Commit Graph

138 Commits

Author SHA1 Message Date
64d372c7e8 revert(mesh): withdraw the neighbourhood anchor -- it regressed the e106 twin mirror
The neighbourhood anchor (f18d591) and its refinement (27a0701) took
cross-container inconsistency from 125 to 51 with coverage unchanged, and made
e106 render as a destroyer rather than a slab. Both are reverted.

ship::tests::static_assembly_matches_runtime_capture is gated on SYLPHEED_ISO, so
it SKIPS in an ordinary cargo test -- which is why the regression was invisible
in every suite run so far. With the ISO it fails:

  e106_bdy_01: static M row0 [-1.0, 0.0, 0.0] != captured [1.0, 0.0, 0.0]

e106_bdy_01 and _02 are a mirrored pair whose two buffers hold the same geometry
reflected in X, and BOTH resources currently decode to the SAME buffer (identical
counts, span and mean_x). apply_twin_mirrors picks which instance to reflect from
the sign of that mean_x, so which buffer wins flips the decision:

  before  both twins mean_x = -66.83  -> mirror bdy_02  (matches the capture)
  after   both twins mean_x = +66.83  -> mirror bdy_01  (contradicts it)

Neither is right -- two resources sharing one decode is itself the bug and the
mirror heuristic has been compensating. The capture is ground truth, so a change
that contradicts it does not ship. The real fix must give each twin its own
buffer first.

Kept from the attempt: this test now also asserts the SET of static placements
against the capture (allow-list {e303_wep_01} for vbase dedup), so extra
placements can finally fail it -- the direction it could never fail in before.

Docs, backlog, INDEX and the ignored test's message all corrected to say
diagnosed-not-fixed rather than fixed.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 01:08:41 +00:00
0f9c95c52e re: selection fixes are exhausted for the last 51 -- the correct block is not a candidate
Implemented the proposed tiebreak as a last resort (take the attractor only if
nothing else validates), keyed first on "all coordinates multiples of 50" and
then on the sharper "all coordinates integral" -- the attractor reads
(42, -900, 2400), (-600, -500, -950) while real geometry carries fractions like
(24.55, 9.84, 4.46). Neither changed anything: still 51 inconsistent, 5480
decoded.

The null result is the finding. A mechanism that defers the attractor whenever
another candidate exists, and changes nothing, means no alternative candidate
validates for any of the 51: the correct block is not in the candidate list at
all. So the residual is not a selection problem and no reordering, scoring or
tiebreak will move it.

The frontier is vertex_run_starts -- the unit-normal run scan that builds the
candidate list -- which emits no start for these resources' real vertex buffers.

Both attempts reverted; only docs land here.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 00:57:09 +00:00
343a26ecc0 re: the remaining mis-decodes share one attractor, not pairwise confusion
Tested the tempting explanation for the last 51 -- that _l/_dead variants share
their base's vertex and index counts, making them mutually confusable and
adjacent so locality cannot help. It is FALSE: 2714 variant/base pairs across
every container, and exactly zero share identical counts.

What is actually happening is better news. e010_bdy_01_l is 171 verts / 90 tris
and NO other resource in its container shares those counts, yet in Stage_S02 and
S26 it decodes to 1600x2100x4800 -- the same bounds e303_wep_01 (172/110)
produced before the fix. Differently-shaped resources land on the same place, so
the attractor is a region of round axis-aligned box data that validates for many
(vtx, idx) shapes at once, not "another mesh with my shape".

That also explains why the neighbourhood fix helped so broadly: it steers
resources away from one strong attractor rather than resolving many pairwise
confusions.

