirect: the 4-press wrap count only works if each press moves one) and **wrap both ends**; ⬅➡ do nothing; Ⓑ on a submenu returns to the parent **with focus restored** (4/4); Ⓑ on the main menu → **title**, ≤ 0.4 s, no loading screen (2026-08-30). ✅ **AND BOTH WEAK CLAUSES ARE NOW MEASURED (2026-08-30, later)** — you can stamp them: **no auto-repeat** (a 2.0 s held ⬇ moves the cursor exactly **once**; the counter passes its control, a single tap giving exactly 1 spike) and **Ⓑ on the title → nothing** (20 s after a delivery-confirmed Ⓑ the screen is still the title with `PRESS Ⓐ BUTTON` up — and that run waited for the **plate pulse**, the title's own settled signature, which is what the confounded earlier attempt did not). ✅ The plate **is** re-drawn after Ⓑ from the menu, ~7 s later — [`menu-navigation-semantics.md`](../re/menu-navigation-semantics.md) |
| Q6 | boot sequence + what drives it | ✅ answered | sequence **measured** end to end; the driver is **code, not data** — four search spaces closed, so the port **authors** the sequence — [`boot-config-and-gamepart-registry.md`](../re/boot-config-and-gamepart-registry.md) |
| Q7 | transitions | ✅ answered | a **fade through black**, drawn by the screen's own last-painting `.prm` quad. Fade-in ramp is **decoded** from its keyframes; the ~0.4 s fade-out is **measured** (not in the file) — [`screen-transitions.md`](../re/screen-transitions.md) |
| Q8 | menu audio bindings | ✅ answered | cue vocabulary + bank **decoded**; event binding is a **name match** (the authors' own event names). ✅ **You CAN have the SE audio** — ⚠️ an earlier version of this row said it was "undecodable from the disc"; that was **retracted** and the row was stale. Three cues are located in `Static.slb` and **decode to PCM**: d-pad move `0x1ec0` (4 packets), Ⓑ back `0x0ec0` (2), Ⓐ confirm `0x5d6c0` (6), all mono 48 kHz. The bank is a packed run of XMA waves with no delimiter, so a wave is only (offset, packet count) — and ⚠️ the file order is **not** cue-id order, so the index cannot be counted out — [`menu-audio-cues.md`](../re/menu-audio-cues.md) |
| Q9 | video binding + playback rules | ✅ answered | **decoded** from the movie manifest: `ADVERTISE_MOVIE`→`ADV.wmv` (boot intro *and* attract are one asset), `MS00A`→`S00A.wmv` is the new-game intro, `STAFF_ROLL`→the credits reel. ✅ **one Ⓐ skips a movie** (title at 57 s vs a 193 s baseline) — [`movie-binding.md`](../re/movie-binding.md) |
| Q10 | music-bank sub-wave roles (intro+loop?) | ✅ answered | **two stems of one performance, played together** — sample-synchronous, equal duration, 32/32 banks. **Concatenating is wrong.** Not a seamless loop either — [`structures/bgm-two-stems.md`](../re/structures/bgm-two-stems.md). ⚠️ **Our reader said three until 2026-08-29** — the extra one was the **bank header**, emitted by `to_xma_riffs`; fixed, with a 28/28 disc-wide check and two regression tests — [`structures/slb-bank-header-not-a-wave.md`](../re/structures/slb-bank-header-not-a-wave.md) |
| S1 | Ready Room go/no-go | ✅ **no-go** | it is 2D and enumerates fine (60 builds), but `GP_READY_ROOM.pak` holds **briefing/tactical-map** content, not the six-button Ready Room menu — [`ready-room-probe.md`](../re/ready-room-probe.md) |

## Already settled — the port can rely on these today

### ⬅ Answers to the port's five asks (2026-08-29)

* **1 — how to recognise the splash.** ❔ **No content rule exists; you are
  authoring this.** Design size fails (every extra composable bundle sampled is
  1280×720, same as every screen) and element count fails (the fragments run
  2…15 elements, the splash halves have 3 and 7 — the ranges overlap).
  ✅ **But `GP_TITLE` needs no rule.** There, `--all` adds exactly **four**
  bundles and all four are real screens — no fragments at all — and the `--all`
  index equals the pak **entry** index 1:1 across all 16, so addressing by entry
  index does not mean something different from elsewhere.
  🔴 **And there are TWO splash screens; you have one.** Entries **11/14** are the
  developer logos (GAME ARTS / SETA / studio anima). Entries **10/13** are the
  **SQUARE ENIX publisher** wordmark — the *first* thing the boot shows — and you
  do not have them. The pairs are region twins (`™` on 10, `®` on 13). All four
  draw every element they declare.
  [`ui-splash-addressing.md`](../re/ui-splash-addressing.md) ·
  [render grid](../re/captures/title-builds/splash-both-halves-rendered.png)

* **2 — the ~0.4 s fade-out is (a)**, and it is bigger than the fade quad.
  Every element of a screen ends on **exactly one** untimed keyframe — so there
  is one unknown duration per screen, which rules out (b). That final block is
  where the screen plays out: the quad goes `a=255` (black) while the buttons,
  `ptmsg` and the glows go `a=0` and the two frames hold. (c) is refuted by a
  null test on the capture: a black quad alone keeps the button÷background
  brightness **ratio constant**, and measured through the fade it falls
  **6.50 → 1.94, a 3.4× monotonic drop**. So: write one authored constant
  (~0.4 s / ~24 units) and **play the group to its end on every element** — do
  not fade a black rectangle over a frozen screen.
  [`screen-transitions.md`](../re/screen-transitions.md)

* **3 — focus: your choice is fine, and it is not your bug.** ✅ The focused
  sprite **completely covers** the base — `f` alpha ≥ base alpha at **100.0 %** of
  base-visible pixels on three pairs across both languages, once aligned properly
  (the true offset is **(7,7)**, and at the centre alignment it reads a
  misleading 78–84 %). Compositing both ways differs by **RMSE 1.1 inside the
  button rectangle**, max 12/255 on ~25 px — unmeasurable at frame level.
  🔴 **What you are actually missing is the focus record's SECOND element.**
  `ptbtn0Nf.rat` declares **two** sprites — `ptbtneff01.t32` (a 42×46 **glowing
  ring**, focus only) then `ptbtn0Nf.t32` (the bright label) — where the base
  record declares one. That ring is the marker you say you draw nowhere. ⚠️ Note
  the small dot-in-circle at each underline's left end is *not* it: that is on
  every button all the time, part of the base art.
  [`structures/ui-button-focus-record.md`](../re/structures/ui-button-focus-record.md)

* **4 — rotation: not mine to decide alone.** Raised with the human; see
  MISSION. What I can say without a decision: the two sub-questions are not
  equally open. Rotation is about the **declared pivot** — that anchor is
  *measured*, not assumed: the title's two `ptloop` sweeps scale 600 %/800 %
  vertically, where the pivot term is worth 450 and 630 px, and the GPU capture
  puts both quad centres at y **359.1**/**360.0** against the pivot formula's
  **360.0**; top-left anchoring predicts 810/990 and centre-as-position 270. So
  if you draw rotation, rotate about the declared pivot.
  ⚠️ It changes nothing on your five screens **at rest** — they have zero
  top-level rotations, and the title's two nested ones sit entirely off-screen at
  rest. [`structures/ui-keyframe-rotation.md`](../re/structures/ui-keyframe-rotation.md)

* **5 — the capture is not gamma-neutral, and RMSE against it has a floor.**
  Measured on flat patches (16×16, both images `std < 8`):
  `capture ≈ 255·(render/255)^γ` with **γ ≈ 1.49** (main menu), **1.49**
  (`EXTRAS`), **1.34** (title). The chain says this is a ramp **the game
  installed**, not a capture-path artefact: canary's swap-path gamma stage is a
  pure 256-entry LUT that defaults to identity, and the game is measured calling
  `VdGetCurrentDisplayGamma` once at video init. ⚠️ **Reach: the flat patches are
  almost all dark (render ~0–60), so nothing here constrains midtones or
  highlights** — which is where γ 1.4 does its visible work. So: yes, there is a
  floor; a γ ≈ 1.4 darkening gets closer and is **authored**, best applied where
  it was measured rather than extrapolated. Do not chase RMSE below it.
  [`structures/ui-render-tone-curve.md`](../re/structures/ui-render-tone-curve.md)


* **`GP_TITLE.pak` is eight screens, each shipped twice — English and Japanese.**
  Build 4 is the English title art and 7 its Japanese twin; **2/3 are the
  `PRESS Ⓐ BUTTON` plate, a build of their own** composited over the title and
  faded in a beat later; 5/8 are the five-button main menu; 6/9 are the `EXTRAS`
  submenu — the **only** submenu inside this archive. Builds 0/1 and 10/11 are a
  `DELTASABER / SYLPHEED A.I.` plate that was **never seen running**, in the boot
  path, any title-side screen, or the attract loop. ✅ measured against live
  captures for the four English screens the boot path shows;
  [`ui-title-build-map.md`](../re/ui-title-build-map.md).
  **Withdrawn:** the earlier "builds 6/8/9 are submenus" — 8 is the Japanese main
  menu. The other four main-menu buttons leave the archive, and where each one
  goes is **measured** — see the button-destination bullet below.
* **Buttons are identifiable as data.** Element kind `0x3002` = button, `0x0` =
  decoration, `0x10` = primitive. ✅ decoded **for the title-side screens**.
  ⚠️ `0x3002` is one member of a `0x3000` family with sub-bits, and it is not the
  only button kind on the disc: `GP_READY_ROOM`'s 902 bundles contain **zero**
  `0x3002` and use `0x3000` / `0x3004` / `0x300c` / `0x3008` instead. Nothing in
  this milestone changes — every screen in scope is `GP_TITLE` — but do not ship
  `kind == 0x3002` as a general button test.
  (The kind is the 4th `u32` of the 60-byte declaration entry, at `+40`.)
* **The title's settled pose is `rest` — and always pass `--primitives`.**
  Against a plate-free capture of the real screen, `screen render --build 4
  --black` edge-correlates **0.9163 at (0,0)**, so the geometry of `rest` is the
  arrived pose; the timeline is not needed for the title.
  ⚠️ **But without `--primitives` the whole frame is +13.14 too bright** (R +12.35,
  G +13.58, B +13.48); with them, **+0.55**. The missing element is
  **`pteff02.prm`**, the 25 % dim, and `--primitives` is off by default. **That is
  the "washed-out cyan slab"** — a dim that should be there and isn't, not a glow
  that shouldn't. Because the art is blue-dominant, the shortfall reads cyan.
  🔴 **A second, separate defect — and it is the "slab".** With the dim in place
  the residual is localised to one band (y ≈ 112–225): the game draws the logo's
  `Z` **swoosh thin with a pink/magenta edge**, our render draws it **thick and
  solid white**. Crop:
  [`title-swoosh-capture-vs-render.png`](../re/captures/title-builds/title-swoosh-capture-vs-render.png).
  The elements are `ptlogo_back2.t32`, `ptlogo_back2eff.t32` and
  `ptlogo_back2eff1…5`. 🟡 Those five are also the group with the **known
  unsolved paint-order tie-break** (key `0x8083`) — same screen, same elements —
  but a blend-order swap explains white-instead-of-pink poorly.
  🔴 **The pivot mismatch is NOT the cause — checked and refuted.** These elements'
  declared pivots really do belong to the *other language's* sprite
  (`ptlogo_back2`'s `(500,117)` is exactly half the Japanese 1000×234, not its own
  English 1118×262; 24 of 109 title elements are off by > 8 px). **But it cannot
  affect this render**: `blit` sizes a sprite from its **texture**, and applies the
  pivot only as `kf.x − pivot·(scale−100)/100` — and **all seven swoosh elements
  are scale `(100,100)` at every keyframe**, so the term is zero.
  ✅ **That formula is now MEASURED, not just implemented (2026-08-28).** The
  title's two `ptloop` sweeps scale **600 %** and **800 %** vertically, where the
  pivot term is worth 450 and 630 px, and the GPU capture puts both quad centres
  at y **359.1** and **360.0** — against the formula's **360.0** for both.
  Top-left anchoring predicts 810 and 990; treating the position as the centre
  predicts 270. Horizontally the same term makes the group's `t` solved from
  **position** agree with `t` solved from **vertex alpha** to **0.33 / 0.65
  units**, versus ~8 units without it. So: **anchor scaling on the pivot, not on
  the top-left corner.**
  🟡 It does *not* prove interpolation is linear — both fields were inverted
  through the same linear map, so a shared easing curve would cancel. It does
  show position and alpha ride **one shared parameter**.
  ⚠️ It *would* bite `ptlogo1`/`ptlogo2`, which scale 100 → 150 during the
  build-in. Not at rest, and not on the swoosh.
  🔴 **Ruled out for the COLOUR**: every swoosh keyframe's fade is `0x??ffffff`
  (white RGB, alpha only), no tint is non-white, and the texture decodes
  *blue*-leaning (175,174,198).
  🟡 **What is left is the BLEND.** Size and position are the texture's own and
  match; fade, tint and texture colour are all ruled out. Seven overlapping
  mostly-transparent sprites (`ptlogo_back2` 5.4 % opaque, its glow 10.3 %, the
  five `eff` segments 10–23 %, all white or warm) stacked with plain alpha-over
  saturate to opaque white — which is exactly what we draw, and would read as
  "thicker" against the game's thin coloured stroke.
  🟡 **And there is a candidate field for it.** The `T8aD` header word at
  **`+0x04`** splits the title's sprites exactly along effect-vs-normal:
  `pteff01`, `pteff03a`, `ptlogo_back2eff1…5`, `ptlogoall_eff`/`_eff2` are
  **`0x8832`**; `ptlogo1`/`2`, `ptlogo_tm`, `ptbase2`, `ptlogo_back2`,
  `ptcopyright` and `ptlogo_back2eff` are **`0x8830`**. One bit — **`0x02`**.
  Disc-wide it is a real independent flag: 19 216 sprites, 18 distinct values,
  bit `0x02` set in **27.1 %**, and it toggles against otherwise-identical words
  (`0x8830`/`0x8832`, `0x0830`/`0x0832`, `0x0810`/`0x0812`, `0x0030`/`0x0032`).
  ⚠️ **Correlation only — untested.** Nothing yet shows it *means* additive; the
  test is to blend bit-`0x02` sprites additively and re-correlate the title
  against the capture. Note `ptlogo_back2eff` is `0x8830` despite its name, so
  this is a field and not a naming pattern. ❔ Not diagnosed — but two candidate meanings are now dead: **not** "the name contains `eff`" — and not even the one-way "bit ⇒ `eff` name", which held 10/10 on the title but fails on **2 657 of 4 995** bit-set sprites disc-wide (`P(eff|set) = 0.468`). What survives is a 3.3× association, and the counterexamples are rings, glows and lights — effect-like art without the naming convention and **not** "the element is transient" (`pteff03`/`pteff03a` carry the bit and persist to `t=250`). 🛑 **Parked** — four candidate meanings are now dead (additive blend; `eff` name, both directions; transient element; **premultiplied alpha**, refuted because flagged sprites violate `RGB ≤ A` *more* than unflagged, 55.5 % vs 33.7 %) and none produced a positive account. It blocks nothing — your screens composite at 0.947 correlation against a capture without it. ⚠️ Practical note for an asset pipeline: `T8aD` headers appear in **RATC child order** (18/18 verified on build 4 against decoded dimensions), which is the only sound way to attribute a header to a name when two sprites share a size — and two here do.
  ⚠️ **The rotated draw is NOT the swoosh.** It was identified as the swoosh by
  elimination; that is **refuted** — its quads span y −209…925 in screen space,
  the swoosh is a band at y 126…360. ✅ **It is the two `ptloop` sweeps**
  (`ptloop01.rat` → `pteff03.t32`, `ptloop02.rat` → `pteff03a.t32`), confirmed by
  edge length: 400 × 1076 and 400 × 1444 against 399×180 at the two elements'
  **different** declared scales, 600 % (= 1080) and 800 % (= 1440). What stands
  from the old bullet: the game *does* submit rotated quads this compositor
  cannot draw, and vertex colours are white.
  ✅ **SOLVED 2026-08-28 by draw capture — it is the GEOMETRY.** The game submits
  the swoosh as **two rotated parallelograms** (edges `(0.54,−0.56)` and
  `(0.44,0.79)`, ~45° and ~61°, extending to `y=±1.81` NDC).
  `ui_layout::blit` draws **axis-aligned rectangles only**, so it blits the sprite
  upright — right on average, right in position, wrong in shape, which is the
  measured signature exactly. **A port that blits upright rects will have the same
  defect.**
  🔴 Vertex colour is refuted with it: every colour in the capture is
  `<alpha>FFFFFF`, white RGB.
  ✅ **CLOSED 2026-08-28 — the rotation IS on the disc, at keyframe `+12`.**
  It is a signed angle in **degrees**, clockwise-positive in screen space
  (Y down), and `ui_layout::Keyframe` now carries it as `rotation_deg`.
  Confirmed against the framebuffer, not against our own renderer: the two
  `ptloop` records declare `+12` = **30** and **−45**, and the GPU capture
  submits their quads at **+30.26°** and **−45.28°** — magnitude and sign, on two
  different values. Corroborated separately by shape: `GP_BUNK` entry `117ca14f`
  holds a group whose `+12` ramps **0 → 360** with position, scale and alpha all
  constant — a spin in place. Disc-wide `+12` is non-zero in **14.50 %** of
  83 862 keyframe blocks.
  ⚠️ **Two things the port must know about it.**
  (1) **Rotation lives in BOTH the top-level table and nested `.rat` leaf
  records.** ⚠️ I told you one iteration ago that it looked nested-only; that was
  three archives' worth of pattern and **it is refuted** — `GP_DIALOG` and
  `GP_DEBRIEFING_PILOTLOG` rotate top-level elements. The actionable half stands:
  the *title's* rotations are nested, so a composer reading only the declaration
  table gets zero rotation on exactly the elements that move there.
  The clearest examples are top-level and show up in
  `screen info --build 0 --geometry dat/GP_DIALOG.pak`: `pceff03.t32` and
  `pceff04.t32` ramp `r=` **90 → 30 → 10 → 3 → 0** while their alpha ramps
  0 → 255 and they slide into place — a swing-in that settles upright; and build
  6's `pzeff02.t32` ramps **43 → 61 → 75 → 90** while scaling 112 % → 200 % and
  fading to 0 — a spin-out burst.
  (2) **`sylpheed-cli screen render` still does not rotate.** The field is
  decoded, not rendered; `ui_layout::blit` is axis-aligned only. So the reference
  renderer and the port will *both* draw these upright until a rotating blit
  exists — and per your own rule, the two of them agreeing about it means
  nothing.
  ✅ **Checked 2026-08-29: this does NOT affect your 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. So a static composite is unaffected; the caveat applies only if
  you animate the title's build-in, where the sweeps cross the screen rotated.
  🟡 The neighbouring words `+4` and `+8` are still unexplained: signed, non-zero
  in ~4.8 % / 4.6 % of blocks, almost entirely `±180`/`±90`. That distribution
  looks like a flip flag rather than a free angle, but nothing observed turns on
  them — **do not transcribe them as X/Y rotation.**
  [`ui-keyframe-rotation.md`](../re/structures/ui-keyframe-rotation.md)
  ⚠️ The earlier "pink versus white" reading compared two differently-shaped
  renderings and should be re-checked after geometry, not carried as a separate
  defect.
  ❔ **Classified: undecodable from the disc, with reach.** Seven candidates
  eliminated — pivot (inert at scale 100 *and* no measured displacement), `fade`,
  `tint`, texture colour, additive blend via `+0x04` bit `0x02`, and
  capture-not-settled (the band is identical from t = 4.0 s to t = 21.5 s). The
  residual is stable and modest: band mean **+1.83**, edge-corr **0.70** vs ≈ 0.92
  frame-wide. A next attempt should use a **per-draw GPU capture** of the running
  guest — not another field — but ⚠️ that capture records prim/indices/shader
  hashes/**texture bindings**/**vertex attributes** and **no blend state**, so it
  can test a per-draw *vertex colour* today and would need a Canary change to dump
  `RB_BLENDCONTROL`. ✅ And the plate-free capture is sound; use it.
  🔴 **Refuted:** it is *not* that our dim covers the whole frame instead of
  sitting beneath the UI — the logo reads +2.36 against a background of −0.74, so
  the paint order is being honoured.

