f3d3594c9c
Last iteration left an unidentified full-screen untextured quad decaying 255->15 during a menu->title transition, which build 5's declaration does not account for. Hypothesis: it is the INCOMING screen's own pteff00, which opens at a255 and clears. 8 frames matching build 4's declared 16 units is a FIT, so the test was a transition whose incoming screen declares something else: title->menu brings in build 5, 0->12 = 12 units = 6 frames. Prediction recorded before the run. Measured: menu->title decay 8 frames (incoming build 4, declared 8), title->menu decay 5 frames (incoming build 5, declared 6). Different incoming screen, different decay, in the predicted direction. The second is one frame short of prediction, inside the documented +-1. The tell that clinches it: a screen contributes TWO primitives, pteff00 at 255 and pteff02 at 64. The settled menu's untextured set is [64]; at frame 34 it becomes [64, 255, 64] -- build 4's opening pair, which no single element explains. Bonus, and it closes the alpha puzzle: in capture 2 the outgoing quad ramps with no other untextured quad present -- 63, 127, 191, 255, steps of exactly 64, four frames, against build 4's declared 261->269 = 8 units = 4 frames. Exact and exactly linear. Capture 1's 102/127/255 was a composite of two overlapping quads, as sylpheed-port proposed. The thing neither of us predicted: the two directions are not the same shape. (A) title->menu is SEQUENTIAL with a real black interval of 5 frames (~10 units, against the port's authored 9). (B) menu->title is a CROSS-FADE with no black interval at all -- the incoming title starts drawing at frame 34, before the outgoing menu's quad begins ramping at 40. Authoring one hold for both directions inserts black that (B) does not have. Also fixed: fade_pair.py's automatic rising/decaying classifier worked on capture 1 and produced nonsense on capture 2, where the title has no full-screen primitive at rest and the heuristic latched onto a transient. It now prints and does not decide. Refutation attempted: sylpheed-port's structural prediction of a 6-frame decay for an incoming menu. Measured 5. Survives as direction, one frame short as duration; recorded as both. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com> Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01Wuu56cE8vJGTBtn1ppsk8v
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.