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Sylpheed/docs/re/structures/result-screens.md
Sylpheed RE agent e23eea36f7 re: the ind_call damage is bounded - no corpus claim was contaminated
The protective sweep after last commit's refutation. The question was which
existing claims the ind_call cross product voids. Answer: none of the ones the
corpus makes.

Every caller-count claim in the corpus verifies against call edges, with zero
ind_call contamination:

  title-crash-stl-tree      sub_82457780  "one caller"     call=1   ind_call=0
  isl-trigger-queue         sub_8226EAB8  "16 callers"     call=16  ind_call=0
  isl-coroutine-spawner     sub_822737C8  "seven callers"  call=7   ind_call=0
  challenge-mission-gate    0x82175110    "22 callers"     call=22  ind_call=0

4 of 4 exact, and not one of the four carries a single ind_call edge.

There is a structural reason for that rather than luck. Partitioning the two
target populations: 1710 targets have ind_call edges, 12170 have call edges, 103
have BOTH, 1607 are ind_call-only, 12067 are call-only. And all 1710 ind_call
targets are vtable entries - 1710 of 1710, zero partials - against a control
where only 273 of the 12170 call targets are. So ind_call fires only on virtual
methods, and 1607 of them have no direct caller at all, which is exactly why the
two EX_ screens came back empty on call and flooded on ind_call.

The residual risk is narrow and nameable: the 103 targets carrying both kinds,
where a caller count taken without a kind filter would be inflated by about 633.
Everywhere else the two populations are disjoint, so a call-based count is safe
and an ind_call-based one is meaningless.

Rule for future work: always filter kind='call'; and when a function has no call
edges, that is a fact about it - it is a virtual method - not a gap to be filled
from ind_call.

All seventeen artefacts byte-identical.
2026-08-28 11:24:14 +00:00

11 KiB

The debriefing and pilot-record screens — STAGE_RESULT, OVERVIEW, EX_OVERVIEW

  • Where: tables.pak (the menu config pak), records STAGE_RESULT, OVERVIEW, EX_OVERVIEW; key lists compiled into the executable at sub_822814D8 and sub_8227A3A0 (found by the base-solver, player-tuning-tables).
  • Related: mission-scoring owns the rules (Score_* in the stage settings); this is the readout. savegame-format documents the same compiled-key-list shape for the LOAD/SAVE screen.

The shape was already known — for other screens

savegame-format establishes it: "the LOAD/SAVE screen's config key list is compiled into the executable, as a pointer array of key strings — the same shape as the Arsenal's (whose keys sit a few hundred bytes earlier and match the pak record exactly)", run starting 0x820A0074. sub_82286BC8's 18-name block is exactly that list — 17 of its 18 are a tables.pak field or record name, so it is the documented save-screen list and nothing new. Its lone residual is PLAYER_AMMO_LESS_10, which is not a tables.pak name at all.

Two more screens, and the key lists match their records exactly

block names all present in tables.pak?
sub_822814D8 24 24 / 24
sub_8227A3A0 21 21 / 21

And the arithmetic closes against the records themselves:

  • sub_822814D8 = the debriefing screen. 24 names = 2 screen ids (STAGE_RESULT, EX_STAGE_RESULT) + 21 stage_* fields + one sound cue (SE_BOSS_CORE_CHARGE). The tables.pak record STAGE_RESULT has exactly 21 fields (2 objects, both 21).
  • sub_8227A3A0 = the pilot record / career screen. 21 names = 5 screen ids (LAST_RESULT, EX_BASE, EX_MAIN, EX_OVERVIEW, OVERVIEW) + 7 ex_overview_* + 9 overview_*. The records EX_OVERVIEW and OVERVIEW have exactly 7 and 9 fields (2 objects each).

2+21+1 = 24 and 5+7+9 = 21, with 21/7/9 measured independently off the pak.

