The human listed pulsation as first-class and the port drew nothing: the plate's
focus record `ptbtn00f` was never reached, because press_start has no `buttons`
and nothing is focused. That it LOOPS is measured -- the corpus timed the period
four times (2.12 / 2.19 / 2.34 / 2.31 s) and you cannot measure a period unless
the thing repeats.
THE RULE I WAS GOING TO WRITE DIED IN THE CENSUS. The spinning ring is a rule in
the renderer because it has a disc-wide check: 16 of 212 elements match its shape
and all 16 are focus rings. The analogous shape for a pulse -- keyframes varying
only in alpha, first alpha equal to last -- matches 82 OF 212, including
ptcopyright, palogo_sqex, ptmsg and every _eff fade. A renderer rule on it would
make the copyright notice pulse. Narrowed to focus records it matches exactly one
distinct element, and a rule justified by n=1 is a special case wearing a rule's
clothes.
So it is a LOOKUP in authored/timing.json keyed <screen>/<element>, with the
census recorded beside it so nobody widens it later.
The period is 129 units -- the element's own group under the port's existing
model: last timed keyframe t=105 plus the authored exit_ramp_units of 24. No new
constant. 2.150 s at 60 units/s, 2.295 s at the ~28.1 fps the emulator presents,
against measurements of 2.12-2.34.
IT IS A CHOICE AND THE ALTERNATIVE IS STATED: restarting at the group's first
keyframe (t=6) instead of 0 gives 123 units = 2.050 / 2.189 s, also inside the
measured spread. Nothing separates them. t=0 is taken because it is where every
other group starts -- consistency, not evidence.
Verified the way the ring was, by bit-identity one period apart. 20 periods is
43.00 s = exactly 172 film frames: frames N and N+172 differ by 0-1/255, while
the control a quarter-second off (43.25 s) differs by 58.7/255. On the held boot
title the glow-box mean swings 26.0 <-> 37.7.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01N7FiFFFwbvG2uxdcEh8HyF
af1d69ed4b