assert_stage.py checks the DEFINITION table against an expected stage marker and
earned its keep immediately: its first live run reported MISMATCH -- the capture
had a live flight HUD and would have been filed as Stage 02, but was the S01
tutorial. That is exactly the failure that silently invalidated an earlier
cross-run comparison.
require_menu (launch_mission.sh) refuses to press until screen_id reads `menu`.
It is NOT sufficient, and this refutes my previous explanation: the run DID
confirm the menu and still loaded the tutorial. The real cause was that the
guard's own capture was a 10x710 sliver which classified as `menu` -- fixed
separately in 6aa31e5.
Left open: whether the menu guard suffices now that slivers are rejected (not
re-run), and why the capture was a sliver at all when the other shots in the same
run were 1279x675.
2.7 KiB
Nav guards — one works, one was not enough, and the real cause was a sliver
Added and exercised 2026-08-26 against a live run.
✅ Guard 2 works, and earned its keep on the first run
tools/re-capture/assert_stage.py states the expected stage and checks it against
the definition table (definitions are the stage's cast and are present from
load; instances arrive in waves). Its first live run:
MISMATCH: UN_f101_TCAF_Acropolis is NOT in the 13 definitions
UN_S01_Asteroid_cmesh_01a ... UN_e106_ADAN_Destroyer
The run had reached a live flight HUD and would have been recorded as a valid Stage 02 capture. It was the S01 tutorial. Without this check the wrong-stage roster looks exactly like a right one — which is how the earlier cross-run comparison was silently invalidated.
Use it as the precondition for any runtime measurement:
./assert_stage.py UN_f101_TCAF_Acropolis (exit 0 iff Stage 02 is loaded).
❌ Guard 1 was necessary but NOT sufficient — my explanation was wrong
require_menu in launch_mission.sh refuses to press until screen_id.py reads
menu. The previous note said the
tutorial was selected because the d-pad went out "from a state never confirmed to
be the main menu". That explanation is refuted: this run confirmed the menu
first, and still loaded the tutorial.
✅ The actual cause: the guard was shown a 10×710 sliver
The guard's own capture was 10 × 710 — not a frame at all. Every statistic in
screen_id.py is an area fraction, so the sliver classified cleanly as menu
(green 0.0000, white 0.0157). The guard passed on garbage, the fixed key
sequence went out blind, and the selection landed on a tutorial entry.
🔑 bin/screenshot's own header already records this failure mode from
2026-08-18 — a second window of class xenia_canary meant grabs came back as
slivers, and "a whole session's screen ids were noise". That fix hardened the
capture side. It did not harden the consumer, so the same failure walked
straight back in through a different path. Fixed now in screen_id.py: captures
below 640×360 return none rather than a screen name (commit 30e53f5).
❔ Still open
- Whether the menu guard is sufficient now that the classifier rejects
slivers — not re-run. The sliver explains this run, but it does not prove the
cursor/item-order assumption behind
dpad down= LOAD GAME is correct. - Why the capture came back as a sliver at all when
bin/screenshotis supposed to take the largestxenia_canarywindow by area. It succeeded for the other shots in the same run (1279×675), so it is intermittent, not systematic.