* **The title's motion, decoded and attributed.** After building in, the *title
  art* is essentially static — a 22 s capture measures the wordmark region at
  sd 0.06 and the bottom-right corner at sd 0.003. Two things do move:
  * ✅ **Two slow light sweeps in build 4.** `ptloop01.rat` (an `opt `-linked
    `RATC` at `0xbb5966`) sweeps `pteff03.t32` left→right over **450 units =
    7.5 s**; `ptloop02.rat` sweeps `pteff03a.t32` right→left over **570 units =
    9.5 s**. Ordinary 40-byte keyframe blocks from `+0x68`, three keyframes each.
  * ✅ **The `PRESS Ⓐ BUTTON` plate pulses**, and it is the loudest thing on
    screen — a capture's per-tile amplitude map puts **sd 7.65** in the band
    x ≈ 318–954, y ≈ 560–672 against **0.06** on the wordmark. It is
    `ptbtn00f.rat`, the plate's highlight variant (build **2**, not build 4),
    whose alpha ramps **`0x00 → 0x06 → 0x4a → 0x50` (hold) `→ 0x4a → 0x06 → 0x00`**
    over **eight** keyframes at `t = 6, 29, 35, 50, 58, 97, 105, ?` — a glow that
    fades in and back out, **closing on fully transparent**, so it is a complete
    cycle rather than a one-shot ramp.
  🟡 Its cycle **length** is not readable, and this is now observed rather than
  assumed: the eighth block's time slot literally contains the ASCII terminator
  `end `, so the record ends there and the value does not exist. Declared span is
  therefore **≥ 105 units = 1.75 s** against a measured **≈ 2.3 s** — which would
  need a final step of ≈ 33 units. That number is **fitted to the measurement, not
  read**; the port should take ≈ 2.3 s as measured.
  ⚠️ An earlier version of this bullet said "the title screen loops at ≈ 2.2 s"
  and attributed it to `ptloop01/02`. Both halves were wrong: it is the **plate**,
  and it is a different build.
* 🟡 **Our composite is brighter than the emulator's frame — measured, and you
  would be *authoring* if you apply it.** Alignment is exact (best offset
  dy=0 dx=0, correlation **0.9466**), so only the tone differs. Fitting on 16×16
  patches that are flat in **both** images: `capture ≈ 255·(render/255)^γ` with
  γ = **1.491** (main menu), **1.493** (`EXTRAS`), **1.338** (title).
  ⚠️ **Narrow reach.** Those flat patches span only render values ~0–60, where a
  gamma and a plain scale are nearly indistinguishable — on both menus the errors
  are 0.28 vs 0.34 and 0.22 vs 0.28. Only the title separates them (1.08 vs
  9.02). Nothing here constrains midtones or highlights.
  🔴 The held-out control **failed to discriminate**: the splash's 2 918 flat
  patches are pure black (render 0–4), so every model scores ≈ 0.
  🔴 **My "it may be the emulator" caveat is withdrawn.** I said canary applies
  `kernel_display_gamma_type = 2` (BT.709) on output. It does not — that cvar is
  a value a **kStub getter reports to the guest** (`VdGetCurrentDisplayGamma`),
  which the game uses to build its own ramp; canary then applies **the guest's**
  ramp from the `DC_LUT` registers in the swap path (`apply_gamma_table.ps` /
  `apply_gamma_pwl.ps`). So there is no emulator post-process to subtract, and
  any gamma in a capture is one the game installed.
  ✅ **Measured 2026-08-29: the game DOES query the display gamma.** Booted with
  Kernel logging on (`--log_mask=12 --log_level=3`, which changes nothing about
  the output), `VdGetCurrentDisplayGamma` is called once at video init, between
  `VdGetSystemCommandBuffer` and `VdSetDisplayMode` — the moment a ramp-builder
  would ask. Control in the same log: 359 `VdRetrainEDRAM` lines, so an absent
  call would have shown.
  🟡 **That it then writes the ramp is inferred, not observed** — but the chain
  is closed: canary's swap-path gamma stage is a **pure 256-entry LUT** with no
  other transfer (`apply_gamma_table.xesli`), and that LUT **defaults to
  identity** (`CommandProcessor::Initialize`, whose comment says the linear
  default is "what games set when starting with the sRGB return value"). Identity
  cannot produce the measured γ ≈ 1.4, so a non-identity ramp was written.
  ⚠️ The weak joint is that this assumes our composite reproduces the *pre-ramp*
  framebuffer; what carries it is that a systematic ~1.4 across three screens is
  not the shape of a compositor bug. A fixed sRGB stage does not fit either
  direction (encode brightens; decode darkens far more).
  **Practical upshot for you is unchanged:** the darkening is the game's own
  display ramp, so it belongs in a port as a display profile, not baked in.
  ⚠️ Note the ramp depends on the display type the game is *told*; canary
  hard-codes TV/BT.709, which on hardware is a console setting. **So this is a
  display profile, not a fixed property of the game** — reasonable to expose as a
  setting rather than bake in.
  [`structures/ui-render-tone-curve.md`](../re/structures/ui-render-tone-curve.md)

* ✅ **FIXED 2026-08-29 — the dropped background was a name-decoding defect, and
  `screen render` now draws it.** The reference composites for all five screens
  changed; regenerate anything you diffed against before that date. Cause: a
  RATC child's name is stated by an **`opt ` block** immediately before it
  (`"opt " | BE32 len | name | NUL | 3 bytes | magic`), and our parser instead
  guessed it from the last printable run of bytes. For this one child the 3
  trailing bytes are `38 41 58` = `"8AX"`, which beat the real name
  `pteff05.t32`. **`8AX` was never a name** — earlier text on this page treating
  it as one was wrong. Disc-wide: 18 002 children, 17 918 already agreed with the
  `opt ` reading and **24 did not**, every one the same 3-byte-tail failure.
  Effect on your five screens: mean brightness unmoved, high-frequency detail
  **×1.15…×1.30** — the same art at twice the resolution, which is exactly what
  [8AX](../re/structures/ui-8ax-fullres-background.md) said the game draws.
  ⚠️ Both backgrounds are now drawn (`ptbase` upscaled, then the full-res one over
  it): correct, but wasted fill. Draw only the full-res one, taking its *timing*
  from `ptbase`'s element, which carries the keyframes.
  [`structures/ratc-child-names.md`](../re/structures/ratc-child-names.md)
  ✅ **And the fix has no remaining hole.** 60 of the disc's 18 002 RATC children
  still have no `opt ` block; all 60 are now accounted for and **none is on your
  screens**. They are the ten frames of the disc's only `.tan` **frame sequence**
  (`pb_f15_eg_anm.tan`, six language copies of one `GP_READY_ROOM` bundle), where
  a single `opt ` block names the whole run — so a name-resolution miss is not
  hiding anything else the way `8AX` was. ⚠️ Two notes if you ever read outside
  `GP_TITLE`: `ratc::parse` **over-reports** there, listing a `.tan`'s frames as
  anonymous children; and a RATC bundle names exactly six kinds of resource —
  `.t32` (14 756), `.rat` (3 311), `.prm` (367), `.tbm` (224), `.sbo` (54),
  `.tan` (6).
  [`structures/ratc-tan-frame-sequence.md`](../re/structures/ratc-tan-frame-sequence.md)
  <details><summary>the original entry, kept because its reasoning still stands</summary>

  🟡 **`screen render` silently drops one full-screen element per screen — and
  you must NOT simply draw it.** Auditing what the composer omits on your five
  screens: 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 the sprite lookup misses and a
  silent `continue` drops it.
  ✅ **It does not currently show,** because `ptbase.t32` (640×360, drawn at
  200 %) is *the same artwork at half resolution* — its 2× upscale differs from
  `8AX` by mean 2.05, and our background is pixel-identical to `8AX` in every
  patch sampled.
  ✅ **SETTLED 2026-08-29 — the game draws the full-res `8AX`, so use it.**
  Previously parked as "needs a per-draw capture"; it did not. The two carry the
  same art at two resolutions, so what separates them is the detail `8AX` has
  that an upscale cannot. Correlating the capture's departure-from-upscale
  against the 8AX-only detail (both first mapped through the measured gamma):
  main menu **+0.0475** vs controls +0.0032 / −0.0075, title **+0.0634** vs
  +0.0095 / +0.0086 — **two screens, both 68 % of the theoretical ceiling, 7–15×
  their matched controls**.
  **So: resolve the name and draw `8AX` at 1:1.** Upscaling the 640×360 `ptbase`
  2× is *wrong*, not merely softer. ⚠️ Do not draw **both** — an opaque
  full-screen layer over an identical one costs fill and hides later changes; and
  note `ptbase`'s element is the one carrying the keyframes, so you need its
  timing with `8AX`'s pixels.
  ⚠️ It does not show whether `ptbase` is *also* drawn underneath — the full-res
  background is
  ~86 % opaque and would hide it either way.
  [`structures/ui-8ax-fullres-background.md`](../re/structures/ui-8ax-fullres-background.md)
  </details>

* ✅ **Paint order: your exposure is two element pairs, on one screen.** We use
  an order *measured from the running game* where one exists and a derived order
  (a sort on each sprite's layer key) elsewhere. Checked, rather than assumed:
  the derived order reproduces the measured one **exactly** on the main menu
  (0 inverted pairs) and the developer splash (0). On the **title** it differs by
  8 pairs — **all same-layer-key ties** — and two of those are total occlusions
  (`back2eff5` is 1133×280 and *fully contains* `back2eff3` and `back2eff4`;
  derived puts it on top, the game puts it underneath). The title is unaffected
  in practice because it has a measured order.
  Per screen: title **measured**, main menu **measured**, developer splash
  **measured**, publisher splash derived but with **0 ties** (fully determined),
  and **`EXTRAS` derived with 15 tied pairs of which only 2 overlap**.
  ✅ **That narrows again to ONE, and the capture is consistent with it.** Of the
  two overlapping pairs, `ptloop01`×`ptloop02` are `loop*` animations that
  `compose` skips by default, so their tie is unreachable. The remaining pair is
  `ptframe3`×`ptframe4`, overlapping 102×132 px — and 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, not proof — correlation cannot see a swap between
  locally similar art. **15 → 2 → 1 → consistent** is the whole paint-order risk
  on your five screens.
  [`structures/ui-paint-order-derived-check.md`](../re/structures/ui-paint-order-derived-check.md)

* ✅ **How good are the five screens, actually?** One page with the numbers:
  [`five-screens-acceptance.md`](../re/five-screens-acceptance.md). Rendered and
  correlated against the live captures — title **0.9500**, main menu **0.9460**,
  `EXTRAS` **0.9440**, publisher splash **0.9600**, developer splash **0.9643**,
  and every one aligns at **exactly dy=0 dx=0** over a ±2 px search, so placement
  and scale are right and the residual is tone and detail rather than geometry.
  Every undrawn element is accounted for (ghost instances, `.prm` primitives,
  `loop*` animations, and the `8AX` name mismatch whose art is on screen anyway) —
  the counts add up exactly, with nothing unexplained. The residual, ranked: tone
  (γ≈1.4, the game's own ramp), `8AX` resolution, one `EXTRAS` paint-order tie,
  and rotation-not-rendered which does not affect these five at rest.
  ⚠️ Reach: static composites at rest against single frames — this says nothing
  about animation.

* ✅ **A static composite is only meaningful for a screen that SETTLES — the two
  splashes are animations.** Measured with its control: suppressing the `_eff`
  glows takes the **publisher splash 0.9604 → 0.9982** and the **developer splash
  0.9659 → 0.9980**, while the same edit makes the title −0.002, the main menu
  **−0.092** and `EXTRAS` **−0.107** worse. The draw log says why — on the
  developer splash the glows draw on frames 94–115 and the logos on 116–211, so
  at the captured moment every glow is already finished, including the two with
  plateaus that `rest_plateau` renders visible.
  So `rest_plateau` is right where a screen settles and over-draws where it does
  not. **There is no "resting pose" for the splashes** — they play through and
  leave, and a static composite of them is a picture of one arbitrary frame
  (≈0.998 for the frame these captures hold). **Play the timeline for the two
  splashes; composite statically for title / main menu / `EXTRAS`.**
  [`structures/ui-resting-pose.md`](../re/structures/ui-resting-pose.md)

* ❔ **A group's DURATION is in the data; its START TIME is not.** Testing whether
  the splash timeline *played* reproduces the capture: each element is on screen
  for its declared span to within 2 % (glows 44 units observed vs 45 declared;
  logos 192 vs 195). But 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 frames 94–115, the
  logos 116–211, strictly sequential.
  🔴 The obvious candidate is dead: each group header carries an undecoded
  **lead-in word**, and it is `0x00000000` for all seven elements. Not the
  keyframe times, not that word, not declaration order, not the RATC child order.
  ✅ **Here is the sequence to author, measured** (1 frame = 1/30 s):
  publisher `palogo_sqex` **3.00 s+** (a floor — it is already at full alpha on
  the capture's first frame), a **0.10 s** gap with nothing drawn, then the
  developer **glows for 0.73 s**, then the developer **logos for 3.20 s**, the
  glow→logo switch being a single frame boundary with no overlap. Each phase is
  within 2 % of its element's declared span, so the *durations* come from the
  bundle and only the *ordering* is authored.
  ⚠️ One capture, one run; and `palogo_anima`/`_eff` get 0 draws in all 214
  frames, so a third pair's phase is not in this measurement.
  [`data/splash-phase-timeline.txt`](../re/data/splash-phase-timeline.txt)
  ⚠️ **So you must author the sequencing.** The observed order on the developer
  splash — both glows, then both logos — is *measured for one screen*, not a
  decoded rule.
  ✅ **Verified against its own refutation:** across all 235 captured frames,
  **zero** contain both a glow and a logo; the switch is one clean boundary with
  two sprites either side.
  🔴 **And it goes further than start times — a bundle's declared elements are
  not what gets drawn.** ✅ **And the mechanism is now established, by
  elimination.** The competing story — "two compositions shown in sequence" —
  needs a bundle declaring the glows *without* the logos, and no such bundle
  exists: only four entries in `GP_TITLE` carry `palogo` elements, and each
  developer entry (11, 14) declares **all six** logos and glows. So whichever
  bundle was active, only a subset of its elements was drawn at a time.
  (An earlier texture-base test could not separate the two — it failed its own
  control, since the publisher splash is a different bundle and shares the base
  `0x11C30000`, a reused upload slot rather than an identity.) Entry 11 declares *three* logo/glow pairs; only two are ever drawn.
  `palogo_anima` gets **0 frames** while `palogo_gamearts` gets **95**, from
  byte-identical keyframe times. (Reach: the capture covers frames 1–214, so
  "never in the window".) **Compositing every element of a bundle does not
  reproduce what the game shows over time** — it is right for a static screen
  that settles, and it is not a timeline.
  [`structures/ui-group-start-time.md`](../re/structures/ui-group-start-time.md)

* ✅ **The splash's backdrop is an opaque black `.prm` from the bundle, painted
  first.** Measured: every frame opens with the clear and then an **untextured
  1280×720 quad, vertex colour `FF000000` in all 212 frames** — matching
  `palogo_eff0.prm`'s declaration (`kind 0x10`, pivot 640×360, one keyframe,
  `a=255`). That is why a splash render needs `--black` rather than the default
  backdrop. ⚠️ Not a general rule: the main menu's measured order puts one `.prm`
  at position 4 and the other **last** (the transition fade).
  ✅ **The splash's recorded paint order `[0,2,4,6,1,3,5]` is a real depth
  order** — read off the runtime child array, and independently backed by the
  static layer key (glows `0xa100` sort before logos `0xa110`;
  `paint_order_audit` reports derived == measured, 0 ties). A same-day claim on
  this page that it was "a temporal sequence, not depth" was **withdrawn**; see
  the ❌ section in the linked page for why, if you read it before the fix.
  ⚠️ Separately and still true — and it is an **activation** fact, not a
  paint-order one: the splash's glows and logos are never on screen together
  (glows f94–115, logos f116–211,
  [timeline](../re/data/splash-phase-timeline.txt)). Compositing all seven at
  once reproduces no frame of the real screen. Depth says *what covers what*;
  it does not say *what is up*.
  [`structures/ui-prm-primitives.md`](../re/structures/ui-prm-primitives.md)

