cce20b83ca
sylpheed-port noted that build 5's ptloop parent can be static while the leaf record animates, and asked me to check it against my table. My own corpus refutes my claim outright. ptloop-leaf-sweep-positions.txt -- written earlier in this same corpus -- records ptloop01.rat's nested record at loop length 600, whose leaf pteff03.t32 sweeps a 400 px-wide quad with its centre running x~921->1041 over t=340..370. The parent's declared rect is (441,270) 200x90. The leaf draws 300 px outside it: the parent rect is a PIVOT ANCHOR, not the drawn extent. Checked against the two JP captures: my measured rect differs by 0 px -- and so does the whole dead region y 270..450 x 480..960 around it -- while the band the sweep actually occupies (x 721..1241) differs by 44 025 px. The zero was measured where nothing happens. So the port's reading is right and now confirmed from the disc: parent static, leaf animates, and the two nested records cycle at DIFFERENT lengths, 600 and 720. My "single static keyframe" described the parent only. The era adjudication is unaffected -- its box overlaps the sweep band only at x 721..776, which shows no between-session differences. The menu-loop question is still unsettled after a second attempt, and the second attempt's failure REFUTES my diagnosis of the first. menu_loop_probe.py gated on the plate pulse (glyph in [500,2500] held 12 samples), fired at t=484.5 s with glyph 1723 -- a verified settled BOOT title, not the attract one -- pressed A, and the press was delivered ([file-pad] keystroke vk=5800 down/up, 8 RE-INPUT lines). Twenty seconds later all five frames still classified as the title (rmse ~67-70, margins 0.06-0.16, the "neither" signature; screen_id says title). So "the attract title accepts nothing" does not explain attempt 1, and the corpus's "the boot title accepts a single A, 2 of 2 runs" is no longer 2 of 2. METHOD: a declared rect can be an anchor, not an extent -- confirm an element draws in a region before diffing that region to ask whether it moves. navigation.md: confirm the screen changed, do not infer it from a delivered press. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
Runtime-capture harness (sylph-re container)
Screenshot-driven scripts for reading the running retail game's menus under Xenia
Canary + lavapipe, headless. They assume the container helpers screenshot,
vgamepad, pad are on $PATH and HOME=/sylph-home/re.
| Script | What it does |
|---|---|
skip_intro.sh |
Boot → main menu, unattended. Taps A only while the intro movie is actually playing (frame-to-frame RMSE), then once at the PRESS Ⓐ BUTTON title. Static logo screens are left alone, so a stray tap can never land on NEW GAME. |
wait_title.sh |
Older variant: wait for the title (green Ⓐ glyph at px 625,618) and tap A. Superseded by skip_intro.sh. |
step.sh |
One Arsenal navigation step (down/up/next/prev/none) + a compact capture: weapon list stacked over the DATA SHEET. |
sweep.sh |
Walk a whole weapon-type list, capturing only rows that show a DATA SHEET — locked rows (a "Conditions to Develop" panel) are detected by the brightness of the Range Class label box and skipped. |
type.sh |
Change weapon-type tab N times (RB) and report the header strip. |
hp.sh / cyc.sh |
Hangar hard-point carousel: cyc.sh steps it (d-pad down, not left/right) and captures the Name + DATA SHEET. |
Input timing under lavapipe: the game polls input at its own low frame rate, so a 60 ms d-pad tap is dropped roughly half the time. 200 ms is reliable; 300 ms starts to auto-repeat (two rows per press).
Findings produced with these: docs/re/weapon-datasheet-runtime.md.
Guest-memory tools (no screenshots)
| Script | What it does |
|---|---|
gmem.py |
Read the live guest address space out of /dev/shm/xenia_memory_* (Xenia's backing file), addressed by guest VA. find / read / words. |
weapon_runtime.py |
Solve the Weapon/Shell struct layouts against the disc records and read the fields the disc defaults. |
unit_discover.py |
Find which runtime class carries a set of ID strings, assuming no vtable: tallies the word at pointer_site - k across distinct IDs. |
unit_runtime.py |
Same solver for the unit\UN_*.tbl definition objects (vtable 0x820af844). Unions several snapshots — unit definitions are per-stage. |
schema_order.py |
Merge a sub-record's field-declaration order across all tables (topological sort); the layout check that pins fields no table ever values. |
order_check.py |
Test offset = base + 4*index for one table's sub-record against solver output. |
grab_tutorial.sh |
Cold-boot Canary, walk to the Nth TUTORIAL entry, wait for the stage load, snapshot guest RAM. One emulator per capture — backing out of a loaded mission wedges it. |
Snapshot first — cp --sparse=always /dev/shm/xenia_memory_* snap.bin (~2 s) — and
point $GMEM_FILE at the copy; the running emulator pegs every core under lavapipe.
🔴 pgrep -f / pkill -f match YOUR OWN shell
An agent driving this toolkit runs its commands through a wrapper shell whose command line contains the pattern being searched for. So
pgrep -f 'pilot\.py' # matches the wrapper running this very command
pkill -f 'fly_session|pilot\.py' # kills that wrapper — the script dies mid-way
This has cost four separate mistakes in one session: two scripts killed
mid-execution, and twice a "is it already running?" guard that answered yes
because it had found itself. The [p]ilot bracket trick does not help when
the literal invocation (python3 pilot.py …) also appears on the wrapper's
command line.
What works:
pgrep -x xenia_canary # exact NAME match, no -f
ps -eo pid,args | grep 'python3 pilot.py' | grep -v snapshot-bash
kill -9 <explicit pid> # look it up first, then kill by pid
The snapshot-bash filter is the reliable tell: the wrapper's command line
always contains the shell-snapshot path.
🔴 The emulator does not survive the end of an agent turn
/work/.claude/settings.json defines a Stop hook that kill -9s every
xenia_canary when a turn ends, printing "Stop hook killed N stale xenia
process(es)".
So:
- never launch a run intending to read it in a later turn — it will be dead;
- an experiment has to produce its evidence within the turn that starts it;
- prefer measurements that land in the first minutes of flight.
REMAINING OBsteps4 → 8 → 12inside the first few minutes, which is why a two-pass differential works in one turn while a 25-minute freeze watch does not.
This cost three iterations of investigating a "mysterious external SIGKILL", complete with cgroup and host memory forensics, before the hook was found. When a process dies at a session boundary, check the harness first.