0feadc4205
The OB kill test did not run -- the guest froze about a minute into the mission --
but sampling the HUD's own mission clock beside the counter caught it instantly.
Twelve samples over ~4 minutes of wall time: the first reads TIME 00:43.24, every
one after reads 01:02.23 unchanged, with REMAINING OB 004 throughout. frozen.py
agrees (max_pixel_delta=0), movers in the entity window are 0, and screen_id still
says `flight` with the process alive.
Worth a file because the mission clock defeats both traps this corpus has paid
for: it is the simulation's own counter, so neither a frozen world nor a finished
one advances it, where screen_id and pixel-churn are fooled by a GAME OVER screen
that animates. Rule recorded: "X never changed" is only evidence if TIME changed
across the same window.
It also closes an open ❔ from earlier this session -- entity-position-anchor-
refuted.md's "0 of 64 regions changed across 357 MB, cause unknown, not
reproduced". Same signature, now reproduced: it was this freeze.
Still unrun for the fourth iteration: the kill test itself. Not conceptually
blocked -- blocked by attrition, with this run dying at t~62s, before even the
t=120 arrival the trajectory prediction needs.
3.2 KiB
✅ The HUD's mission TIME is the liveness oracle — and it closes the "0 movers" mystery
Measured 2026-08-27, Stage 02 (guarded route, stage asserted), attempting the
REMAINING OB kill test.
What happened
The kill test did not run: the guest froze about a minute into the mission. It was caught immediately, and by the cheapest possible means — sampling the HUD's own mission clock beside the counter.
Twelve samples over ~4 minutes of wall time. The first reads TIME 00:43.24;
every one after reads 01:02.23, unchanged, with REMAINING OB : 004
throughout.
Confirmed three independent ways at the same moment:
| check | verdict |
|---|---|
mission TIME |
frozen at 01:02.23 |
frozen.py |
frozen max_pixel_delta=0 gap=6.0s |
| movers in the entity window | 0 |
screen_id.py |
still flight |
| process | alive |
✅ Why this is worth a file: TIME beats every other liveness check
This corpus has twice recorded a confident negative that turned out to be about a
dead world — the in-mission freeze, and the GAME OVER screen animating while
tools reported "the counter never moved"
(mission-freeze-and-ob-flag.md). Both defeated
screen_id.py, and the second defeated pixel-churn detection too, because a
finished mission still animates.
The mission clock defeats neither trap, because it is the simulation's own counter. A frozen sim does not advance it; a finished mission does not advance it; a live one always does. It costs one crop of an already-taken screenshot.
Rule: sample TIME beside any in-mission measurement. A reading of "X never
changed" is only evidence if TIME changed across the same window.
Crop used here: convert shot.png -crop 210x46+995+38 +repage time.png
(the REMAINING OB digits are -crop 150x46+1085+232). Montaging N crops into
one strip makes a whole run's timeline readable in a single look.
✅ It also closes an earlier ❔ from this session
entity-position-anchor-refuted.md recorded
a session where 0 of 64 sampled regions changed across the whole 357 MB
mapping while the HUD rendered, and left the cause ❔ — "not reproduced; cause
unknown". It is now reproduced, with a diagnosis: that was this freeze. The
signature matches exactly — movers 0, screen still flight, process alive at
full CPU, and nothing in guest memory advancing.
So that open question is answered, and the general lesson it was filed under stands reinforced rather than replaced.
❌ What did NOT get done
The REMAINING OB kill test — kill one e010, expect the counter to fall by
exactly 1 — is still unrun, now for the fourth iteration. It is not blocked by
anything conceptual; it is blocked by attrition. Roughly half of Stage 02 runs
end early, and this one froze at t≈62 s, before the t=120 arrival that the
trajectory prediction needs, let alone before any
kill.
❔ The freeze's cause remains uninvestigated. This run establishes only that it happens, that it happened at t≈62 s of mission time, and that TIME detects it in one crop.