The game receives the (A) press - measured, vk=5800 flags=0001, out of ~6500
polls. Input delivery was never broken; four harness bugs were, and with those
fixed the boot goes title -> one (A) -> main menu.
GP_DIALOG DIFFICULTY is still unreached (NEW GAME hits the standing black-screen
hang), but the main menu carries two primitives, which is what the question
needed. Records the slip in the instrumentation too: logging on XSUCCEEDED
counts X_ERROR_EMPTY as success and buried the two real keystrokes under 6499
empty polls.
Next step is now STATIC: a primitive's position is stable by role across three
measured screens but nothing in the file predicts it, so dump the full 60-byte
declaration entries - four words unread - and look for a word that sorts like
the measured orders.
Chasing why (A) does not advance the title turned up four harness bugs, one real
root cause, and a refutation of that root cause as the explanation.
FIXED, each verified:
* boot_menu.sh sent the emulator stdout to /dev/null, which is why none of the
rest was visible. It now keeps a log and prints its path.
* skip_intro.sh probed pixel (625,618) for the green (A) glyph - a 1280x720
coordinate. screenshot returns the 1279x675 game surface, where that point
is on the copyright line and reads (8,17,31). Symptom: a 600s TIMEOUT with
the title on screen. Now classified with screen_id.py; next boot printed
"TITLE at 239s -> A".
* skip_intro.sh no longer taps through the movies. Making that press real (the
vgamepad fix) was a REGRESSION: the boot then reached the title in 90s and
that title accepted nothing. menu_draw_capture.sh records the same finding
independently.
* boot_menu.sh signs in whichever profile exists instead of a hard-coded XUID.
ROOT CAUSE FOUND: naming a XUID with no profile behind it opens a sign-in
dialog, xam_dialogs_shown_ goes to 1, and IsUIActive() then discards every
XamInputGetKeystrokeEx. Measured 8,388,601 swallowed calls in one boot with the
pad log showing presses arriving normally throughout. Only B13EBABEBABEBABE
exists on disc; the script asked for E0300000EFBEA3D4. Signing in the real
profile takes the swallow count 8,388,601 -> 0.
AND REFUTED: that is not why the title is stuck. With a valid profile and zero
swallowed keystrokes, a single (A) on the title that ends the boot still does
nothing. The dialog bug was real and worth fixing; it is not the explanation.
Next probe is specific: --log_mask=13 records no kernel calls, so it is not even
known whether the game polls at the title. A log on the SUCCESSFUL
XamInputGetKeystrokeEx return, mirroring the one already on the swallow path,
answers it in one boot.
'skip_intro.sh: line 44: vgamepad: command not found' right after 'movie -> skip
A'. Every '-> skip A' and 'TITLE -> A' this harness has printed pressed nothing,
which is also why the intro movie ran to 434s: it was never skipped.
screen_children.py walks every resident screen object (vtable 0x820b30b4), reads
the element array at +0x08 and the child array at +0x30, and prints the paint
permutation with each pivot. Validated in one run off the live title: it
reproduces BOTH previously measured orders character-for-character - the splash
[0,2,4,6,1,3,5] and the 24-element title permutation - so the next screen it is
pointed at can be trusted.
The screen that matters was not reached. GP_DIALOG DIFFICULTY carries exactly
one primitive and would say whether the game paints it first or last, which is
the bit that decides where primitives belong. But (A) does not advance the title
screen at holds of 0.10, 0.25 or 0.40s, and neither does START, with the pad
verified end to end: pad.py writes /tmp/xenia_pad.txt, the emulator runs with
--hid=file --pad_file pointing at it, and the mtime updates on every press. The
title is unambiguously the interactive one - PRESS (A) BUTTON is rendered.
Recorded as a blocker rather than worked around. Next step is specific: boot with
the emulator stdout kept and read the [RE-INPUT] IsUIActive log already present
on the canary branch, which would say whether the keystroke is being swallowed
emulator-side.