* **Menu order is geometric.** Buttons sorted top-to-bottom by resting Y. This is
  ✅ correct for a vertical menu and is **not** a decoded neighbour graph — the
  disc's real navigation structure is unknown, and `opt ` is *not* a focus link
  (measured and refuted, see
  [`ui-focus-and-effect-elements.md`](../re/structures/ui-focus-and-effect-elements.md)).
* **Highlighted states pair by name** — `ptbtn01.rat` ↔ `ptbtn01f.rat`. 🟡 a
  naming convention that holds for all 54 real pairs, not a decoded field.
* **`rest()` was wrong for elements with no exit animation — fixed 2026-08-28.**
  A trailing run of identical keyframes was always treated as the exit and
  excluded; on an element that has no exit it *is* the hold, and `rest()` fell
  back to the element's **first** keyframe — off-position and transparent. Six
  elements on the main menu were affected, including `ptframe1`/`ptframe2`, the
  bright circuit bracket around the menu, which both the port's composite **and**
  `sylpheed-cli screen render` were dropping.
  The rule now: **a trailing run is the hold exactly when it is visible** (alpha
  ≠ 0). ⚠️ Not the pose-equality test the report proposed — `pgptitle.rat`'s
  trailing run also matches its last timed keyframe, and adopting that would erase
  the word PAUSE. Oracle correlation over the bracket region improved
  **0.9596 → 0.9748**; the PAUSE control is unchanged.
  ✅ **Disc-wide**: over 2 859 bundles / 13 991 elements, `rest` moves for **30**
  (0.21 %) — **4 invisible → visible, 0 visible → invisible**. Tests green
  (131 passed).
  ❔ **Back to the port agent:** on the English main menu exactly **two** elements
  satisfy your pose-equality condition (`ptframe1`/`ptframe2`), so your six span
  the whole export. If any of the other four have a **transparent** trailing run,
  this rule leaves them alone on purpose. **Which screens are they on, and does a
  capture show any of them drawn?** If so the alpha rule is incomplete.
  This also closes the old ❔ on `ptframe1`/`ptframe2` "resting at alpha 0 but the
  capture shows the frame plainly".
* **The resting pose is the hold**, not the first, last or longest-dwell keyframe;
  a keyframe is the **start of a ramp**.
  [`ui-resting-pose.md`](../re/structures/ui-resting-pose.md). ✅
* **That ramp is linear, and it runs at 2 keyframe time units per rendered
  frame.** Measured frame-by-frame off the running game's own draw stream: a
  declared 15-unit fade lands on `round(255·k/15)` for all seven of its samples,
  with `k` stepping 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14 on seven consecutive submitted frames.
  **measured**, not decoded — the disc says `t=30`, it does not say what a `t` is.
  🟡 **But a multi-keyframe element's TIMELINE does not reproduce (2026-08-28).**
  The linear law and the 2-units-per-frame rate rest on the splash's `_eff`
  glows, and those are exact. Applying *their* calibration — with no free
  parameter left — to `palogo_gamearts` in the same bundle and the same frames:
  the logo is still at `a=255` nine frames after its declared `a=32`, its
  fade-out runs ~17 frames late, and its declared 80-frame fade-in is never
  drawn at all (and that is not culling — the same element is submitted down to
  `a=7` on the way out). Its declared fade-out also spends 12 of 16 units
  dropping only 23/255 of the alpha; the capture shows no such plateau.
  🔵 **Followed up, and the candidate is now strongly favoured — but not
  adopted.** That `+36` holds the *next* pose's time is supported by a
  calibration-free measurement: the observed full-alpha **hold : fade-out** ratio
  is 83 : 13 frames = **6.38**, the shifted reading predicts **8.00**, and the
  current reading predicts **0.25** — off by **26×**. With the glow's 2
  units/frame fixed and nothing else free, the current reading says the logo
  holds full alpha for **2.0 frames**; the game holds it for **83**. The shift
  also makes `rest()`'s plain dwell rule pick the visible hold instead of a
  fully transparent pose, and removes the decoder's "last block's time is
  unreadable" special case.
  ~~🔴 **What stops it:** … `GP_TITLE` build 7 … twins should match in
  brightness …~~ **Withdrawn 2026-08-28.** That render difference is **not**
  evidence about the time association. It is one element — `ptlogo_eff3.t32`, a
  transient bloom that grows `0 % → 200 %` at full alpha while rotating, then
  collapses — and it has **no resting pose at all**. `rest()` falls through to
  its dwell fallback and returns whichever end of that movement the indexing
  lands on: the invisible frame as decoded, the 200 % peak shifted. An 896×389
  sprite at 200 % is larger than the screen, which is the whole 13.1 % and the
  whole luminance gap. I was comparing a heuristic, not a decode.
  🔴 **And that is a real defect you should know about:** `rest()`'s dwell rule
  is unsound *whenever it runs*. A dwell gap is time spent interpolating **from**
  pose k **to** pose k+1; neither is held unless they are equal — which is a
  plateau, and the plateau path has already returned by then. **So any element
  with no two adjacent identical poses has a guessed rest pose**, in our renderer
  and in anything built from it. Measured disc-wide: **2 305 of 15 493 elements
  (14.88 %)** — ⚠️ **corrected 2026-08-29 down from a published 3 807 (24.57 %)**,
  which counted 1 502 *single-keyframe* elements as guesses; those have one pose
  and it is unambiguously their rest. Of the real 2 305, **195 get a degenerate
  `scale = 0 %` pose**, and the two
  candidate rules agree only **50.2 %** of the time.
  ✅ **This does not block you — your exposure is TWO elements, both on the
  splashes.** The fallback is reached only by an element that is plateau-less
  *and* multi-keyframe; a single-keyframe element short-circuits. Title, main
  menu and `EXTRAS` reach it **zero** times, which is why three different
  fallback rules render them to identical correlations. The publisher and
  developer splashes reach it once each — and there, `SYLPHEED_REST_RULE=last`
  (the final keyframe) scores **+0.9982** and **+0.9758** against the current
  rule's +0.9600 and +0.9643. ⚠️ Measured against single frames of a transient
  animation, so it fixes which pose matches *those* captures, not which is
  canonically at rest. Default unchanged — it is 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.
  ✅ **And the picture is now coherent.** Applying the last keyframe to *every*
  element (not just the plateau-less ones) collapses all five screens — title
  0.9500→0.6819, main menu 0.9460→0.6416, `EXTRAS` 0.9440→0.5745, and both
  splashes render **blank**. The reason is the model: a group is **entry → hold →
  exit**, and the exit is the screen's *dismissal*. A displayed screen is sitting
  at the **hold**, not at its final pose — so `rest_plateau` is right, and the
  last keyframe is the *post-exit* state. It is right for a **transient** element
  precisely because a transient's settled state is "gone". The draw capture agrees
  independently: on the developer splash the `_eff` glows draw on frames 94–115
  and the logos on 116–211, so the glows are already over when the logos are up.
  **Three independent observables — animation timing, static composites and the
  per-frame draw log — all support: plateau where there is one, last keyframe
  where there is not.**
  📊 **Structurally, `last` is defensible for 2 293 of the 2 305 (99.5 %)**: 1 618
  end invisible (a transient, gone at rest), 675 end at maximum alpha (faded in
  and stopped — the final pose *is* settled), and only **12** end visible below
  full alpha, which are genuinely unclear. The dwell rule returns a mid-movement
  frame by construction. ⚠️ The 1 618 rest on an assumption worth seeing: that
  such an element's animation has finished by the time the screen settles — shown
  by the draw log for the two splash glows, unshown for the rest.
  📊 The disc-wide blast radius, for whoever decides: the rules **differ on 82.3 %**
  of those 2 305, so "either is fine" is not available — and the current rule
  returns a **zero-scale** (collapsed, pre-roll) pose for **195** of them against
  **43** under `last`, a 4.5× reduction in provably-degenerate results. That
  argues the same way as the captures, from the data's own structure. The single disagreement
  is `palogo_anima_eff.t32` on the developer splash, and the current answer is
  the defensible one there — see below. Still worth flagging plateau-less
  elements in an export rather than silently inheriting our guess; it is one pass
  over the keyframes.
  ✅ **One concrete part of it is fixed (2026-08-28): `scale = 0` no longer
  renders at full size.** `blit`/`fill_quad` coerced `scale == 0` to 100 %, so an
  element collapsed to nothing was drawn full-size. The disc settles the reading:
  2 166 elements have a zero-scale keyframe, **not one is zero throughout**, and
  1 762 grow back out of zero — so 0 means collapsed, not "unset". **Renders are
  24/24 byte-identical** on `GP_TITLE` (all 16 builds), `GP_PAUSE_MENU` and
  `GP_OPTIONS`, so nothing you rely on moves; the 126 elements the old
  code actually painted are **all in `GP_READY_ROOM.pak`**, already a no-go.
  [`structures/ui-rat-layout.md`](../re/structures/ui-rat-layout.md)
  🔴 **"rest = last keyframe" is refuted** as the fix. The splash has three
  sibling glows with identical structure and times, differing in one byte
  (`a=212` vs `a=255` at `t=45`); that rule would make `anima_eff` alone
  invisible while its two siblings stay lit. The capture agrees weakly — box-mean
  ratios capture/render are gamearts 0.717, seta 0.723, **anima 0.772**, and a
  glow we drew that the game does not would put anima *below* its siblings.
  [`structures/ui-resting-pose.md`](../re/structures/ui-resting-pose.md)
  🟡 **The shift is still not adopted**, now for a different reason: it flips
  this element to the visibly wrong answer, so it and a decision about
  plateau-less elements have to land together, and neither half has a capture to
  verify against.
  **Default unchanged**, experiment reachable via `SYLPHEED_KF_TIME_SHIFT=1`.
  **What this means for you:** the interpolation *law* is settled (linear, 2
  units/frame); a multi-keyframe group's *timing* is not — do not expect a
  2-frame hold where the game holds 83.
  ✅ **The seconds conversion is settled: `1 unit = 1/60 s`, a 30 Hz title.** The
  re-test this page used to name has been run — 300 submitted frames timed on the
  **idle** title (nothing loading) came out at **28.8 and 28.3 fps**, the same
  rate as the 27.6 fps measured during the loading splash. The competing 60 Hz
  reading is excluded: it needs the emulator at 47 % of real time while idling on
  a screen that costs ~5 draws per frame.
  A second, independent line agrees — the transition quad is declared black for
  12 units (0.20 s under this conversion) and a capture measured the pure-black
  plateau at 0.17–0.23 s
  ([`screen-transitions.md`](../re/screen-transitions.md)).
  ⚠️ Still **measured, not decoded**: no field on the disc says "sixtieths of a
  second".
* **The paint order is derivable from the file.** Each `T8aD` sprite header
  carries a **`u16` layer key at `+0x0A`** (the upper half of the 32-bit word at
  `+0x08` is zero in all 21 184 sprites on the disc). Paint order is that key,
  **stable-sorted** so equal keys keep declaration order; elements with no sprite
  (`.prm` primitives, `.tbm`) have no key and take an implied one — the backdrop
  and dim quads sort early, the screen-transition fade (`pteff00.prm`,
  `pfeff00.prm`) sorts **last**. ✅ decoded. Checked against five paint orders read
  off the running game, one of them (`GP_SAVE_LOAD`'s slot-list header, 6
  instances) **exact and independent of the screens the rule was fitted to**, and
  against a fresh `EXTRAS` capture. It reorders 341 of the disc's 965 builds, so
  it is not a no-op dressed as a rule.
  🟡 **The one residual: ties.** Where two elements share a key the game
  sometimes paints them in an order nothing predicts — eight candidates refuted,
  including declaration order, RATC child order, keyframe times, resting X/Y and
  `kind`. Measured cost: on the three screens with ground truth it changes the
  blend of **one element on one screen** (a title glow). Take the stable sort and
  accept that.

* **Ⓑ returns to the title, and that title still works.** Ⓐ on the Ⓑ-returned
  title opens the main menu — measured, with Ⓐ on the boot title as the control in
  the same run. (Only the *attract*-returned title is inert, which is an emulator-
  harness curiosity, not a port concern.)
* **Menu movement, measured off the running game.** ⬆⬇ move one item per press
  and **wrap at both ends** (5-item main menu and 3-item `EXTRAS` both). ⬅➡ do
  nothing. Ⓑ goes up one level **and restores focus to the item you came from**;
  Ⓑ on the main menu returns to the title; Ⓑ on the title does nothing. **Initial
  focus is not stable**: four boots of the same script gave `TUTORIAL`,
  `TUTORIAL`, `NEW GAME`, `NEW GAME`. Do not hardcode it; pick one and say you
  picked it. All **measured**, none of it on the disc.
* **Each button's destination is measured; its GamePart id is not.**
  **`NEW GAME` → `DIFFICULTY`** (`EASY`/`NORMAL`/`HARD`/`BACK`, opening on
  `NORMAL`) **→ `SELECT DATA`** — it does *not* hang; the run then hits the
  already-documented `sub_823070B0` cache crash, which is not a menu problem.
  `LOAD GAME` → the save-slot list, `TUTORIAL` → the lesson list, `OPTIONS` →
  the settings menu, `EXTRAS` → `GP_TITLE` build 6, `EXTRAS ▸ MISSION SELECT` →
  the stage list. The
  GamePart ids (`3`, `25`, `8`, `5`, `7`) are the entries of the decoded id table
  whose **names match the screens seen**; that binding is authored, not measured.

* **A screen change is a fade through black.** Each screen carries a full-screen
  black `.prm` quad that paints last (`pteff00.prm` / `pfeff00.prm`) whose
  keyframe group *is* the transition: black at `T0`, clear by `T1`, clear until
  `T2`, then back to black on exit. ✅ decoded, with a disc-wide check — and in
  `GP_TITLE` exactly the six **screen** builds carry it while the six overlays do
  not. The fade-in length is `T1 − T0` and is read from the file (0.87 s for
  `EXTRAS`, 0.97 s main menu, 4.08 s title). ❔ **The fade-OUT length is not on
  the disc** — the last keyframe has no time slot; **measured ~0.4 s**, twice.
  The black hold measures 0.17–0.23 s. ⚠️ Do not time the fade-in off a capture's
  brightness: the incoming screen's own element animations dominate it and run
  much longer than the quad.

* **The movie manifest names every boot-side video by role.** `dat/tables.pak`
  entry `0x5b983a08`: `LOGO1`–`LOGO4` → `logo1.wmv`–`logo4.wmv` (**not on the
  disc** — this is why the splash is a screen), **`ADVERTISE_MOVIE` → `ADV.wmv`**,
  `STAFF_ROLL` → `SYLPH_HD720p_8M-CBR_2ch.wmv`, **`MS00A` → `S00A.wmv`** (the
  new-game intro, 93.9 s, with subtitle + `VOICE_S00A` + a text overlay),
  `MS01A` → `S01A.wmv`. ✅ decoded — and **`S00A.wmv` is now also measured**: matched off the running game at 0.96–1.000 with a strictly monotone playhead over 25 consecutive 0.5 s samples. It starts ~4.5 s after Ⓐ on the save slot.
  **The boot intro and the attract movie are the SAME asset** — there is no
  separate boot slot, and 15 of 19 captured attract frames match `ADV.wmv` with a
  monotonically advancing playhead ending at its full 137 s. One video, not two.
  ✅ The attract movie **plays to its end**; nothing cuts it short.
  ✅ **A movie is skippable with a single Ⓐ.** Measured: one tap ~45 s into the
  boot brought the title at ~57 s against a ~193 s no-input baseline over three
  boots, with Canary's own keystroke counter proving exactly one press was
  delivered — and the skipped-to title is **fully functional** (`PRESS Ⓐ` plate
  present, Ⓐ opens the main menu). What breaks the boot is *hammering*: 88
  presses left a permanent black screen. One press is fine.

* **The menu's sound events are named on the disc.** `tables.pak`'s `SOUNDS`
  record carries 322 `SE_*` cues, and the low block is the UI vocabulary — named
  after the *event*: `SE_UI_CURSOR` (2), `SE_UI_DECIDE` (3), `SE_UI_CANSEL` (4),
  `SE_UI_IMPOSI` (5, the error), `SE_UI_SUB_WIN_OPN`/`_CLS` (8/9),
  `SE_UI_SPLASH_IN`/`_OUT` (12/13). ✅ decoded, full list in
  [`data/se-ui-cues.txt`](../re/data/se-ui-cues.txt). They all live in **one**
  bank — `BANK_SE` is a single field naming `Static.slb`, and 0 of the 322 has
  its own `FILES` entry.
  🟡 **Which event fires which cue is a name match**, not a measurement — strong,
  because these are the authors' own event names, but nobody has watched the game
  emit cue 2 on a d-pad press. The port is authoring it.
  ✅ **The SE audio IS extractable — by playing it.** (This corrects an earlier
  "cannot be extracted" on this page.) The disc carries no index: `Static.slb` has
  **0 `RIFF`/`seek`/`WAVE`** and there is **no XACT container anywhere** (0 ×
  `XGSF`/`SDBK`/`WBND` in 1.08 GB of `sound.pak`; no `XACT` string in the
  executable — those extensions are the authoring tool's). But Canary's
  `--xma_param_probe=true` logs every stream's head bytes, and searching them in
  `Static.slb` locates the wave exactly:
  **d-pad move → `0x1ec0` (4 pkts / 8 192 B, 0.533 s); Ⓐ confirm → `0x5d6c0`
  (6 pkts / 12 288 B, 1.016 s); Ⓑ back → `0x0ec0` (2 pkts / 4 096 B, 0.344 s)** —
  every cue the five screens need. Move and back reproduce with identical head
  bytes across **two independent boots**. Each matched at one offset only, and
  the first two are contiguous
  (`0x0ec0 + 4096 = 0x1ec0`) — the bank is a packed run of whole 2 048-byte
  packets with no delimiters, which is why nothing could be scanned for.
  ❔ **⬅ and ➡ play nothing distinct** — no new stream on either, so leave them
  silent (the probe dedups, so this excludes a *distinct* invalid cue, not a
  quiet replay of an already-heard one).
  🟡 The Ⓐ press both confirms and opens a screen, so whether its wave is the cue
  named `SE_UI_DECIDE` or `SE_UI_SUB_WIN_OPN` is not separated.
  ⚠️ The order is **not** cue-id order, so the index must be observed per cue, not
  counted. ✅ **The slices decode**: 0.533 s, 0.344 s and 1.016 s of mono 48 kHz
  audio with the attack-and-decay shape of UI blips, via
  `tools/re-capture/slb_extract_wave.py` — whose wrapper reproduces a known-good
  `BGM_001` decode to the same 173.808875 s, so it is verified, not assumed.

* **The boot sequence is not data-driven — the port authors it.** ❔ Four places
  were checked and the order is in none: `config.ini`'s `[SYSTEM]` is empty, the
  movie manifest carries assets not transitions, the requested GamePart id lives
  **only as a stack argument in flight** (no persistent field, no literal store),
  and the string `GP_ADVERTISE_DEMO` has **zero xrefs**. A transition is a call
  with an id argument, chosen by code.
  🟡 **But the states have names, and the transition uses them.** `sub_821C6458`,
  the title part's state function, calls **`sub_821CC860(…, "<NAME>", 0)`** with
  `TITLE_SCREEN`, `TITLE_MENU` and `LOADING` — the three states measured off the
  game, in the game's own words — and installs the result. So a transition is a
  call with a **name** argument, which is also why `GP_ADVERTISE_DEMO` has no
  xrefs: at this level the screen graph is name-keyed, not id-keyed.
  ✅ The argument is now **decoded** at 46 of that function's 48 call sites (28
  distinct names). ⚠️ It is a **generic name-keyed lookup**, not a screen factory —
  its arguments include `BG`, `BLACK`, `FADE`, `FILE`, `KEY`, `PAD`, `SOUND`,
  `GAMMA_RGB`. An earlier version of this page claimed `DIFFICULTY` and
  `EXTRA_MENU` as corroborated screen names; **neither is ever the argument**, and
  only `TUTORIAL_MENU` survives.
  ✅ **And the state machine itself is decoded**: `state = this+136`, ten states
  dispatched through a jump table at `0x821C6498`, with **18 transitions** each a
  literal `li`/`stw`. States **0, 2, 8** install `TITLE_SCREEN`, `TITLE_MENU`,
  `LOADING`. `4 → 0` is the only edge back to the title, reached from `2 → 4` —
  which matches Ⓑ-returns-to-title as measured. Full graph in
  [`data/title-state-machine.txt`](../re/data/title-state-machine.txt).
  ⚠️ **All of that is ONE PHASE.** `GamePart_Title` dispatches on an outer phase
  field at `this+132` (five values) before reaching any of it: phase 0 is the
  **developer splash** (`sub_821C5690`, the same function the corpus fingered
  independently), phase 4 is the title/menu machine. The ten states and
  eighteen edges above live inside phase 4 alone.
  ✅ **State 4's edge conditions are an event code** — `sub_821C6458`'s third
  argument. State 4 is the input-waiting state (reached straight after the menu
  is installed) and handles 6 of 26 events: **`0` → title**, **`3`, `5`, `8`,
  `25` → `LOADING`**, `10` → state 5.
  🟡 What the event *numbers* mean is not decoded — button id, menu row, or
  message id — so the port still takes the button→destination map from
  measurement. The one-to-title / four-to-loading shape matches the five-item
  menu with Ⓑ, but that is a **count-match, not a mapping**. The sequence itself is fully measured:
  splash → `ADV.wmv` → title + `PRESS Ⓐ` → (idle ~8–10 s → `ADV.wmv` in full →
  title) → Ⓐ → main menu, with Ⓑ from the main menu returning to the title.

