Files
Sylpheed/README.md
Sylpheed port agent 2cffac0d31 docs: retract "reference renderer" -- sylpheed-cli is not the oracle
A framing correction from the human, and it runs through everything I have
written, so it is a retraction rather than a silent edit.

Reborn "was/is just a GUI explorer and extraction CLI for verifying the decoding
of the various files. It may very well be wrong." The oracle is the Xenia Canary
capture and the game.

So verify-screen is a CONSISTENCY check between two decoders that share their
assumptions, plus a regression detector -- not a correctness check, and
agreement in it is not evidence of correctness. Its header now says so, it calls
the CLI the COMPARISON renderer, and DIFFERS means "we moved apart, find out
which of us moved".

The uncomfortable part, recorded because it is the actual failure mode: this
file already contained the sentence "two renderers reading one field through one
decoder agreeing is not evidence that the field is right", written after the
ptframe1 case -- and I then went on quoting 3/255 against sylpheed-cli as though
it meant the port was right. Having the principle written down did not stop me
leaning on the agreement.

Three times both renderers agreed and both were wrong, each caught only by a
capture: pteff05 (menu screens had no background), scale-0 (drawn full size
instead of collapsed), rest() (the menu bracket missing).

Correctness moves to the captures -- nine of them, indexed at
docs/re/captures/ORACLE-CAPTURES.md, covering all five screens in scope. Three
cautions travel with them: not gamma-neutral (there is a floor, don't chase it),
geometry IS sound (a positional disagreement is real), and each is one moment of
a still-animating screen.

verify-screen keeps running over all 16 screens every iteration. It is still
worth having -- total, cheap, and it catches a divergence introduced on the RE
side. It is just not a grade.
2026-08-29 08:45:48 +00:00

3.1 KiB

Sylpheed Godot

A clean-room Godot 4 port of Project Sylpheed: Arc of Deception, starting with the menu shell: developer splash → intro video → title → main menu → submenus.

You need your own copy of the game. Nothing in this repository is game content. An offline exporter reads the disc you supply and writes an open, moddable asset tree; the Godot project reads only that tree and never touches a disc format.

  your disc  ──▶  crates/sylpheed-export  ──▶  export/   ──▶  port/  (Godot 4)
                  (Rust; decoders come from      JSON + PNG        reads ONLY
                   sylpheed-formats)             + OGG + OGV       open formats

Why the wall

Two reasons, and the second is the interesting one:

  1. Godot cannot read IPFB archives, RATC bundles, T8aD textures, XMA banks or WMV video, and it should not learn to.
  2. Modding is a goal of this port. If the runtime reads the original formats, modding means reverse engineering. If it reads JSON and PNG, modding means opening a file.

Where the knowledge comes from

The decoders live in sylpheed-formats, pinned by revision — a separate project, where the reverse engineering happens. Its docs/port/HANDOFF.md is the contract: what has been decoded, what was measured off the running game, and what is known to be undecodable. Read it before assuming a value is on the disc.

Layout

crates/sylpheed-export/ disc → open formats. Regenerates export/ wholesale
port/ the Godot 4 project
authored/ decisions that are not on the disc, each with its reason
export/ generated, gitignored, never hand-edited
tools/ verification harnesses that hold the port to the reference renderer
docs/ the mission, the format spec, the agent's loop prompt

Verifying

The oracle is the Xenia Canary capture and the game, not either renderer. sylpheed-cli screen render is an explorer and extraction CLI for verifying decodes, and it can be wrong -- three times both it and the port agreed and both were wrong, each caught only by a capture.

So tools/verify-screen is a consistency check and a regression detector, not a grade. It draws every exported screen both ways -- built from the same sylpheed-formats revision the exporter is pinned to -- and reports the largest per-channel difference in the frame:

tools/verify-screen              # every screen in the manifest
tools/verify-screen main_menu    # one of them

A difference means the two moved apart; docs/DECISIONS.md says which one moved and why, rather than tuning the port until the number goes down. Correctness is checked against the captures indexed at docs/re/captures/ORACLE-CAPTURES.md -- mind that they are not gamma-neutral, so RMSE against them has a floor.

Status

P1. The exporter writes GP_TITLE's twelve screen builds and their sprites, and the Godot project draws any of them statically at 1280x720 from that tree alone. main_menu matches the reference renderer to within 3/255 on every channel of every pixel. Next: P2, keyframe animation.