The debriefing readout, in full

stage_num_shoot_down_aircrafts   stage_points_shoot_down_aircrafts
stage_num_shoot_down_ships       stage_points_shoot_down_ships
                                 stage_points_shoot_down_others
stage_weight_shoot_down
stage_num_main_objectives        stage_points_main_objectives
stage_num_sub_objectives         stage_points_sub_objectives
stage_clear_time                 stage_points_clear_time
stage_shoot_down_ratio           stage_points_shoot_down_ratio
stage_damages_friendly_ships     stage_points_damages_friendly_ships
stage_damages_wingman            stage_points_damages_wingman
                                 stage_points_friendly_fire
stage_total_points               stage_rank

🔑 Nine num/points pairs plus three points-only lines — the screen shows a raw count and its score contribution for kills by class, objectives, time, ratio and both damage categories; friendly_fire, shoot_down_others and weight have no counter column. That is the same partition mission-scoring measures on the settings side.

The career readout

overview_points, _total_play_time, _clear_stages, _retry_times, _shoot_down_aircrafts, _shoot_down_ships, _shoot_down_weight — seven, and OVERVIEW adds overview_rank and overview_medals. The EX_ twin has the seven and neither of the two, which is what makes EX_ the reduced variant rather than a different screen.

🟡 Not settled: what EX_ means (a second profile? the online/leaderboard variant?) — but see stage-numbering-and-player-craft: _EXn on an asset name is measured to mean "the n-th challenge mission", which makes "EX_ = the challenge-mission debriefing" a consistent reading of why this twin drops overview_rank and overview_medals. Not adopted — the selection has not been shownEX_BASE, EX_MAIN, EX_STAGE_RESULT and EX_FONT are keys with no record of that name, so the prefix is a screen-id convention, not a table. And PLAYER_AMMO_LESS_10 is unexplained.

Reproduce: parse tables.pak with tools/re-capture/unitgroup.py and count the fields of the three records; take the key lists from the sub_822814D8 / sub_8227A3A0 / sub_82286BC8 sections of ../data/name-block-bases.txt.

The EX_ selection, shown at last — a mode word tested against 3

The section above left this open: "the selection has not been shown". It is shown now. Both screens that reference EX_ names carry the same five-instruction idiom immediately before the choice — sub_822814D8 at 0x822815b4 and sub_8227A3A0 at 0x8227a408:

lwz    r11, 4(rX)          ; the owning object
lwz    r11, 184(r11)       ; a mode word at +184
addi   r11, r11, -3
cntlzw r11, r11
rlwinm r11, r11, 27, 31, 31 ; r11 = 1  iff  [+184] == 3
cmpli  cr6, 0, r11, 0x0
bc     12, 4*cr6+eq, <plain>  ; not 3  -> STAGE_RESULT / OVERVIEW
                              ; else   -> EX_STAGE_RESULT / EX_OVERVIEW

cntlzw of zero is 32; rotating left 27 lifts bit 5 into bit 31, so the sequence is a branchless "equals 3" test. The equal-to-zero branch takes the plain name, so EX_ is chosen exactly when the word is 3.

A small partition over the three key-list loaders the corpus already names:

loads +184 does not
references EX_ names 2 0
does not 0 1

sub_822814D8 and sub_8227A3A0 both load it; sub_82286BC8, which references no EX_ name, has no +184 access at all. Both off-diagonal cells are empty.

🔑 3 is the game's own EXTRA — and that is not CHALLENGE

challenge-mission-gate already established the vocabulary for this constant at a three-way switch: == 3EXTRA, == 5 or 6CHALLENGE, otherwise FILE. So the prefix reads literally: EX_ is the EXTRA variant.

⚠️ This refines the tentative reading above rather than confirming it. That section proposed "EX_ = the challenge-mission debriefing" by analogy with _EXn on asset names. The measured constant is EXTRA, which in the game's own three-way vocabulary is a different kind from CHALLENGE (5/6). EX_ tracks EXTRA specifically.