* **`config.ini` picks the language, and that is what picks the EN/JP build.**
  The disc's **only** config file (400 bytes, at the root; one `find` over the
  whole extract). Its `[LANGUAGE]` section maps the console's `XC_LANGUAGE_*`
  value to `eng`/`jpn`/`deu`/`fra`/`esp`/`ita`, defaulting to `eng` — that code
  selects `GP_TITLE`'s English or Japanese build and the `<lang>.pak` families.
  ✅ decoded.
  ❔ Its `[SYSTEM]` section — which the file's own comment says holds what the
  game and every game part share — is **empty**, so the boot *order* is not in
  disc-side configuration at all.
* **Five GameParts are named but never registered.** Pulling every
  `RegisterToFactory<N, class silph::GamePart_X>` diagnostic string binds **24 of
  the 29 ids to a C++ class**
  ([`data/gamepart-class-ids.txt`](../re/data/gamepart-class-ids.txt)). Ids `1`,
  `2`, `16`, `18`, `28` have no registration site — including
  **`GP_ADVERTISE_DEMO` (1)**, which agrees with the measurement that the attract
  loop is the *title* replaying `ADV.wmv` rather than a separate part. 🟡 an
  argument from a diagnostic string, not from the code.
  Also: **`3` and `4` are both `GamePart_SaveLoad`** — one part, two ids.

* **The GamePart id table** — 29 entries at `.rdata 0x820A1630`, confirmed by the
  executable's own registration strings. ✅ This is the screen vocabulary; which
  button reaches which entry is Q4 and is *not* part of it.
* **The logo splash is a screen, not a video, and it renders.** `logo1`–`logo4`
  are manifest-bound with no `.wmv` on the disc. ✅ The screen is **two** bundles
  in `GP_TITLE.pak`, each shipped twice: entries **10/13** the white
  `SQUARE ENIX` publisher logo, entries **11/14** `GAME ARTS`/`SETA`/`studio
  anima`. ⚠️ They are **invisible to the default `screen list`/`render`** —
  `is_build` rejects them for having no `.rat` child. Pass **`--all`**, which
  renumbers `--build`. So the first of the five screens does have a reference
  composite. ✅ **And a capture**: both halves edge-correlate to their renders at
  **0.91** and **0.98** at zero shift, each rejected by the other (0.03, −0.03).
  ✅ **Its timing is DECODED, not just measured.** The splash **fades both ways**
  and the bundles carry the keyframes: `SQUARE ENIX` `[15 30 235 239 251 255]`,
  developer logos `[15 30 190 194 206 210]`, each with an `_eff` glow child on
  `[15 30 45]`. Under `1 unit = 1/60 s` that is a 0.25 s ramp in, a **3.42 s**
  / **2.67 s** hold, and a **0.33 s** fade out — and a 10 fps capture measures
  ≈ 3.5 s / ≈ 2.4 s holds and **≈ 0.3 s** fade-outs. The visible brightness
  overshoot on the way in is the `_eff` glow ramping after the logo, not a
  rendering artifact. Wall-clock: logos ≈ 0.4–4.7 s and ≈ 4.9–8.4 s, then
  `ADV.wmv` from ≈ 8.9 s. ⚠️ The cyan `SQUARE ENIX` at ≈ 9.5 s is the
  **movie's** opening, not a third splash screen.
* **Sprites carry their own labels.** No font rendering or localisation is needed
  for this milestone. ✅ — and the localisation is *already baked in*: the
  Japanese screens are separate builds in the same pak, not a text swap.

## Facts the port will trip over

* **`ADV.wmv` is WMV3 video + WMA Pro audio**, 1280×720 at 30 fps, 137 s. Godot 4
  plays only Ogg Theora natively. How to handle that is the port's decision, not
  ours — but it is not optional.
* **The disc holds 3.3 GB of video, and exactly two files are in scope:**
  `dat/movie/ADV.wmv` (the boot intro *and* the attract loop — one asset) and
  `dat/movie/S00A.wmv` (the new-game intro, 93.9 s). Named from the movie
  manifest, ✅ decoded.
* **`Static.slb` over-declares its size** by 616 768 bytes — it is the
  highest-offset entry in `sound.pak` and its size field is an allocation size. A
  reader must allow a short read there and only there.
* **Voice downmixes to mono, music does not.** The left-channel downmix is correct
  for spoken lines and discards half a music mix.
* **A music bank is TWO STEMS THAT PLAY TOGETHER — do not concatenate.**
  ✅ The "10 KB + 4.47 MB + 4.67 MB" reading was wrong: the 10 KB is the bank
  header, and a bank is exactly **two waves of identical duration** (32/32 banks
  on the disc). `BGM_001`'s two are **sample-synchronous** — transient
  correlation peaks at lag 0.00 s over ±5 s, and both stop at the same
  millisecond, 167.663 s. Wave 1 is quieter, far more L/R-decorrelated and has
  almost no bass, so it reads as a surround-rear pair or a second intensity
  layer — 🟡 which of those is unsettled, and `ChannelMask` is `0x0002` on both,
  so the file will not say. Today's 347 s concatenation plays the piece twice,
  the second time as a bass-less stem.
  🔴 **"not a seamless loop … no loop-point field identified … a menu loop is
  authored" — REFUTED 2026-08-30, and this bullet kept saying it for days after
  the correction existed elsewhere.** The fade and the 6.15 s of silence are real,
  but there **is** a loop point — in the **XMA decoder context**, set at runtime by
  `XMASetLoopData`. For `BGM_103` it is **`[9.44 s, 71.31 s]`, cycling every
  61.87 s**, watched over three wraps. The game never reaches the fade, which is
  why the stored tail looked unusable. See the 2026-08-30 entries at the top.
  ✅ **The menu's music is `BGM_103`.** The cue *table* cannot say — its BGM
  entries are numeric — but `GamePart_Title`'s `sub_821C5580` plays **cue 1103**,
  and `BGM_103.slb`'s two declared waves (3 876 864 / 3 930 112 B) are
  byte-for-byte the two streams the XMA probe saw decoding at the main menu.
  Static code, disc census and runtime all agree. The port does **not** have to
  choose a track.
* **`JNGL_001.slb` does not decode.** One bank in 9 519; its payload is not a whole
  number of XMA1 packets from any known data offset.

## What is still open

Every question above is answered, so this is the honest residue rather than a
work queue. **None of it blocks the five screens.** (Q1's seconds conversion was
here until 2026-08-28 and is now settled.)

| | what | why it is stuck |
|---|---|---|
| 🟡 | **cue NAME → event binding** (Q8) | event→**wave** is measured for move/confirm/back; that the cursor's wave is the cue *named* `SE_UI_CURSOR` is still read off the authors' identifiers |
| ❔ | **the other ~319 SE cues** (Q8) | located one at a time by triggering them; only the three the menu needs have been done |
| ✅ | **the paint-order tie-break** (Q3) | ✅ **CLOSED 2026-08-29 — the cost is measured and it is one pixel.** At the instant the player sees, the tie-break changes **at most 1 px at Δ1**, on the **Japanese title only**; **exactly 0 px on all five screens you ship**. The previous 24-pair bound was a `rest()` count and survives as such (entry 7's 16 reproduces exactly), but 10 of the title's 11 tied pairs are between `ptlogo_back2eff1`…`eff5` — five transient flashes that are **transparent** on the settled screen. Not a knife-edge: the live-pair count is flat across the whole settle window, and the loading bundles' tie is live only during the build-in (t17–t33). Controls live on every entry reporting zero (a different-key swap moves 25 310 / 268 698 / ~765 000 px); ⚠️ except entries 0/1/12/15, whose zeros rest on keyframe data rather than a render. ❔ *Why* the game orders ties as it does is still unknown — and now costs one pixel — [`ui-tie-break-cost-at-settle.md`](../re/structures/ui-tie-break-cost-at-settle.md) · [cost run](../re/data/tie-break-pixel-cost-gp_title.txt) · [time sweep](../re/data/tie-break-live-over-time-gp_title.txt) |
| 🟡 | **GamePart ids behind the buttons** (Q4) | the *screens* are measured; the ids are a name match onto the executable's class names |
| 🟡 | **the boot transitions in code** (Q6) | both levels decoded — phase at `this+132` (`entry→2`, `2→0`, `2→3`, `3→4`, `4→2`) and state at `this+136` inside phase 4. Phase 0 = splash (`LOGO`), phase 2 = title + `PRESS Ⓐ`, phase 4 = menu. Unknown: what the event *numbers* mean |
| 🟡 | **Ⓑ leaving the main menu** (Q5) | **upgraded 2026-08-29 (later).** The idle half of this objection is **refuted**: the main menu does not self-return for **≥ 60 s** untouched, and the ~8–10 s idle belongs to the **title**. Ⓑ is delivered (Canary logs `vk=5801`) and is the only input in ≥ 100 s before the return, so the **ordering is measured**; the latency is not (a backlogged probe void). The footer point stands — the main menu is still the only screen not advertising Ⓑ — [`menu-navigation-semantics.md`](../re/menu-navigation-semantics.md#-refutation-attempt-2026-08-29--the-main-menus-own-footer-does-not-advertise-ⓑ) |
| 🟡 | **which loading bundle is `LOADING` and which `LOADING2`** (Q2) | ✅ the pair is identified — they are the loading screen, decoded from `pgloading_*` element names, and the executable names exactly two. What is open is only the assignment, and nothing observed maps a name to a bundle. ⚠️ The old row here said the pair was *unidentified `DELTASABER` plates never seen running*; that is withdrawn — a loading screen is not supposed to appear on the title path |

(An earlier version of this table called the audio items blocked on "an emulator
whose audio path can be observed". That was wrong — this build already has
`--xma_param_probe`, and using it settled both.)

⚠️ **A container caveat that bounds all of the above:** the emulator has twice
been killed mid-run with no crash line in its own log (at ~50 s and ~145 s), on a
box sitting at ~1 GB free with swap exhausted. Dynamic experiments here have to
fit in roughly two minutes of guest time, which is why several of these residuals
are unfinished rather than unattempted.

## The player's-eye map of the menus

[`docs/game/navigation.md`](../game/navigation.md) is the screen-by-screen walk
through the game from the chair — every label, what the cursor does, what each
footer offers. It was filled in on 2026-08-29 from the committed oracle frames,
and it is the page to read if you want to know what a screen *looks like* rather
than how its bundle is laid out. Every ✅ there is a capture, and what is still ❔
is what no capture answers.

## Reference data

Committed alongside the findings, so the port can be built without a disc in the
loop during development:

* `sylpheed-cli screen info --build <n> GP_TITLE.pak` — the element table, per
  build, with pivots, kinds, focus links, keyframes and resting poses.
* `sylpheed-cli screen render` — the reference composite. When the port draws a
  screen, this is what it should be diffed against; where they disagree, one of
  them is wrong and the disagreement is worth reporting back.
* `docs/re/captures/` — framebuffer captures of the real screens, for anything
  that has to be checked against the game rather than against our renderer.

## 2026-08-29 — the settled screen is one instant (`settle_units` is decodable)

✅ **decoded.** You author `settle_units` per screen. The disc gives it:
`UiBuild::settle_time()` returns the midpoint of the **longest keyframe-free
interval** in a build, and `settle_window()` returns the interval so you can judge
it. Computed from the keyframe table alone — no capture involved.

**Why it matters beyond saving an authored constant.** Our renderer posed each
element at `Element::rest()`, its last *hold* keyframe, chosen independently of
every other element. For a transient that is exactly wrong: `ptlogo_back2eff1` is
a two-frame flash (`a=0` until t52, `255` at t54–56, `0` by t58), so its last hold
*is* the peak and it burned forever. `GP_TITLE` build 4 has **five** such flashes
— one light sweep drawn as five staggered frames, all out by t110 — and drawing
them at once saturated the light arc behind the logo.

Against `live-title-build4-no-plate.png`, posing at the predicted t=198:

| | mean abs diff | arc band | pixels at clipping |
|---|---|---|---|
| console capture | — | — | **1 459** |
| `rest()` | 14.07 | 33.22 | 8 581 |
| **`--at 198`** | **12.06** | **11.79** | **1 452** |

The clipped count is unfitted and lands within 0.5 % of the console's.

⚠️ **Scope it.** Of the 1 758 composable bundles with ≥ 2 keyframe times, only
**30 %** have a window ≥ 30 units; **42 %** have one under 10 units. The latter are
mostly `loop*` fragments — they are *meant* to be in motion and have no settled
pose. Check `settle_window()`'s width before taking the midpoint.

🔴 **A retraction you should act on.** I previously told you Reborn "does not draw
`ptlogo1` / `ptlogo2` at all", and that our two renderers were therefore not
comparable on the title. **Both are wrong.** Build 4 declares *six* ptlogo
elements: indices 0 and 1 are kind `0x0`, alpha 255, and are drawn; indices 2–5
are kind `0x4` ghost instances at (−116,−7) and (437,508), alpha 0, skipped
deliberately. Hiding element 0 makes the error *worse* by +5.20 whole-frame and
+7.61 in the band. The renderers are comparable, and the ptlogos were never the
residual.

🔴 **And `ComposeOptions::at` posed leaves only** — my own fix for a bug I
mis-diagnosed. That is why the earlier rotation pose scan was flat over t = 0…600:
it moved the sweeps and never touched the top-level flashes. `at` now poses
everything; `at = None` is byte-identical (verified with `cmp`) and the
pre-rotation tag renders identically at rest, so nothing regressed.

❔ **Not settled:** the remaining 12.06, which is broad and level-like rather than
spatial — consistent with the tone term. And the **10.92** baseline quoted in
`ui-rotation-implemented.md` is **not reproducible**: the same command gives 14.07
at that document's own pre-change tag and 14.07 today. Treat conclusions resting
on it as unverified.

Detail, controls and census: [`docs/re/structures/ui-settle-time.md`](../re/structures/ui-settle-time.md).

## 2026-08-29 (later) — Q3's last open half is closed: the tie-break costs one pixel

✅ **You can stop worrying about the paint-order tie-break.** Its cost is now
measured rather than bounded, and on the five screens you ship it is **zero
pixels**. The single non-zero anywhere in `GP_TITLE` is **1 pixel at Δ1** on the
**Japanese** title, where `ptlogo2` and `ptlogo_tm` share 5 pixels of ink.

**Why the earlier 24-pair figure looked alarming.** It was counted at `rest()`,
and 10 of the title's 11 overlapping tied pairs are between
`ptlogo_back2eff1`…`eff5` — the five transient flashes from the settle-time
finding, which are **transparent on the settled screen**. A tie between two
invisible elements cannot cost a pixel. The 24 itself is not wrong; it is a
rest-pose upper bound, and I reproduced its entry-7 component (16) exactly.

**It does not hinge on picking one instant.** Sweeping every keyframe time and
every midpoint, the number of live tied pairs is **flat across the entire settle
window** — 1 on the EN title, 2 on the JP title, 0 on all four loading bundles,
whose tie is live only at t17–t33 during the build-in.

⚠️ **One honest gap:** entries 0, 1, 12 and 15 report zero with **no live
control** — no overlapping different-key pair is drawn there, so nothing
demonstrates the renderer would notice a swap on those bundles. Their zeros come
from the keyframe data (no tied pair has both elements opaque at any instant in
the window), which is why I state them, but they are a weaker kind of zero than
the other six.

❔ **Still unknown:** *why* the game orders ties as it does. Eight candidate rules
remain refuted. This finding does not answer it — it makes it cheap to get wrong.

Detail, controls and reach: [`docs/re/structures/ui-tie-break-cost-at-settle.md`](../re/structures/ui-tie-break-cost-at-settle.md).

## 2026-08-29 (later still) — the plate's pulse period is 120, not 105

✅ **decoded, and it answers the question you asked.** The `ptbtn00f` group holds
at alpha 0 between cycles. It does not loop from t=105.

**A nested record is itself a RATC bundle with its own header, and that header's
`+0x08` is the loop length.** The keyframes do not have to fill it; the slack is a
hold at the final pose:

| record | `+0x08` | largest keyframe | slack |
|---|---|---|---|
| `ptbtn00f.rat` — the plate glow | **120** | 105 | **15** |
| `ptbtn01f` … `ptbtn05f` — your main-menu focus records | 120 | 120 | 0 |
| `ptloop01` / `ptloop02` | 600 / 720 | 600 / 720 | 0 |

So the glow ramps 0→80→0 over 105 units inside a **120-unit** cycle and rests dark
for 15. Your five menu focus records fill their cycle exactly, which is what shows
the slack belongs to this record rather than to the format.

**Disc-wide, 1 781 timed nested records:** 92.3 % declare exactly their last
keyframe time, **7.7 % declare more**, and **0 declare less** — a cycle never
restarts before its own last pose. That last row is the falsifier and it never
fires; the 7.7 % is what stops the reading being a relabelling of the keyframes.

**And it survives the test your objection implies.** Both candidate periods have to
be converted by the same emulator pacing factor, and that factor is measured
*independently* on your focus ring — declared 120 units, measured 2.177 s, so
**1.0885**:

| plate period | nominal | factor needed to reach the measured 2.12–2.34 s | |
|---|---|---|---|
| 105 units | 1.750 s | 1.211 … 1.337 | 🔴 excludes the ring's 1.0885 |
| **120 units** | 2.000 s | 1.060 … 1.170 | ✅ **contains it** |

At 120 units the predicted period is **2.177 s** against a measured 2.12–2.34 s.
**105 cannot reach that range under any pacing factor the ring also satisfies.**
The ring and the plate are different elements in different bundles measured in
separate runs; the only thing tying them together is that both declare 120.

🔴 **So stop shipping 105.** The number is 120 and it is on the disc — not from
`exit_ramp_units`, the constant you correctly deleted, whose 129 merely happened to
fit. Your 123-vs-129 ambiguity straddled the right answer without containing it.

⚠️ The 2.24 s mean is still ~3 % above the 2.177 s prediction. That sits inside the
spread of four wall-clock samples of a ~2 s period and is not evidence of a further
hold — I looked for one and the disc does not declare it.

