786ca36c97
Follows up the defect found last iteration: rest()'s dwell fallback is
guessing whenever it runs. Two things were open -- how big it is, and
whether "rest = the last keyframe" is the fix. Both are now answered, and
the second is answered no.
plateau_census.py walks the placement regions directly instead of going
through `screen info --geometry`, which decodes every texture and cannot
do a disc-wide pass in reasonable time. Its control reproduces GP_TITLE
build 7's three fallback elements and names ptlogo_eff3.t32 among them
before counting anything.
elements with a keyframe group 15 493
no plateau -> rest pose is guessed 3 807 (24.57 %)
... current rule returns invisible 1 711 (44.9 %)
... current rule returns scale=0 195 ( 5.1 %)
the two candidate rules agree 1 911 (50.2 %)
195 elements get a rest pose with scale 0%, which is not a pose. And
disc-wide the choice of rule is not cosmetic: the candidates agree half
the time.
But the port's exposure is one element. Across main menu, EXTRAS, title
and the developer splash, 14 elements are plateau-less and the two rules
agree on 13. The single disagreement is palogo_anima_eff.t32.
And "last keyframe" loses there, on a control that needed no new capture:
the splash carries three sibling glows with identical structure and
identical times --
palogo_gamearts_eff 15:a=0 30:a=255 45:a=255 -:a=0 plateau -> visible
palogo_seta_eff 15:a=0 30:a=255 45:a=255 -:a=0 plateau -> visible
palogo_anima_eff 15:a=0 30:a=255 45:a=212 -:a=0 no plateau
-- differing in one byte. "Last keyframe" makes anima 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,
not above.
So the defect is measured and the fix is still undecided. Nothing in the
decoder changed.
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.