⚠️ The boundary of what was measured: the EXTRA = 3 constant is established at +144 of the stage-loader class, while the word tested here is at +184 of [object + 4]. Same constant, same EX/EXTRA naming, two different offsets in what may be two different objects — that the two fields are the same field is not shown, only that both compare a mode word against 3.

🔴 Who writes +184 — blocked, by two independent instrument failures

The next question after the selector is what supplies the mode. Two routes were tried and both are measured to have no power here.

The offset route has no power. stw …, 184(rN) occurs 301 times in the image, lwz from +184 351 times, and 115 functions touch both +144 and +184. +184 is an ordinary small offset shared by many unrelated classes — the same shape that the corpus already recorded as failing three times. Nothing here narrows to a writer.

The xrefs ind_call edges are a cross product — do not use them as callers. Asking for the callers of the two screens returns 633 sources for each, and the two lists are identical, which cannot be right. Measuring the relation itself:

ind_call rows 1 827 297
distinct targets 1 710
distinct sources 6 992
targets with exactly 633 sources 236

236 different functions sharing the identical source count is the signature of an unresolved-indirect-call cross product, not of a call graph. ⚠️ Any reading that treats an ind_call edge as "X calls Y" is void, here and elsewhere in the corpus.

⚠️ The control shows the other kinds are fine: sub_82286BC8 has exactly one caller, kind call. And both EX_ screens have zero non-ind_call edges — they are reached only through function pointers, which is why the direct graph is empty for them.

What did come out: both EX_ screens are slot 1 of their own class

Scanning the 1 150 catalogued vtables' entries in the flat .pe:

function vtable slot
sub_822814D8 (debriefing) ANON_Class_271D5F25 1
sub_8227A3A0 (career) ANON_Class_CAA8AD62 1
sub_82286BC8 (save) in no catalogued vtable

So each EX_-selecting screen is a class whose slot-1 virtual is its key-list builder, and the third — which selects nothing — is not a vtable method at all. That is consistent with the 2 / 0 / 0 / 1 partition above arriving from a structural difference rather than a coincidence.

🔴 Still not settled: what writes +184. Both the offset sweep and the call graph are exhausted for it. A route with actual power would be the RTTI class behind ANON_Class_271D5F25 / _CAA8AD62, or a runtime watch on the field — not another static offset search.

How far the ind_call damage reaches — bounded, and the corpus is clean

The refutation above is corpus-wide in principle, so the next question is which existing claims it voids. Answer: none of the ones the corpus makes.

Every caller-count claim in the corpus checks out against call edges, with zero ind_call contamination:

doc claim call ind_call
title-crash-stl-tree sub_82457780 "one caller" 1 0
isl-trigger-queue sub_8226EAB8 "16 callers" 16 0
isl-coroutine-spawner sub_822737C8 "seven callers" 7 0
challenge-mission-gate 0x82175110 "22 callers" 22 0

4 of 4 exact, and none of the four has a single ind_call edge.

And there is a structural reason, not luck. Partitioning the two target populations:

count
targets with ind_call edges 1 710
targets with call edges 12 170
both 103
ind_call only 1 607
call only 12 067

🔑 All 1 710 ind_call targets are vtable entries — 1 710 of 1 710, zero partials. (Against a control: only 273 of the 12 170 call targets are.) So ind_call fires only on virtual methods, and 1 607 of them have no direct caller at all — which is exactly why the two EX_ screens came back empty on call and flooded on ind_call.

⚠️ The residual risk, named precisely: the 103 targets carrying both kinds. There a caller count taken without a kind filter would be inflated by ~633. Everywhere else the two populations are disjoint, so a call-based count is safe and an ind_call-based one is meaningless.

Rule for future work: always filter kind='call'; and when a function has no call edges, that is a fact about it — it is a virtual method — not a gap to be filled from ind_call.