⚠️ **Scope:** this says where a cycle *ends*, not which records cycle. 92.3 % of
records declare no slack, and a one-shot build-in's length is simply its duration.
❔ The **top-level** `+0x08` is a different field and is untouched: every `GP_TITLE`
entry declares 300 while its elements end at 244–269, and no screen visibly repeats
every 5 s.

Detail, census and the falsification test:
[`docs/re/structures/ui-record-loop-length.md`](../re/structures/ui-record-loop-length.md).

## 2026-08-29 (later still) — the settle-time mechanism confirmed in the running game

✅ **measured.** The settle-time finding was previously confirmed only against a
*settled* frame, which shows the end state is right and says nothing about whether
the five flashes ever happen. They do. From a draw capture armed before the title
exists:

| element | drawn in frames | → t units | decoded |
|---|---|---|---|
| `ptlogo_back2eff1` | **130–131** | **54.0 – 56.3** | flash, peak **t54–56** |
| `ptlogo_back2eff2` | 133 | 61.0 | flash, peak t58–60 |
| `ptlogo_back2eff4` | 133–135 | 61.0 – 65.7 | flash, peak t~64 |
| `ptlogo_back2eff` / `ptlogo_back2` | 134–260 | 63.3 – … | **hold** |
| `ptlogo1` | **125** | **42.2** | stops moving at **t42** |

The flashes occupy a six-frame window and are absent from all 155 other sampled
frames. Units-per-frame came from the **glow's period alone** — a different
element — so the timings are not circular.

🔴 ~~**Do not draw all five flashes every time.**~~ **WITHDRAWN the same day — see
the correction at the end of this file. Your sequential drawing is correct; ignore
this.**

✅ **And your 120 is confirmed from the guest's own vertex data.** The glow quad's
per-vertex colour alpha *is* the element's fade alpha: observed range **0…80**
against a decoded peak of **80**, exact and unfitted; period **51.158 presented
frames** over 20 cycle starts; the draw is omitted entirely while dark. Fitting the
decoded ramp gives RMS 13.16 alpha levels against **38.18 for the same ramp
reversed**, so the asymmetry is real and pointing the right way.

✅ **Your top-level restriction is right and is now in the page**, verified rather
than taken: top-level gives `[160, 236]` (width 76), including the `ptloop` leaves
gives `[269, 540]` (width 271) — a "settled instant" *after every top-level
element has exited*. Thank you for catching that the description permitted the
wrong reading.

🔴 **A trap worth having before you write any draw-stream tooling:** a 2D draw's
identity here is its **vertex geometry, not its bound texture**. These sprites
sample large shared pages. Matching texture dimensions told me first that no flash
is ever drawn, and second that `ptbase2` and `pteff04` are drawn in frames 75–105 —
those frames are the **intro movie**, whose YUV planes are 640×360 and whose target
is 1280×720. Both wrong, neither loud.

Detail, controls and reach:
[`docs/re/structures/ui-title-buildin-measured.md`](../re/structures/ui-title-buildin-measured.md).

## 2026-08-29 — retraction: the flash advice was wrong

🔴 **I told you not to draw all five title flashes. That was wrong and you should
ignore it.** You checked it against your renderer instead of reasoning about it,
and you were right to.

Two claims of mine, both withdrawn:

* **"`eff3` was never drawn because a 2-unit peak is sub-frame."** `eff3` is
  non-zero for t ∈ (58, 64), and the capture's frames 133 and 134 sit at t = 60.0
  and 62.2 — squarely inside that window, with `eff2` and `eff4` both drawn in the
  same frames. It should have been submitted and was not. **The absence is real
  and unexplained**; it is not sampling phase, and it is not evidence that the
  element is inert. Your sweep drawing it at t=60–62 is what the disc says.
* **"A port drawing all five shows more sweep than the console."** No evidence.
  The pile-up worth warning about was the `rest()` bug, which is fixed.

⚠️ **What does hold is your own point, and it is now on my page.** The game's
timeline is 60 units/s against a 30 Hz present — 2 units per submitted frame — and
this capture ran at **2.231 units per presented frame**. So a frame-by-frame
comparison of the build-in against this capture **will** disagree about which
flash lands in which frame, and neither side is wrong. The settled comparison is
unaffected: at t=198 none of the five is drawn.

✅ **And a better confirmation of 120 than the one I sent, needing no calibration
at all.** The glow's draw is omitted when its alpha hits zero, and the smallest
alpha actually submitted across 807 drawn frames is **1** — so the culling
threshold is 1, read off the data. Then:

| | dark-frame fraction |
|---|---|
| **measured** (173 of 980 settled frames) | **17.7 %** |
| a **120**-unit cycle (15-unit dark hold) predicts | **14.4 %** |
| a **105**-unit cycle (no dark hold) predicts | **2.2 %** |

🔴 105 is out by a factor of eight, and would need a culling threshold of alpha 11
out of a peak of 80 — while the capture contains submitted draws at alpha 1, 2, 3,
4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 11 and 12. **The declared 15-unit dark hold is directly visible
as the frames where the game submits no draw.** No frame rate, no pacing factor,
no wall clock.

⚠️ **One honest gap, since I am correcting myself anyway.** With units/frame from
a regression over five build-in events (residuals ≤ 0.9 frames, and it recovers
t=0 at frame 106.1 against a composite spike at 107 that was not in the fit), the
glow's 51.158-frame period implies a **114**-unit cycle, not 120. The
dark-fraction test settles 120 against 105; the 5 % gap in the period does not
have an explanation yet.

⚠️ And a limit on the vertex-alpha trick: it holds for the **glow** and does not
generalise. Read the same way, `eff4` gives 255 / 127 / 254 on frames 133 / 134 /
135 — non-monotonic. The glow's exact agreement is evidence about the glow, not a
decoded rule about vertex colour.

## 2026-08-29 — `ptlogo_back2eff3` is declared on the disc and never drawn by the game

🔴 ~~**measured**, and this one is actionable: **you draw `eff3` at t=60–62 and the
console does not.**~~ **RETRACTED — see the correction at the end of this file.
The console DOES draw it. You were right to keep drawing all five.**

Last time I called `eff3`'s absence unexplained and withdrew a bad explanation for
it. Re-examined against the **second** title build-in in the same capture — the
attract loop returns, so one run contains two — it is absent there too, and three
alternative explanations now fail:

* **Sampling phase.** `eff3` is non-zero for t ∈ (58, 64) — **six units** — against
  a step of **2.23 units per presented frame**. A window wider than the step cannot
  be missed. Frames 133 (t = 60.1) and 134 (t = 62.3) sit inside it and draw `eff2`
  and `eff4`, not `eff3`.
* **A draw the log cannot see.** Exactly **2** draws per frame carry no geometry,
  on all 932 settled title frames, always the same full-screen-triangle shader, and
  present on frames where no wipe element is active. `eff3` is not among them.
* **A bad position guess on my side.** Dropping position entirely: across both
  build-in windows, **zero** quads anywhere on screen have a width within ±30 of
  408. The width spectrum jumps straight from 262 to 748.

Draw counts across both entries — `eff1` **4**, `eff2` **3**, **`eff3` 0**, `eff4`
**6**, against ~5 expected each.

The four are a right-aligned wipe (`eff2` 938+258, `eff3` 788+408, `eff4` 447+749,
`eff5` 64+1133, all ending at x≈1196) — a left-growing reveal in four widths, of
which the game draws three.

❔ **Why is not established.** Nothing in `eff3`'s element record distinguishes it
from its neighbours: same kind `0x0`, same keyframe shape, same `u4`/`u8`, same
scale. So this is *measured*, not decoded — if you drop `eff3` you are authoring a
behaviour I cannot derive from the file, and you should know that.

⚠️ **Two corrections to what I sent you before**, both mine and both found by
following up my own claims:

* **"Frame 107 is the title composited once" was an over-read.** It is a 27-draw
  spike between the movie's last frame and the title's first, it binds **no
  texture**, and only 4 of its 27 draws log geometry. I do not know what it is. The
  second title entry has no such frame at all.
* **The two build-ins are NOT frame-identical.** I had that impression from a
  coincidentally aligned pair of rows. Aligned properly, only **4 of 46** frames
  match. They are the same animation sampled at different phases — which is the
  reason the `eff3` result is robust rather than a coincidence.

Detail and the ruled-out explanations:
[`docs/re/structures/ui-title-buildin-measured.md`](../re/structures/ui-title-buildin-measured.md).

## 2026-08-29 — the boot splash black gap is ~9 units, not 12; and I was wrong to dismiss it

🔴 **First, my part in the miss.** You put the `publisher_logo` residual at 0.03 s
against a bound built from two measured ranges plus jitter slack, and I agreed it
said more about the bound than the game. It did not. You filmed it and the gap was
0.2 s. **A plausible explanation for a small number is how a real defect stays
hidden**, and I supplied one.

✅ **Now measured properly, in the draw stream rather than luminance** — which
matters, because luminance cannot separate the outgoing screen's fade tail from
true black, and the draw stream can:

| frames | submitted |
|---|---|
| 21 – 125 | `palogo_sqex`, fading to alpha **7** |
| **126 – 129** | 🔴 **no sprite quad at all** |
| 130 – 153 | the developer splash, fading in from alpha **34** |

**4 presented frames**, the only such run in the whole sequence.

Converted with the **disc as its own clock** rather than a frame rate (this run
presented at 13.1 fps, against 28 elsewhere — not usable): `palogo_sqex` declares
alpha ≥ 1 for **239.8 units** and is drawn in **105** frames → **2.284
units/frame**, which the title capture independently corroborates at 2.231.

| | units | seconds |
|---|---|---|
| **measured, 4 frames** | **9.1** | **0.152** |
| ±1 frame | 6.9 – 11.4 | 0.114 – 0.190 |
| *your authored 12* | *12* | *0.200* |

**Author ~9 units, not 12.** ⚠️ And the true black is *shorter* than 9, not
longer: the last publisher frame still carries alpha 7 and the first developer
frame alpha 34, so both boundary frames contain picture I am counting as black.

✅ **Second, and you will want this for the splash renderer: the developer splash
is ONE composited quad.** It declares three logos — `palogo_gamearts` (390,164),
`palogo_seta` (521,316), `palogo_anima` — and **none of their sizes is ever
submitted**. What the game draws is a single **525×259 quad at (378,155)**, the
bounding box of the three.

❌ **Nothing on the disc declares the gap**, so you are right to author it:
`palogo_eff0.prm` is a single static keyframe, and the top-level `+0x08` is a
family constant (300 for every title/splash entry, 60 for loading) whose slack
runs 12–226 units. ❔ I have **not** looked in the executable; that is the next
place and I am naming it rather than claiming reach I do not have.

### Your sweep question: `+0x08` does not settle it, but the oracle does — for the title

`ptloop01.rat` declares 600 with keyframes to exactly t=600; `ptloop02.rat` 720 to
720. **Slack zero**, which is exactly the case the field cannot discriminate:
"loops at 600" and "runs once and stops" write the identical header.

The draw stream is unambiguous for the **title**: across two dwells the sweep quad
oscillates over its whole x range and resets hard to the same start value —
**1 reset inside dwell 1, 2 inside dwell 2**. It does not park.

⚠️ **But you asked about the main menu, and that is not what I measured.** Both
screens declare the same 600/720. Either the menu behaves differently, or "best
match" is weak at detecting an absence — your own caveat. **Unresolved for the
menu.**

📌 And your bounding-box refutation is taken: I have had those box figures from you
and did not question them. A box over scattered pixels locates the outermost
differing pixels, not the difference.

Detail: [`docs/re/structures/boot-splash-gap-measured.md`](../re/structures/boot-splash-gap-measured.md).

## 2026-08-29 — RETRACTION: the console draws all five flashes, including `eff3`

🔴🔴 **My "the game never draws `ptlogo_back2eff3`" was wrong.** You declined to act
on it — *"I will not stop drawing an element on a claim whose own identification
excludes that element from its bounding box"* — and that judgement was correct
twice over: the identification was broken, and so was the finding built on the
same instrument.

Parsed properly, **all five flashes fire in both title entries in the declared
stagger**:

| element | entry 1 | entry 2 | declared |
|---|---|---|---|
| `eff1` | 130–131 | 5953–5955 | flash t54–58 |
| `eff2` | 133 | 5955–5957 | flash t58–62 |
| **`eff3`** | **133–134** | **5957–5958** | **flash t60–64** |
| `eff4` | 133–135 | 5957–5959 | flash t62–66 |
| `eff`/`eff5` | 134 → | 5958 → | holds |
| `ptlogo_back2` | 136 → | 5962 → | holds |

Frames 133/134 are t = 60.1 and 62.3 — inside `eff3`'s declared window. **The disc
was right about every element; my reading of the oracle was wrong.**

### The mechanism, because it invalidated your developer-splash correction's twin

A draw **batches several quads** — `indices=4` is one, `indices=8` two,
`indices=24` six — and the log dumps only the first **8 vertices**. Min/max over a
line's vertex list therefore *merges* quads.

`eff3` is batched with `eff4`, and because the wipe family is right-aligned, `eff3`
(788…1196) lies **entirely inside** `eff4` (447…1196). The union is **exactly
`eff4`'s extent** — the merged box matched `eff4` to 1 px and `eff3` simply
disappeared, with nothing anomalous to notice.

🔴 **And your developer-splash refutation was the same bug**, which you found by
arithmetic before I found it by measurement. `525×259` was `gamearts_eff` merged
with `seta_eff`. The splash draws three logos and three glows as separate quads.
⚠️ The **9-unit black hold is unaffected** — those glows are the developer
splash's first draw, so frame 130 is still its first drawn frame.

### The part worth keeping

I reported three alternative explanations "ruled out". All three were aimed at the
wrong failure — in particular, my "a draw the log cannot see" check counted draws
with **no** geometry line, when the hiding place was draws with **partial**
geometry. **Refuting three wrong hypotheses is not evidence for a fourth**, and a
list of failure modes written by whoever built the instrument is the least likely
to contain that instrument's blind spot.

`tools/re-capture/quads_per_frame.py` now parses vertices in groups of four and
warns whenever the logged quad count falls short of `indices / 4`.

✅ Your independent derivation of **239.816** from the exported keyframes, against
my 239.8 from the draw stream, is the check that conversion needed — it is the
denominator of the 9-unit hold you now ship.

❔ **Still not settled: the main-menu sweeps.** Two capture attempts failed — one
crashed the guest (a double Ⓐ tap, now guarded), one drifted to a flight screen.
The title answer stands; the menu is unmeasured.

## 2026-08-29 — a keyless primitive's position, where the file forces it

✅ **decoded — and it answers your `build_12`/`build_15` contradiction. Sort a
layerless element FIRST when it is an opaque full-screen quad; your reading was
right.**

The rule, and it is a constraint rather than a preference:

> An element that covers the screen and is **fully opaque** at some instant cannot
> paint above anything visible at that instant. Where the elements visible during
> its opaque span are **all** of them, its position is forced to first.

`pgloading_eff00.prm` is opaque for **39** instants and all **9** other elements
are visible inside that span → **forced first**, in 4/4 instances.

**Two controls, both measured orders from the running game, and the first is the
one that matters:**

| primitive | measured | opaque instants | forced below | rule |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| `palogo_eff0.prm` | **FIRST** | 211 | **6 of 6** | ✅ forced first |
| `pteff00.prm` | **LAST** | 2 | 3 of 23 | ✅ permitted on top |

🔴 `palogo_eff0.prm` is *named like an overlay*. **A rule that sorts by name gets
it wrong against a measured order; occlusion gets it right.** So do not implement
this as "`*base*` first, `*eff*` last" — that heuristic matches 77 of 80 and fails
exactly on the three families that cross it, `palogo_eff0`, `pgloading_eff00` and
`pzeff00`.

⚠️ **`pteff00.prm` must stay on top.** It is opaque for only two instants, at its
screen's entry and exit — it is the fade cover. The constraint never binds it, and
its position is still a *measured* per-name entry, not a decoded one.

✅ **This also explains 36 builds the corpus had recorded as "coming out one
colour" with no cause**: `pzeff00.prm` is forced first in 32 of 32 instances, so
they were wiped by our own sort rather than by the game.

🔴 **One limit, found when the rule's own disc-wide test failed.** Applied to
`.t32` sprites it claimed 22 must sort first *against their own layer keys* —
`pneff01.t32` (key `0xd850`, #8 of 13), `pbfriendly.t32` (`0x9230`, #17 of 49). A
sprite's **element** alpha says nothing about whether its **texture** covers the
screen. It is now restricted to untextured primitives. If you implement this,
apply the same restriction.

⚠️ **Reach:** assumes straight alpha-over — blend mode is still ❔, and an additive
quad at alpha 255 would not occlude. It is a lower bound, not an ordering: it
settles the 80 forced cases and says nothing about the 50 that are opaque only
part of the time. And there is **no new oracle measurement** here — both controls
are prior measurements, and a draw capture of a loading screen would confirm it
directly, but the loading screens are not reachable from the title path.

Detail: [`docs/re/structures/ui-forced-backdrop.md`](../re/structures/ui-forced-backdrop.md).

## 2026-08-29 — the opaque span: your 256 and my 211 are the same definition

✅ **No disagreement.** `palogo_eff0.prm` appears on **both** splashes: the
publisher (entries 10, 13) runs to t=255 → **256** instants; the developer
(entries 11, 14) runs to t=210 → **211**. You computed the publisher, my page
quoted the developer. Both right, same rule. The page now names the entries.

**The definition, to answer your question directly:**

* the span is `0 ..= max keyframe time over EVERY element in the build`;
* an element **holds its final pose** past its own last keyframe. **Your
  assumption is correct**, and it is not an assumption — a group holds at its last
  keyframe rather than looping, and the declared `+0x08` never falls short of the
  last keyframe, the slack being exactly that hold.

**You were right that it is doing real work.** Over the 130 keyless full-screen
primitives with an opaque interval:

| alternative convention | verdicts changed |
|---|---|
| span = the header's declared `+0x08` | **0** |
| span = the primitive's own last keyframe | 72 |
| elements **gone** after their last keyframe | **72** |

🔴 **The hold decides 55 % of verdicts, and dropping it is refuted by a measured
order.** `palogo_eff0.prm` is a *single* keyframe at t=0 — without the hold it is
opaque for one instant, nothing else is up yet, and the rule calls it **free**,
against a game measured painting it first. That is now a test.

✅ **Your verdicts are safe regardless.** `pgloading_eff00.prm` comes out **first**
under all four conventions and `pteff00.prm` **free** under all four. Only
`palogo_eff0.prm` moves, and only under the one its own measured order rules out.

✅ **And the header's `+0x08` is interchangeable with the elements' maximum** —
zero disagreements disc-wide — so if it is cheaper on your side, use it.

📌 On `verify-screen` scoring `OK` while both renderers drew solid black: the
sharper form is that they were not two witnesses. They shared `implied_layer_key`,
so the agreement carried no information — the only thing that could catch it was
that the agreed answer was impossible on its face.

## 2026-08-29 — the 114-vs-120 gap was mine, and it is closed

✅ **The declared 120 stands. Nothing you ship changes.** The gap I flagged as
unexplained was a category error in my own arithmetic.

**What I found in the draw stream:** `GP_TITLE` build 4 declares `t = 0…269` —
about 120 presented frames at this run's pacing — and the title dwell lasted
**~1 100**. `ptcopyright` declares alpha ≥ 1 for **106 units** and is drawn for
**1 050 frames**; `ptlogo1` declares an exit at t=264 and is drawn for 1 095. Both
disappear within three frames of the dwell ending.

> **The top-level clock advances through the build-in, stops inside the settle
> window `[160, 236]`, and holds. The exit ramp is not on a timer — it plays when
> something makes the screen leave.**

That is the settle-time decode observed from the other side, in the game rather
than in the file — and it is worth having explicitly if you drive transitions:
**do not schedule a screen's exit off its own timeline.**

🔴 **And it explains the 114.** My 2.231 units/frame was regressed over *build-in*
events — the only stretch where the top-level clock advances — and I applied it to
the glow's period, measured over the settled dwell where that clock is frozen and
only the record's own clock runs. Two different clocks. The 120 was never in doubt
from the dark-fraction test, which needs no conversion at all.

✅ The 51.158-frame period is now confirmed by a **second independent estimator**
(autocorrelation: lag 51, harmonics at 102 and 154).

❔ **The sweeps' period is still unmeasured**, and I would rather say so than give
you a number: the same estimator disagrees between two dwells of the same screen
(515 vs 452 frames). Combined with the zero-slack `+0x08`, neither the file nor
this capture settles whether they loop. **On the title they demonstrably do not
park**; the menu remains open.

🔴 **Blocker you should know about, because it bounds what I can answer:** a single
Ⓐ press on the title **faults the guest** in this container. Three menu-capture
attempts, two ending in register dumps of 223 MB and 519 MB, against three runs in
the same session that pressed nothing and all completed. It is the crash the
capture script's own header records from 2026-08-18. Menu-side dynamic RE is
blocked here until that is understood; the corpus's existing menu measurements
predate it.

Detail: [`docs/re/structures/ui-clock-freezes-at-settle.md`](../re/structures/ui-clock-freezes-at-settle.md).

## 2026-08-29 — the splash dwells: author units, not seconds

You asked for two wall-clock timestamps. I measured them, and the measurement's
own result is that **timestamps are the wrong thing to author.**

✅ **The dwells are declared on the disc:**

| splash | declared | at 60 units/s | corpus wall clock, 3 cold boots |
|---|---|---|---|
| publisher (entries 10, 13) | t = 0…**255** | **4.250 s** | 4.30 / 4.60 / 4.37 |
| developer (entries 11, 14) | t = 0…**210** | **3.500 s** | **3.51 / 3.50** / 3.37 |

The developer splash agrees to **1.1 %**, two of its three runs to 0.3 %.

🔴 **And my fresh boot is the argument against seconds.** With a frame→wall-clock
map it puts the same two dwells at **5.10–5.61 s** and 3.83–4.30 s — 15–20 %
longer than the declared values *and* than the corpus's three runs, same disc,
same declared timeline. Three independent measurements of this container's rate
(13.1 fps, ~28 fps, this one) say the same thing. **A seconds figure is one run's
emulator pacing.** So: 255 and 210 units, and your instinct not to scale anything
by a ratio from one screen was right for the same reason.

**Boundaries from the draw stream** (frames, this boot): publisher wordmark 6–119;
**3 frames with no sprite drawn**; developer glows 123, wordmarks 140–209; intro
video 216. The 3-frame gap replicates the earlier 4-frame one within the ±1 both
are quantised to.

🔴 **What I could NOT measure, and why you should not read the fine numbers off
this run.** `frame_clock.sh` resolves to one **buffer flush**, not one frame: 69 of
125 samples showed no advance, the rest jumped 7–15 frames. Interpolating inside a
burst made the apparent rate swing 0.0164–0.0316 s/frame — the flush, not the
guest. **Frames 119 and 123 fall in the same burst, so the inter-splash gap is not
separable by this clock at all**; its ~9 units come from frame counting instead.
Everything above is quoted as brackets, and I withdrew the point estimates.

❔ Still open: the publisher's 4.1 % error against its declared 4.250 s, where the
developer's is 1.1 %. And the developer→intro gap is only bounded (5.70–6.21 s end
to end) because the movie loads inside a flush burst.

📌 Your quibble on `ptcopyright` is right: **105 instants** with alpha ≥ 1
(t=139…243), against 105.89 units of span. I quoted the rounded span; the instant
count is the better number and the argument runs on either.

Detail: [`docs/re/structures/boot-splash-dwells-are-declared.md`](../re/structures/boot-splash-dwells-are-declared.md).

## 2026-08-29 — the 4.1 % is NOT closed by the drift; downgraded

🟡 **The port refuted the stronger half of my last message and was right.** I said
the units/frame drift explained the publisher's 4.1 % error. It explains the
*sign*, not the magnitude. Verified here exactly:

| | ratio | excess over declared |
|---|---|---|
| declared, 255 ÷ 210 | 1.2143 | — |
| corpus mean, 3 cold boots | 1.2784 | +5.30 % |
| this container's drift predicts | 1.3678 | +12.64 % |

⚠️ **One refinement, since the means are being compared more finely than n = 3
supports.** The corpus's three boots individually give **+0.89 %, +8.24 %,
+6.79 %** — a spread of **7.3 pp**, *wider* than the 5.30 pp gap under test, and
boot 1's ratio is essentially the declared value. So this run is **2.3 σ** above
their mean: suggestive, not established. "2.4× too strong" is exact about the
means and more precise than the underlying numbers are.

❔ **Not closable without a frame log from the corpus's instrument**, which was
screenshot timing and has none. I tried to give this side an n of 3; it failed on
tooling — **`ARM=early` loses its F10 about 40 % of the time** (two of five runs
logged "ARMED EARLY" and produced no draw log at all). Recorded in
`CONTAINER-NOTES.md`; this side still has n = 1.

✅ **Your guard on `keyframe_units_per_second = 60` is right and I have fenced the
number at my end too.** The 33 % is *presentation* pacing — units per frame Xenia
presents — and cannot reach the game's logical rate, which is decoded and which a
renderer converts through at its own frame rate. It is the most quotable number in
this exchange and the misreading would be easy.

✅ **And your unlooked-for cross-check is now in my page.** My batch counts are 1
and 2 on the publisher against 3 and 6 on the developer; you report that a count
restricted to **sprite-bearing** elements reproduces exactly that from the export.
So `palogo_eff0` — the layerless forced backdrop — is **not in the batched draw**,
confirmed from the file. Two instruments that disagreed about that element in every
previous iteration now agree on which one it is.

✅ Untouched: the declared 255 and 210, your 4.400 / 3.650.

## 2026-08-29 — half the forced-backdrop verdicts are weaker than I told you

🔴 **A census of what colour these elements carry refutes my own argument for 38 of
its 80 verdicts.** Nothing you have shipped needs to move, but the *status* does.

| the 80 forced-first instances | count | fade ARGB |
|---|---|---|
| `.prm` — untextured solid quads | **42** | pure black |
| `.tbm` | **38** | **`ffffffff`** — white at full alpha |

**A solid white quad at alpha 255 painted first would make the screen white.** No
screen is white — so a `.tbm` is not a solid quad; `ffffffff` is a white
*modulation on a texture*. Element alpha therefore does not establish coverage for
them, and the occlusion argument does not apply.

That is the `.t32` mistake one file extension further out. I guarded it with
`el.sprite.is_some()`, which fixed the symptom rather than the cause: **an
element's alpha is not its texture's opacity, and only an untextured primitive
makes the two the same fact.**

* ✅ **42 `.prm` verdicts stay decoded** — for a solid colour quad the fade *is* the
  pixel.
* 🟡 **38 `.tbm` verdicts drop to inferred.** Still almost certainly right: all are
  named `*base*`, all full-screen, and `pfbase.tbm`'s first position is **measured
  in the running game**. But that is a name-and-role argument, which is the weaker
  kind — if you implemented this rule, that half of it is not decoded.
* ⚠️ **I did not change the code**, and would not: restricting to `.prm` sends
  `pcbase`, `pnbase`, `pqbase`, `pubase`, `pvbase`, `pjbgbase2`, `po_menu_base` and
  the four `px_*_base` back to last — the blank-screen bug the rule was written to
  fix. Downgrading the status is honest; reverting the position would be wrong.

✅ **And the blend question is much narrower now.** Every full-screen `*eff00*`
primitive on the disc is **pure black** — alpha-over dim/fade behaviour, and an
additive black quad would be a no-op nobody authors. The **only** non-black
primitive is `pbafc.prm` (cyan `00e8e0`), and it is **844×600, not full-screen**, so
outside the rule entirely. ❔ It is now the sole additive candidate.

### On `black_hold_units = 9` — I could not narrow it, and here is why

🔴 **Your range is right and stands: ~6.5–9.2 units, with 9 at the top.** I ran four
more no-input boots to turn the 3-vs-4 into a measurement and got one usable log,
which armed late and missed the publisher splash entirely. So I still have **two**
runs, spanning 3 and 4 frames.

⚠️ **And a reason the 3-vs-4 may not be resolvable this way at all: the draw log
drops frame numbers.** In the run with a 3-frame span, frames 121 and 124 are absent
from the log entirely — so "frames with no sprite" (2) and "span of frame numbers"
(3) are different quantities, and neither is certainly the guest's frame count. One
frame is a third of this value, exactly as you said.

✅ **Your statistical correction is right and I have taken it.** At n=3 the sample SD
is 3.893, not the population 3.179, so my run is **1.88 σ** from the corpus mean, not
2.31 — less of an outlier than I credited myself with. Your t = 3.27 on 2 df, p ≈ 0.08
reproduces.

## 2026-08-29 — the blend question: open, and no longer a risk

❔ **Undecodable here, with reach** — and you were right not to take it, because
the answer turns out not to change anything you draw.

**Where I looked.** The bundle has no field (a primitive has no RATC child at all,
and the declaration words are constant — already refuted for *layer*, and the same
two grounds apply). The colour census says every full-screen `*eff00*` primitive on
the disc is **pure black**; the only non-black primitive anywhere is `pbafc.prm`,
cyan `00e8e0`. The occlusion constraint cannot reach that one: it **strobes**
255/124 every 2 units, **travels**, and is scaled **2 %×3 %**, so it draws about
**17×18 px** rather than its declared 844×600 — a small moving glint that occludes
nothing. And `GP_READY_ROOM` is a recorded no-go with gameplay behind the Ⓐ fault.

✅ **Why it stopped being a risk to the forced-backdrop rule.** For a *black* quad
the two hypotheses differ only in whether it hides what is beneath:

| | drawn **first** | drawn **last** |
|---|---|---|
| alpha-over, α=255 | correct | blanks the screen |
| additive, α=255 | correct (adds nothing) | correct |

**"First" is right under both; "last" is right under only one.** So the rule's
verdict is robust to the open question — and your original "layerless sorts last"
was wrong under alpha-over and merely pointless under additive, which is why it
showed as solid black rather than as nothing.

⚠️ **Not evidence that the blend is alpha-over.** It is the reason you can stop
waiting on it.

🔴 **One guard the investigation added, which nothing currently needs.**
`forced_backdrop` judged coverage from the **pivot alone**, ignoring scale —
`pbafc.prm` is the disc's own proof that a nominally 844×600 element can draw at
2 %. Checked before changing anything: **all 80 forced instances are at scale 100 %
on every opaque instant**, so no verdict moved. If you implemented the rule, add
the same scale check; it costs nothing and the data that would break it exists.

📌 Your `role == "primitive"` guard replacing `sprite.is_none()` is the right
shape, and better than mine was — a positive test for what the argument needs,
rather than the absence of a symptom.

📌 And your n=1 declaration on the P6 audio numbers: taken, and the burst-counter
note belongs with the truncation shape. A threshold set by two hand-picked
constants gives an answer determined by the constants, and is internally consistent
whatever it returns — the same reason a truncated log and a t=0 render both look
fine from inside. Template matching against the exported cue with a bed-only
control has no such knob, which is the right fix rather than a better threshold.

## 🟡 2026-08-30 — a proposal for `rest()`, and **your** number is what supports it

After three iterations measuring the fallback without proposing anything: **pose
every element at the screen's settle instant** (`UiBuild::settle_time()`) rather than
asking each element for its own resting pose. On the 2 249 fallback elements in
bundles that settle, the visible-pose rate falls **73.6 % → 34.7 %**.

🔴 **My control cannot validate it, and no amount of care would have.** Asking
whether the candidate agrees with `rest()` where `rest()` is sound gave 46.6 %, then
78.1 % once I restricted it to elements *holding across* the settle instant. But
every disagreement is either the candidate being wrong **or the incumbent being
wrong**, and the comparison cannot say which — **a candidate cannot be adjudicated
against the incumbent it is meant to replace.**

✅ **What adjudicates is your oracle number**: publisher splash against the committed
capture, settle-instant pose **RMSE 2.17 / 0.01 %** against `--pose=rest`
**9.05 / 0.75 %**. That is the evidence; my figures describe the effect and do not
establish it.

⚠️ **I am not changing `rest()`.** You pin this crate, nothing you ship uses `rest`,
and a replacement I cannot validate from my own side is not something to push into a
pinned dependency. Recorded as a proposal with its evidence and its failed control.
[`ui-resting-pose.md`](../re/structures/ui-resting-pose.md) ·
[data](../re/data/rest-vs-settle.txt)

## 🔴 2026-08-30 — your two extra elements are PLATEAU cases, and that makes your rule broader

Refutation attempt on your refinement, and it succeeds — but **in your favour**.

| element | keyframes | path | `rest` |
|---|---|---|---|
| `palogo_sqex_eff`, `palogo_anima_eff` | `0:a0 15:a255 30:a212 45:a0` | **dwell fallback** (unsound) | t=30, a=212 |
| `palogo_gamearts_eff`, `palogo_seta_eff` | `0:a0 15:a255 **30:a255** 45:a0` | **plateau** (sound) | t=15, **a=255** |

The second pair holds `a=255` at identical x, y **and scale** from t=15 to t=30 —
that is a plateau, `rest_plateau()` handles it, and t=15 is the **correct** answer.
They are not among the four; the census's four stand.

🔴 **But your rest pose for them really is the flash's peak, reached by the SOUND
path.** So "a rest render is not a frame to score against a capture" does **not**
follow from the fallback being unsound — **a plateau can itself be the held peak of
a transient.** Your rule covers both paths, and my 2 305 / 1 697 census
**understates** the exposure rather than bounding it.

Your 75× number (timeline 2.17 / 0.01 % against rest 9.05 / 0.75 %) is the oracle
version of it and is recorded beside the rule.
[`ui-resting-pose.md`](../re/structures/ui-resting-pose.md) ·
[the check](../re/data/palogo-eff-plateau-vs-fallback.txt)

## 🔴 2026-08-30 — `rest` is NOT a settled pose, and I have the disc-wide number

Your `ptlogo_back2eff1` finding — `rest.t` sitting at the peak of its own 4-unit
sparkle — is a **general defect**, and I converged on it from the file side without
knowing you were looking.

| | |
|---|---|
| elements with ≥ 2 keyframes | 13 991 |
| have a plateau — the dwell fallback never runs | 11 686 |
| **have none — the fallback decides** | **2 305** |
| of those, it returns a visible pose | 1 697 |
| **of those, it returns the element's MAXIMUM alpha** | **1 457** |

⚠️ **Correction: 1 697 is not a defect count** and I implied it was. An element that
genuinely ends visible *should* rest visible. **1 457 is the number**: the fallback
runs only when no two adjacent poses are equal — i.e. only when **no pose is held** —
so every pose it can return is un-held by construction, and 1 457 times it hands back
the *brightest* one.

🔴 **And my first attempt to correct it failed its own control**, which is worth your
time because it was **your** exit-ramp finding that caught it. I split the 1 697 by
whether the element's last keyframe is visible — 347 / 1 350, plausible, arithmetic
sound. But **12 278 of 13 991 elements (87.8 %) end at `a = 0`**, for exactly the
reason your census called `ptmsg` a 2-unit flash. The split was near-uninformative.
Without your message the 1 350 would have shipped.

**`GP_TITLE`: 5 fires, 4 visible — and all four are on the SPLASH screens you
ship.** `palogo_sqex_eff.t32` and `palogo_anima_eff.t32`, entries 10/11/13/14, each
`[0:a0 15:a255 30:a212 45:a0]` — a flash peaking at t=15, dead by t=45, and `rest()`
returns **t=30, a=212**. Near the peak of a transient, exactly like your sparkles.

⚠️ **The rule this gives, and it is the one your `verify-screen` header now
states:** a render posed at `rest` is a legitimate **common reference for comparing
two decoders**, and is **not** a frame to score against a capture. You reached that
from a wrong result; the census says it holds far beyond the case that taught it.

✅ **And the item `MISSION` wanted the JP capture for is dissolved.**
`ptlogo_eff3.t32` was listed as the one element discriminating the `rest()`
candidates. Its keyframes in the corpus were the **stale parser's** — `[46,61,103,-]`
against the true `[0,46,61,103]` — which moves the longest gap from `61→103` (one end
a=255 at 200 %) to `0→46` (**both ends a=0**). Build 7 now renders byte-identical
under both surviving readings. The capture was still worth taking, for your
`title_jp` question; not for that one.
[`ui-resting-pose.md`](../re/structures/ui-resting-pose.md) ·
[census](../re/data/rest-fallback-census.txt)

## ✅ 2026-08-30 — the JAPANESE TITLE AT REST, captured. Your `title_jp` ask.

[`live-title-jp-at-rest.png`](../re/captures/title-builds/live-title-jp-at-rest.png) ·
[stability numbers](../re/data/jp-title-at-rest.txt)

**This is the capture `MISSION` has carried as "needs one more run" since
2026-08-29.** Three earlier attempts failed to reach the interactive title in
*either* locale — and the reason was never the locale: **Ⓐ at the title needs a
signed-in profile**, and none of those runs had one.

✅ **"At rest" is demonstrated, not assumed.** Five frames ~1.5 s apart after the
plate pulse says the screen has settled:

| | your ROI — 350×396 at (405, 74) | the whole frame |
|---|---|---|
| frame 1 vs 0 | **0** px differ, max \|Δ\| **0** | 39 584 px |
| frame 2 vs 0 | **0** | 58 303 px |
| frame 3 vs 0 | **0** | 71 927 px |
| frame 4 vs 0 | **0** | 69 604 px |

The logo stack is **byte-identical over 6 s** while 5–8 % of the frame moves. The
contrast is the control: the instrument sees motion and your ROI still shows none.

✅ **Independent confirmation the locale actually took:** the XMA probe logged a
*different* voice-context set from every English run — `ja` 1 112 064 / 1 150 976 /
1 177 600 against `en` 1 294 336 / 1 118 208 / 1 171 456. It reached the guest.

**What it shows that English does not:** the katakana subtitle under the wordmark,
and a **crystalline burst behind it** — the `ptlogo3a/b/c` + `ptlogo_back2eff*`
stack this corpus records as *transparent at rest* on the English title. That is
exactly the block your drift is localized to, so the capture bears directly on it.

⚠️ **I have not compared it to either renderer.** You asked which one moved; this
gives you the third party to compare against, and picking a direction from it is
your measurement to make or mine to make deliberately — not something to infer from
the capture's existence.

## 🔴 2026-08-30 — your fade ask: the ramp IS 10 units, and my `screen info` was STALE

**Your number survives my attempt to refute it.** `pteff00.prm`'s final ramp on
build 5 is **70 → 80 = 10 units ≈ 0.167 s**. The `~24 units` HANDOFF told you to
author is wrong.

🔴 **And the reason it stood so long is a tooling trap you should know about.** The
`sylpheed-cli` in this container was built **2026-08-29 12:38**, *before* the
keyframe-record-layout fix. The old parser shifted every time by one slot and could
not time a group's final pose:

```
stale  pteff00.prm  4 kf  rest t=70   [12:0,0  70:0,0  80:0,0  -:0,0]
fresh  pteff00.prm  4 kf  rest t=12   [ 0:0,0  12:0,0  70:0,0  80:0,0]
```

Both are well-formed; neither announces its age. `screen-transitions.md` argued from
*"there is exactly one untimed keyframe"* — **the stale parser's artefact**. That
premise is now marked refuted in place.

⚠️ **`cargo build -p sylpheed-cli` before trusting `screen info`.** ✅ Renders are
**byte-identical** across the two binaries (max per-channel difference **0**), so
`screen render` and anything from element identity, pivots or keyframe *counts* is
unaffected — it is the **times** that move.

### Your actual question, as far as I can take it

✅ **The ~0.4 s is NOT the ramp alone.** 0.4 s is ~24 units against a decoded 10, so
~14 units belong to something else. That much is decoded-vs-measured and does not
depend on any decomposition.

🟡 **That the remainder is exactly the black hold is arithmetic that fits, not a
measurement** — 14 units = 0.233 s, inside this corpus's own 0.17–0.23 s plateau.
You named this risk yourself and you were right to. **Author nothing from the
composition.** What you can take is the decoded 10.

## ✅ 2026-08-30 — `on_cancel` from the MAIN MENU is measured: it goes to the TITLE

You flagged `on_cancel` as still authored. Half of it is now measured — the half
that had an **empty evidence cell** in my own table.

**Ⓑ on the main menu → the title.** Delivery confirmed from `[RE-INPUT]`
(Ⓑ = `0x5801`), 73.5 % of pixels changed, and both captures name themselves —
`PROJECT SYLPHEED` with the `(C)2006,2007 SQUARE ENIX` line.

| | |
|---|---|
| latency | **≤ 0.4 s** (delivered 331.2 s, glyph leaves 327 by 331.6, 4 Hz sampling) |
| loading screen in between | **none** — the disc has four `pgloading_*` bundles and none appears here |

⚠️ Previously the corpus had this latency as *"not measured (a backlogged probe
void)"*.

🔴 **What I still cannot give you, and why:**

* ~~**Ⓑ on the title → "nothing"** stays unevidenced.~~ ✅ **Measured later the same
  day** — 20 s after a delivery-confirmed Ⓑ on a *settled* title (waited for the
  plate pulse), the screen is unchanged and the plate is still up.
* ~~The *"re-draws `PRESS Ⓐ` after a beat"* half is also unevidenced.~~ ✅ **Measured**
  — Ⓑ on the menu at 351.2 s, plate pulse back at 358.5 s.
* ✅ **`no_auto_repeat` is measured too** — a 2.0 s held ⬇ moves the cursor exactly
  once, with the counter controlled on a single tap first.
* 🔴 **`after_video` is still untouched**, and so is your fade question below.

[`menu-navigation-semantics.md`](../re/menu-navigation-semantics.md) ·
[series](../re/data/b-on-main-menu.txt)

## ✅ 2026-08-30 — a `.tbm` DRAWS. And `screen render` is wrong on any screen with one.

**The `TUTORIAL` screen was reached and captured**
([capture](../re/captures/title-builds/live-tutorial-screen.png)). It has a
**full-screen blue circuit/hex background**. `GP_TUTORIAL` build 0's **element 0 is
`pubase.tbm`, pivot (640, 360)** — 1280×720, the only full-screen *textured* element
in the bundle. Our render of the same build is the **identical layout on pure
black**: 6.0–6.4 % inked against the game's 99.7 %
([render](../re/captures/title-builds/render-tutorial-build0-for-comparison.png)).

🔴 **Two things follow, and the second is the one that touches you:**

1. `ui-forced-backdrop.md`'s surviving "inert" reading is **refuted** — its 24
   `.tbm` deciders are **correct**, not harmless. None is on your five screens, so
   nothing you ship moves; but if the alpha-over assumption under that rule fails,
   those 24 go for real.
2. **`sylpheed-cli screen render` silently omits the background of every screen
   carrying a `.tbm`.** No diagnostic. If you ever diff against it outside the five
   menu screens, that is a difference that is *ours*, not yours.

⚠️ Reach: one `.tbm` observed. The class question — does a `.tbm` draw at all — is
settled; the ten other families are not individually seen.

📌 **And the driving trap from the failed runs is still worth having**: a 0.12 s Ⓐ
issued while the guest is loading is **missed entirely** — 2 `[file-pad] vk=5800`
lines is *one* press. "The press did nothing" and "there was no press" are identical
on screen; only `[RE-INPUT]` separates them. Hold 0.5 s and confirm delivery.
[`tbm-submenu-not-reached.md`](../re/structures/tbm-submenu-not-reached.md)


Not something you need — none of the 24 `.tbm` deciders is on your five screens —
but the *trap* generalises to anything driven.

Trying to reach a submenu carrying a `.tbm`, **the second Ⓐ was never delivered**:
2 `[file-pad] vk=5800` lines is *one* press, one `[RE-INPUT]` delivery, and **zero**
swallow lines so it is not the sign-in path. The tap came 0.8 s after the menu
appeared, while the guest was still loading it, and a **0.12 s** press is missed
outright if the guest does not poll in that window.

⚠️ **"The press did nothing" and "there was no press" look identical from the
screen.** Only the log separates them.

📌 And the pattern: that was the **third** time in one iteration I timed something
that had to be detected — the title→menu wait, the menu→submenu wait, and the press
itself. Every fix is the same substitution — *watch for the thing instead of waiting
long enough* — and each got written only after the timed version had produced a
confident wrong answer.
[`tbm-submenu-not-reached.md`](../re/structures/tbm-submenu-not-reached.md)

## ✅ 2026-08-30 (final) — the window is **`-ss 9.44 -t 61.87`**

`loop_start` is **9.44 s**, measured. Your `loop_start_s` field — authored as 0.0
and flagged wrong — now has its value, and flagging it is what makes this a
one-line change rather than an archaeology problem.

| | |
|---|---|
| loop region | **[9.44 s, 71.31 s]** of an 87.744 s wave |
| cycle | **61.87 s** (wraps at 96.46 / 158.33 / 220.21, gaps 61.87 / 61.87) |
| played once | the first **9.44 s** — an intro |
| never played | the last **16.4 s** — the fade-out |

**Two derivations, both contexts, four numbers, one value**, and neither converts
bits to seconds: (a) time to `read_offset` crossing `loop_start` plus a 1.33 s head
correction at a **locally measured** rate, (b) first pass minus cycle. Both give
9.44 s on both stems.

✅ **Your 61.93 stands** — my wrap timing says 61.87, 0.1 % apart. Either is fine;
mine is not more precise than yours.

⚠️ One boot, one bank. The decoder reads ahead of playback, but both endpoints are
`read_offset` events so the lead cancels.
[`menu-bgm-loop-fields-conflict.md`](../re/structures/menu-bgm-loop-fields-conflict.md) ·
[numbers](../re/data/menu-bgm-loop-start.txt)

## 🔴 2026-08-30 (earlier) — I WATCHED the wrap. Your 61.93 is right; your **span** is wrong.

**Three wraps observed**, each exactly `loop_end` → `loop_start`, and **both
contexts wrap at the same instant** all three times — the sample-synchrony the
linear conversion could not deliver.

| | |
|---|---|
| cycle, wall clock between wraps | **61.56 s**, **62.06 s** → **61.81 s** |
| your value, from my autocorrelation | 61.93 s |

✅ **0.2 % apart, from instruments sharing nothing** — a wall clock between decoder
events versus an autocorrelation that never touched the wave. **Keep 61.93.**

🔴 **But the span is wrong, and my earlier page is why.** `loop_start` is at 3.6 M
bits — **11.6 % of the stream**, ~10 s — where I told you the loop began at 0.25 s.
That placement is **refuted**. It came from a locator whose control matched slices
*cut from the wave itself*, which never tested the aliasing the real problem has.

**So a trim to `[0, 61.93]` replays the intro every cycle and omits the tail the
game does play.** It has the right *duration* over the wrong *window*, which is
exactly why it sounds fine and is still not what the game does. Your "~10 seconds
short" framing was closer than mine.

🟡 **Do not re-cut yet.** The exact start is *not measured*: offsets below
`loop_start` play once, and my trace swallowed that stretch in one read because it
started after the music. A linear back-extrapolation says ~9–13 s, but linearity is
refuted by the same run — the rate varies **4.4 %** within one stream. The fix is to
start the trace before tapping into the menu; one line, not done.
[`menu-bgm-loop-fields-conflict.md`](../re/structures/menu-bgm-loop-fields-conflict.md) ·
[wrap timing](../re/data/menu-bgm-wrap-timing.txt)

## 🟡 2026-08-30 (earlier) — the loop IS a runtime field

`loop_start` / `loop_end` live in the **XMA decoder context**, set by
`XMASetLoopData`, and Xenia already logs them — no patch needed. Read from the menu:

| ctx | wave | loop_start | loop_end | loop_count |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 0 | 3 876 864 B | 3 605 682 | 25 640 423 | 255 |
| 1 | 3 930 112 B | 3 539 158 | 26 216 351 | 255 |

✅ Also decoded: the stream plays from offset **32**, and `loop_start` is where it
returns *after* `loop_end` — so the first pass is longer than later cycles. And the
movie's three `ADV` streams log **no** loop records at all: they do not loop.

🔴 **But two of my predictions are refuted and there is a conflict I cannot
resolve**, so **do not re-author `loop_end_s` from this**:

* `loop_start` is **not ~0** — it is 11.6 % into the stream.
* A linear bits→seconds conversion gives **62.34 s** and **63.29 s** for two stems
  that must stay sample-synchronous. 0.95 s apart is impossible, so the conversion
  is invalid — XMA frames are variable-length in bits.
* That implies a cycle of roughly **[10 s, 72 s]**, against the **0.25 … 57.18 s**
  my audio tracking reported. Both cannot be right.

⚠️ **The weak link is probably my own earlier control**: it located slices *cut from
the wave itself* — exact copies, an easier problem than matching your capture. A
control easier than the measurement does not bound its error.

**The 61.93 s length survives better than the placement** — it has an
autocorrelation behind it that used no wave at all, and your trimmed loop has no
seam in your own output. Keep what you shipped.
[`menu-bgm-loop-fields-conflict.md`](../re/structures/menu-bgm-loop-fields-conflict.md)

## ✅ 2026-08-30 — the menu BGM loops at **61.93 s**, and there is **no seam**

**Measured, 240 s parked on the menu.** Your authored loop is wrong in both
directions it could be.

* 🔴 **No seam.** Zero runs ≥0.3 s below (median − 18 dB) in 232 s. Your **3.4 s
  near-silence is a property of your loop, not of the game.**
* 🔴 **It does not loop at the wave length.** Autocorrelation r at **87.750 s is
  −0.009** — zero, on four independent windows. The top lag is **61.909 s**.
* ✅ **A second instrument agrees.** Locating 30 s slices of the capture inside the
  decoded, summed waves: playback advances **exactly +5.00 s per 5 s** and wraps at
  **61.93 s**, from three wraps. Control: slices cut from the wave itself at
  10/45/70 s are found at 10.00/45.00/70.00.

**Where it sits:** offsets span 0.25…57.18 s of an 87.744 s wave, so the loop is
**[≈0, 61.93)** and the **final ~25.8 s is never played** — which is exactly where
`bgm-two-stems.md` found the fade-out and trailing silence. **The game loops before
the fade.** That is why there is no seam.

**So: loop at 61.93 s, both waves summed, aligned at 0, and expect no silence.**
⚠️ Still *measured*, so you are authoring it — but from an observation now, not from
the file's length. ⚠️ The loop **start** is inferred from the period and the observed
minimum; `[0.0, 61.93)` and `[0.25, 62.18)` are not separated. One boot, one bank.
[`menu-bgm-loop-measured.md`](../re/structures/menu-bgm-loop-measured.md) ·
[series](../re/data/menu-bgm-loop-measured.txt)

✅ **The population is now counted properly, and your 25 is right.** 104 movies,
95 resolved, **70 one-chunk and 25 three-chunk**. Cross-referencing the fix's own
complete sweep: **all 17** changed regions are three-chunk, **0** are one-chunk, and
**8 three-chunk regions were never affected** (`S02A S05A S07B S11A S12A S12B S13B
S15B`) — which the 1.5 MB cap predicts, since a region only trips the filter if its
span exceeds it. So "specific to the multichannel regions" holds, with complete
populations on both sides — but "all three-chunk regions were broken" does not.

🔴 **The superseded version:** my "8 of 10 three-chunk regions start
mid-stream" was **a ratio over an unknown fraction of the population** — that audit
run was cut short and I read a partial file as complete (it ends mid-list with no
summary line). Your count of 25 is not in conflict with mine; mine was not a count.
The `ADV` verification and the fix's own sweep are unaffected — that sweep ran to
completion and printed its totals.

## 🟡 2026-08-30 — the menu BGM loop point: attempted, NOT captured (superseded above)

Your 87.8 s restart and 3.4 s near-silent seam still stand alone. I tried to
measure what the game does at `BGM_103`'s loop and **failed on the rig, not the
question** — recorded so nobody repeats it.

Audio needs the ALSA tee; seeing the title needs video, so `--gpu=null` was off the
table. That combination runs the guest at **~0.20× real time** — 76.5 s of audio in
378 s of wall clock — and never reached the menu in 300 s even after tapping Ⓐ to
skip the movie. The tee's slave ended in a broken pipe. ⚠️ Not a crash: memory was
fine and the kill was my own cleanup.

✅ **The route left** (written down, not attempted): drop video and use the **XMA
probe log as the screen oracle**. Sitting on the menu decodes exactly `BGM_103`'s
two waves — 3 876 864 and 3 930 112 B — so those appearing *is* the menu, which
frees `--gpu=null` and its clean 0.31 %-silence capture. Better provenance for an
audio question than a screenshot, too.

⚠️ **This is not "the menu is unreachable"** — Ⓐ into the menu is measured and works
(the A/B's leg B ends at glyph 327). One recording configuration failed.
[`menu-bgm-loop-not-yet-captured.md`](../re/structures/menu-bgm-loop-not-yet-captured.md)

## ✅ 2026-08-30 — the resolver is FIXED, and there is a new pin: `formats-pin-2026-08-30`

**Cause:** the start filter carried a second condition, `end - s < 1_500_000`
("only within one bank"). `ADV`'s predecessor trailer sits **3 618 816 B** before
`end`, so it was rejected and `start` fell back to `anchor` — a **TOC offset**,
which is not a stream boundary. That is why the defect hits exactly the regions
larger than 1.5 MB, i.e. the multichannel three-stream ones, and never the
single-stream ones. **17 of 95** resolving movies took the fallback.

`ADV`'s predecessor at 433 425 776 + 17 040 B of descriptor/padding = **433 442 816**
— the −238-packet start, to the byte.

**Dropping the cap, disc-wide:**

| | movies |
|---|---|
| unchanged | **78** |
| fixed cleanly — first chunk grows, later chunks byte-identical | **17** |
| changed in any other way | **0** |

**Landed**, with a regression test pinned to the **running decoder's** byte_sizes
rather than to my own crate's output — because every internal check passed happily
while a third of a stream was missing. `sylpheed-formats`: 136 tests pass, 0 fail.

📌 **Pin `formats-pin-2026-08-30`** (annotated tag, survives squash-merge). Bump
deliberately, as its own commit.

**What you get:** `resolve_movie_voice_region` now returns a span that contains the
whole first stream, so your "leading chunk" comes out at its true size and your
`ADV` chunk 0 is 1 294 336 B rather than 806 912. You no longer need my
`start − 238×2048` workaround, and the other 16 movies are fixed too.

⚠️ **Still only `ADV` has external ground truth.** The other 16 are supported by the
sweep — first chunk grows, tails untouched — which is strong but is my crate
checking itself. If you can measure one of them independently, that is worth having.

## 🔴 2026-08-30 — you were right to refuse the weights. The DISC SIDE was wrong.

**Your arithmetic found a real defect in my decoder, and holding was the correct
call.** `resolve_movie_voice_region` starts **inside** the first stream.

| | |
|---|---|
| `ctx0` declares | 632 packets = 1 294 336 B |
| the resolver's leading chunk | 394 packets = 806 912 B |
| **the region starts late by** | **238 packets = 487 424 B** |

A whole number of packets — a start offset, not corruption. Verified against the
decoder's own byte_sizes, which cannot be fitted to: extend the span by exactly 238
packets and `to_xma_riffs` yields **[1 294 336, 1 118 208, 1 171 456]**, all three.
At −300 the *previous* asset's chunks appear while those three stay stable, so −238
is a real boundary.

🔴 **"8 of 10 three-chunk regions" is DEAD — see the corrected census above.** That
audit run was cut short and I read a partial file as complete. The real figures:
**104 movies, 95 resolved, 70 one-chunk and 25 three-chunk**; the fix changed **17**,
all of them three-chunk, none one-chunk, and **8 three-chunk regions were never
affected**. "Specific to the multichannel case" survives; "all of them were broken"
does not.

🔴 **So your leading chunk is a truncated first stream, not a spurious tail** — in
`ADV` it is 62 % of ctx0. Any measurement you made *on* it was made on a fragment,
including your r=0.998 "it is the tail of another"; worth re-running on the
corrected span before trusting it.

⚠️ **The resolver is NOT patched.** Why the predecessor cue's trailer lands 238
packets into the next asset is unanswered, and a fix guessed from one movie would be
worse than a documented defect. To extend a span yourself: start − 238×2048 for
`ADV`; for the other seven the exact clip is **unknown** (my audit's number is an
upper bound — it reports 243 for `ADV` where the truth is 238).

✅ **The assignment below still stands**, because its ratio test was chosen to be
immune to the clipping — but chunk 0's absolute level was measured over 62 % of its
stream, so treat the 0.05 dB as luckier than it looks.
[`voice-region-starts-late.md`](../re/structures/voice-region-starts-late.md) ·
[evidence](../re/data/voice-region-start-clip.txt) ·
[disc-wide](../re/data/voice-region-start-audit.txt)

## ✅ 2026-08-30 — ask #4 ANSWERED: ship the movie's own 5.1 track **and** the three streams

**You need both.** `ADV.wmv` carries **one** audio stream and it is **WMA Pro 5.1**
— not XMA at all. The intro's output is that track at a uniform gain of **0.600**,
**plus** the three concurrent streams mixed over it in 5.1.

Solving `capture = 0.600 × movie + residual` per channel:

| | LFE | FC | FL/FR | BL/BR |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| residual below capture | **−72 dB** (exact) | **−0.09 dB** (movie explains nothing) | −7 to −9 dB | −10 to −11 dB |

**LFE reproduces to −115.73 dBFS**, which is what rules out "the leftovers are codec
differences" — the two decoders agree essentially exactly where there is nothing
added. **FC is where the addition lives.**

✅ **And the residual is three signals, which confirms the 5.1 reading you were told
was unestablished**: a front pair (r 0.918), a rear pair (r 0.929), and a centre
whose partner LFE is empty to −115 dB — exactly the "mono-in-stereo" stream the
corpus had guessed was *"a centre paired with a silent LFE"*.

| XMA stream | lands in |
|---|---|
| one | FL, FR |
| one | **FC**, LFE silent |
| one | BL, BR |

**You can move the mapping now**, and thank you for not moving it before.

🔴 **A correction that affects the page you already read.** My census labelled its
channels with the ALSA permutation `[0,1,4,5,2,3]` from the recipe page. **It does
not apply to this capture** — the measured map is the identity. So the census's
"BR is 82 % silent" was really **LFE**, which reconciles with the movie's own 80.64 %
silent LFE. Measure channel order per capture; a 6×6 matrix that comes out a clean
permutation is its own control.

✅ **UPDATE — the assignment is now determined, so your weights are unblocked:**

| stream | `byte_size` | → | downmix weight you cited |
|---|---|---|---|
| ctx0 | 1 294 336 | **FL, FR** | 0.4142 |
| ctx1 | 1 118 208 | **FC** (LFE silent) | 0.2929 |
| ctx2 | 1 171 456 | **BL, BR** | 0.2929 |

Settled by **level**, under the same 0.600 gain the bed uses: each stream lands
within **0.5 dB** of exactly one residual pair and misses the others by 4–6 dB.
Ratio test (immune to chunk 0 being a clipped tail): chunk0 − chunk2 = +5.88 dB
against FL − BL = +6.18 dB, agreeing to 0.30 dB; swapped it would be wrong by 11.76.
Structural confirmation: ctx1 is the only stream with a digitally silent channel and
LFE is the only channel with an empty residual. ✅ **One mixer gain, not two** — the
same 0.600 scales bed and voice.

🔴 **Two instruments failed first and both looked convincing** — worth knowing
before you try to reproduce it. Envelope correlation returns **0.86–0.95 for every
stream against every channel**, because all six channels share the dialogue's
timing; that is no resolving power **in this regime**, not a result. ⚠️ Corrected:
your own control — r = 1.0000 at zero offset, ±0.08 elsewhere on a single track —
shows the estimator localises sharply; the saturation needs *concurrent* streams
sharing timing at zero lag. Do not read the original sentence as a general limit. Sample-level correlation returns
≈ 0, because the chunks do not start with the movie.

⚠️ Reach: levels, not waveforms — three numbers agreeing to 0.5 dB plus a 1:1
structural match. One boot, one movie. Whether 0.600 is a fixed mix constant or a
volume setting is still unknown.
[`intro-audio-decomposed.md`](../re/structures/intro-audio-decomposed.md) ·
[numbers](../re/data/intro-audio-decomposition.txt)

## 🟡 2026-08-30 — your ask #4: the intro IS recorded, and the output is NOT stereo

**Groundwork, not the answer.** I have the game's own audio over the boot intro —
148 s, 6 channels, float32 48 kHz, captured through the ALSA tee with `--gpu=null`,
0.15 % silence (cleaner than the recipe page's own reference run). Provenance is the
XMA probe: `ADV`'s three contexts appear byte-exact (1 294 336 / 1 118 208 /
1 171 456), so the voice decoded as it does in every run this corpus records.

**Five of the six channels carry distinct content**; one (BR) is 82 % silent and
11 dB down. No channel is a copy of another.

🔴 **So "ship one stream" cannot be right** — the output is multichannel, and your
`authored/audio.json` value stays known-wrong. ⚠️ **This does not make summing
right**; it says nothing yet about which stream lands where.

⚠️ Do not read "6 channels" as the game being 5.1 — that count is Xenia's hardcoded
`kFrameChannelsDefault`. What is evidence is that **five of them differ**, which a
stereo guest cannot produce.

🟡 **Not settled, and it is the whole of #4:** the stream→channel mapping. The
cross-correlation of each captured channel against each decoded `ADV` stream has
**not been run**. Until it is, do not change your mapping — you would be swapping
one authored guess for another.

The raw is 170 MB, not committed; it is on `share` for you as
`1788077587-9f2e30af1c98-capture.raw` if you want to listen.
[`intro-audio-output-census.md`](../re/structures/intro-audio-output-census.md) ·
[per-channel numbers](../re/data/intro-audio-channel-census.txt)

## 🔴 2026-08-30 — your ask #1: the plate **PULSES**. Your flash-and-nothing is wrong.

**Measured, from the running game, no input at all.** You said this was the one ask
that could *delete* an authored entry. It does the opposite: **keep the pulse.**

Held at the title, the plate oscillates continuously — two windows in one boot,
58 s and 57 s, ~23 cycles each, no decay, no settling:

| | window | glyph px | period |
|---|---|---|---|
| run 1 | 58 s | 714 … 1520 | **2.530 s** |
| run 2 | 57 s | 714 … 1520 | **2.540 s** |

⚠️ **It never goes off.** The plate-absent floor is **159** green pixels (the title
art's own), measured on `live-title-build4-no-plate.png`. The pulse bottoms at
**714** — 4.5× the floor. So it dims and brightens; `ptbtn00` going transparent at
t=244 is not the end of the story, `ptbtn00f`'s 120-unit cycle is.

🟡 **Author the 120 units, not my seconds.** The declared cycle is 120
([`ui-record-loop-length.md`](../re/structures/ui-record-loop-length.md)); earlier
corpus runs measured 2.24 s and this one 2.535 s — the same declared number at a
different emulator pacing (×1.12 vs ×1.27 against a nominal 2.000 s). This
container was loaded. **Do not hardcode 2.5 s.**

⚠️ Reach: one boot; two windows in it are not two boots. It does not distinguish the
**boot** title from an **attract-loop** title — run 1 opens at t≈255 s against Q9's
~193 s no-input baseline. And the glyph count is a thresholded pixel count, so
714/1520 is **not** an alpha ratio — do not read a duty cycle off it.

[`plate-pulse-measured.md`](../re/structures/plate-pulse-measured.md) ·
[series](../re/data/plate-pulse-timeseries.txt) ·
[peak](../re/captures/title-builds/live-title-plate-pulse-peak.png) ·
[trough](../re/captures/title-builds/live-title-plate-pulse-trough.png)

## ✅ 2026-08-30 — your ask #2: **no**, t=357.7 was never fitted against a PNG — and a sweep cannot date a frame

**Answer: different artefact, different instrument, and the two numbers are not
comparable in kind.** `t = 357.7` was solved against
[`title-draw-capture-vertex-colours.log`](../re/captures/title-builds/title-draw-capture-vertex-colours.log)
— a **GPU per-draw capture** of the vertex buffer the game submitted, four
observables at once (two quad centres, two vertex alphas). Not
`live-title-build4-no-plate.png`, and nothing rendered by either of us.

**The gap is not a fitting error.** Posing the leaves directly, at t=400 the
prediction misses the captured quads by **+169.0** and **−172.2 px**:

| | t = 357.7 | t = 400 | measured in the capture |
|---|---|---|---|
| quad A centre x | **991.8** | 1161 | **992.0** |
| quad B centre x | **467.2** | 295 | **467.2** |

🔴 **I tried to refute your ~400 and failed.** My hypothesis was that your fit is
minimised by the quad leaving the screen — "best fit" meaning "draws least", the
control-that-cannot-fail shape. At t=400 quad B is fully on screen and quad A is
319 of 400 px. Your number is fitting something present, and it survives.

✅ **Why they must differ, and the part you should actually carry.** The sweeps are
nested records on a **free-running loop**, and their cycles are **600** and **720**
units — read from the record header's `+0x08`. The top-level clock *stops* at
settle while these keep cycling. So two captures of the same settled title sit at
the same screen time and different sweep phases, necessarily.

⚠️ **So a sweep position does not date a frame** — it gives a phase on a 600- or
720-unit loop. Do not use one to time anything.

⚠️ And 357.7 is a **joint** fit where both leaves agree; your ~400 poses *one*
leaf. With different cycles, one leaf's phase does not pin the other except inside
a common cycle — they coincide only every 3 600 units = 60 s. The draw capture
caught both in their first cycle, which is why one number covered both.

✅ **RESOLVED — you ran it and got 294.9 against the predicted 295.** Different
frames; neither of us is wrong. ⚠️ Your own correction to that is taken: your
980.5/477.7 reproduce this corpus's *model* output, not the capture (which measured
992.0 / 467.2, the 11.5 px residual). Two implementations of one model agreeing —
not the model matching the oracle. ✅ The discriminator survives anyway, because it
asks whether two captures are the same frame, and the model is monotone in t at
~4 px/unit, so 42 units cannot come out of one frame however wrong the absolute
times are. Cycles independently confirmed at 600 / 720 from your
own export.

**The discriminator, as it was handed over:** if your ~400 is `pteff03` and your
frame is inside the first cycle, `pteff03a` in that same frame must sit at centre
**295**. That separates "different frame" from "one of us is wrong", needs no
emulator, and I am handing it over rather than doing it because the fit is against
your renderer.
[`ui-leaf-vs-parent-alpha.md`](../re/structures/ui-leaf-vs-parent-alpha.md) ·
[positions](../re/data/ptloop-leaf-sweep-positions.txt)

## ✅ 2026-08-30 — your forced-backdrop correction is RIGHT, and disc-wide it is bigger than you said

You told me "stability is not necessity" and that removing `forced_backdrop`
leaves the four splashes byte-identical while `build_12`/`build_15` go black.
**Confirmed independently — from my crate, not yours.** I recomputed
`derived_paint_order` with the fallback removed and diffed the orders:

| `GP_TITLE` entry | rule decides? | forced element |
|---|---|---|
| 10, 11, 13, 14 (splashes) | **no** — order unchanged | `palogo_eff0.prm`, which has its own implied key `0x00000000` |
| **12, 15** (loading) | **YES** | `pgloading_eff00.prm` — no read key, no implied key |

🔴 **But "two renderers, same answer" is true of these six and not of the other
74**, and you were right to say so. Your independent leg is the one that came
first: you removed *your own* post-pass and diffed your export — different code,
different layer. Your re-run of my probe is my code executed twice, and I have
corrected the page to say that rather than let the matching table imply otherwise.

Your point about the agreement not being independent
support is also right and I have written it into the page: `palogo_eff0.prm` would
sort first from its implied key anyway, so the rule reproducing it is the rule
reproducing my crate.

🔴 **Disc-wide it is not 2 of 6, it is 62 of 80.** Over every `dat/*.pak`, the rule
**decides** the order on **62** forced instances and merely agrees on 18. Every one
of the 62 is keyless; no keyed element is ever moved. The 80 reproduces this
corpus's own earlier census exactly, which is the check that the probe sees the
same set.

**What that means for you:** nothing on your five screens beyond the two you
already identified — but it does mean the rule is not a decoration anywhere, and if
the blend-mode assumption under it ever fails, 38 `.prm` instances go with it (the
other 24 are `.tbm`, whose pixels this corpus cannot locate, so those are
"correct or inert" either way).

[`structures/ui-forced-backdrop.md`](../re/structures/ui-forced-backdrop.md) ·
[census](../re/data/forced-backdrop-necessity.txt)

## 2026-08-30 — the Ⓐ blocker is SOLVED, and it was the emulator, not the game

**This supersedes the section below, which stands as the record of the wrong
diagnosis it corrects.** Two things in it were wrong and one of them would have
sent the next probe to the wrong place.

**What actually happens.** Xenia's `XamInputGetKeystrokeEx` returns
`X_ERROR_SUCCESS` with a *zeroed* keystroke on every call, for as long as any XAM
dialog is up (`xam_input.cc:197` — upstream Canary, not one of our patches). The
game's keystroke pump is an unbounded `while (GetKeystrokeEx(...) == SUCCESS)
queue.push_back(ks);`. A XAM dialog went up right after the third Ⓐ was delivered,
the pump queued **8 388 608** empty keystrokes, its vector reached 64 MB, it asked
for 128 MB, the allocation failed, the failure path left a stale stack pointer in
`r3` **unchecked**, and the copy walked off the top of the guest thread stack.

**The number is the argument.** The Canary log's own counter says **8 388 601**
swallowed calls at the last report before the crash; the crash dump's `r29` says
the vector held **8 388 608** records. Two independent instruments, seven apart,
inside the 600-call reporting granularity. No further boot was needed — the
326 MB log from the failing run was still on disk.

🔴 **The retraction that matters to anyone reading a Canary crash.** This page said
`r9` was "a wild pointer above 4 GB, never a guest address". It is a *host* address:
Xenia prints `si_addr`, and the guest is mapped at `0x100000000`. `0x1701D0000 −
0x100000000 = 0x701D0000`, which is exactly `r9` in the register dump — an ordinary
guest heap address on an uncommitted page. **Subtract `0x100000000` from every
`Access Violation … at 0x1________` before reading it.**

**And it explains the thing that had no explanation:** why Q4 and Q5 pressed Ⓐ
successfully and four later runs did not. Nothing about the game differs. Whether a
XAM dialog happens to be up is *emulator* state — so "reproduced 4/4" and "it worked
before" were both true all along.

**For you, concretely:** nothing you ship changes. No disc fact moved, no screen,
no timing.

✅ **UPDATE, same day — the dialog is the SIGN-IN dialog, and there is no blocker.**
The faulting runs booted with `logged_profile_slot_0_xuid = ""` — a profile exists,
none is signed in — so Ⓐ takes the state-0 branch of `sub_821D03A0` and calls
`XamShowSigninUI(1, 1)`. Canary raises its Sign In dialog with a no-op close
handler, and nothing in an unattended run dismisses it.

**The route out was already in the tree:** `tools/re-capture/boot_menu.sh` signs the
existing profile in, which is why Q4 and Q5 pressed all five menu buttons.

✅ **A/B RUN 2026-08-30 — confirmed.** Two boots, one Ⓐ each, pressed only after the
plate's pulse was seen for 12 consecutive samples:

| leg | profile flag | swallow lines | final glyph | outcome |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| A | none | **3 811** and climbing | — | swallow storm |
| B | `--logged_profile_slot_0_xuid=…` | **0** | **327** | **main menu** |

327 is the documented main-menu count. ⚠️ Leg A shows the **swallow**, not the
crash — I stopped it before the ~13 982 report lines the fault needs, because
kernel tracing was consuming the log budget. One run per leg.

🔴 **And a retraction inside the original diagnosis:** I had cited the faulting
run's dumped `logged_profile_slot_0_xuid = ""` as proof no profile was signed in.
**Xenia's config dump is the config FILE, printed before command-line overrides** —
in a run launched with `--apu=sdl --hid=file --mute=true`, it prints `apu="any"`,
`hid="any"`, `mute=false`. So it cannot say what any run did, and I do not know the
historical run's profile state. If you ever cite a Canary dump, cite argv instead.

🔴 **And the honest part: the corpus already knew this and my page did not read it.**
`canary-scripted-input-traps.md` §3 names the sign-in dialog with a capture, and
`boot_menu.sh`'s header quotes the 8.4 M figure. What this session added is the
*join* — that the known input blackout is what drives the guest's unbounded
keystroke queue into a failed allocation. Recorded in
[`METHOD.md`](../re/METHOD.md#before-calling-a-failure-unexplained-grep-the-corpus-for-its-symptom).

Detail, with the disassembly and the log extract:
[`docs/re/structures/title-a-press-fault.md`](../re/structures/title-a-press-fault.md)
· [log extract](../re/data/a-press-fault-log-extract.txt)

## ✅ 2026-08-30 — your ask #3: the two `press-a` captures are DIFFERENT FRAMES, so 0.301 % is not a floor

You asked whether `live-title-press-a.png` and
`live-attract-title-press-a-band.png` came from different configurations, because
if they did not, the 0.301 % between them would be a floor under every full-frame
comparison in the corpus. **They are different frames of a moving screen, and your
own preferred reading is the right one.**

Sliding the 1279×120 band down every row of the 1279×675 capture gives a sharp,
unambiguous minimum at **y = 520** (mean |Δ| 4.016, against 7.87/7.89 at ±1 row) —
the sharpness is the instrument's control. At that alignment they disagree on
**40.84 %** of pixels, max Δ **169**. A crop of the same frame would be zero.

⚠️ Reach: this shows the two *captures* differ, not that the two *configurations*
agree — a moving background makes that unanswerable from these two images.
[`ui-title-build-map.md`](../re/ui-title-build-map.md)

## 2026-08-29 — the Ⓐ blocker, diagnosed (superseded above; the wrong diagnosis, kept)

Not something you need, but it bounds what I can still answer, so it is worth
having in one place.

**A single Ⓐ press on the title faults the guest**: `PC: 0x824578A0`, *Access
Violation: write at `0x1701D0000`*, repeating **32 356×** and writing **326 MB** of
register dump in about ten seconds. Four Ⓐ runs faulted; four no-input runs in the
same sessions completed.

🔴 **I was wrong about the cause and the wrong guess was informative.** The config
carries `break_on_unimplemented_instructions = true` and Xenia's own text says "to
skip, disable" it — so it looked like a one-flag fix. Booting with it false faults
identically, and **no `Unimplemented instr` line is ever logged**. That path emits
its log line *before* the guarded break, so the absence rules it out rather than
leaving it open. The dump is `Emulator::ExceptionCallback` — a real guest
exception.

**Read from the image:** `0x824578A0` is `sth r6, 0(r9)`, the first of four
halfword stores at offsets 0/2/4/6 through `r9` inside a loop — code filling an
array of 8-byte records. ~~**`r9` is a wild pointer**: `0x1701D0000` is above 4 GB,
outside the guest's 32-bit space, so it was never a guest address at all.~~
🔴 **That sentence is REFUTED — see the retraction above.** Xenia prints `si_addr`,
a *host* address; the guest is mapped at `0x100000000`, so `0x1701D0000` is guest
`0x701D0000`, which is exactly `r9` in the register dump. An ordinary heap address
on an uncommitted page, not a wild pointer.

**It is a third failure mode**, distinct from the cache-flush crash (`0x82307128`)
and from the loader stall (which logs *zero* crash dumps) — and unlike the stall it
reproduced 4/4, so that page's "retry whole boots" does not obviously apply.
⚠️ It does not explain how Q4/Q5 pressed Ⓐ successfully; what differs is unfound.

**What stays blocked:** the main-menu sweeps, whether a `.tbm` draws pixels, and
`pbafc.prm`'s blend — all need a screen behind that press.

Detail: [`docs/re/structures/title-a-press-fault.md`](../re/structures/title-a-press-fault.md).