Candidate next step recorded with its risk: de-prefer candidates whose sampled
positions are all multiples of 50 with a large span. It must be a TIEBREAK
between validating candidates rather than a rejection -- an earlier sweep for
that signature also flagged legitimate e_rou_* composite proxies -- and it needs
the same gate (decoded must not fall from 5480).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 00:46:32 +00:00
27a0701e0d fix(mesh): refine the anchor map before using it -- inconsistency 63 -> 51
Pass 1's anchor map contains exactly the mistakes the neighbourhood is meant to
correct, so a resource sitting beside a mis-anchored neighbour inherits a bad
reference. Re-anchoring against the improving map and repeating converges
quickly: two rounds, and a third changes nothing (the loop exits early when a
round is a fixpoint).

  before                 decoded 5480/6294  inconsistent 125
  neighbourhood anchor   decoded 5480/6294  inconsistent  63
  + refining the map     decoded 5480/6294  inconsistent  51

Coverage still unchanged. The 51 that remain cluster in _l (LOD) and _dead
variants -- e001_l, e010_bdy_01_l, e106_eng_02_l, _rou_f302_base_dead,
e303_base_dead and friends. A plausible reading is that a variant shares its
base's vertex and index counts, making the two mutually confusable so that
locality cannot separate them; recorded as untested rather than asserted.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 00:39:35 +00:00
f18d5919f7 fix(mesh): anchor XBG7 resources by neighbourhood -- inconsistency 125 -> 63, ships render right
anchor_pool_mesh took the FIRST candidate in file order from a container-global
vertex-run scan, so a resource could be handed another resource's block whenever
both shared (stride, vertex count, index count). Both blocks are real geometry and
both pass every quality gate, so only position separates them.

anchor_pool_mesh_near now tries candidates in order of distance from a reference,
and anchor_models_filtered runs two passes: pass 1 anchors first-match to learn
where resources land, pass 2 re-anchors each resource preferring the median anchor
of its +/-2 descriptor neighbours. Too few anchored neighbours -> keep pass 1, so
nothing regresses to guesswork.

  before  decoded 5480/6294  shared 681  inconsistent 125
  after   decoded 5480/6294  shared 681  inconsistent  63

Coverage unchanged, inconsistency halved. e303_wep_01 decodes to 49x23x42 in ALL
containers now, and e106 renders as a destroyer instead of a slab -- its two
shared turrets symmetric at X[-203,-154] and X[154,203]. That resolves the
user-reported "capital ships assemble wrong" for this cause.

The filtered path needed care: models_named (what the viewer uses) dropped
non-wanted resources, which would have left filtered decodes with no
neighbourhood and silently kept the old behaviour. Resources are now collected
regardless of the filter, but only the asked-for ones and their +/-2 neighbours
are decoded in pass 1, so a filtered decode stays proportional to what was asked.

63 cases remain; mesh_consistency_disc stays ignored and now records 63, not 125.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 00:31:20 +00:00
d660705c47 re: the correct anchor is already a candidate -- locality selects it, monotonicity does not
Enumerating every validating candidate for e303_wep_01 in Stage_S02 gives exactly
two:

  vb = 18403456   span 1600 x 2100 x 4800   <- taken, only because it is first
  vb = 52257440   span   49 x   23 x   42   <- correct, the size all 11 good
                                               containers give

So the scan is not missing anything; the wrong block merely appears earlier in
file order.

Monotonic anchoring is REFUTED as the constraint: recording each resource's
accepted anchor in descriptor order gives 25/47 increasing steps in Stage_S01 and
130/248 in Stage_S02, no better than chance. Locality holds instead -- in
Stage_S02 the descriptor neighbours anchor at 51974668 and 52218424, the correct
candidate is 52257440, and the wrongly-taken block sits at 18403456, two thirds
of the file from its own family.

Proposed rule, needing no new format knowledge: among validating candidates
prefer the one nearest the neighbouring resources' anchors, falling back to
first-match when there is no neighbour yet. It selects 52257440 here.

Not implemented: it moves the anchor for all 6294 resources, so it needs the
before/after measurement (decoded must not fall from 5480, inconsistent should
fall from 125) and then un-ignoring mesh_consistency_disc.

Instrumentation reverted; only docs land here.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 00:16:22 +00:00
7c514e3a57 re: ROOT CAUSE of the silent XBG7 mis-decodes -- the candidate list is container-global
anchor_pool_mesh walks candidates from vertex_run_starts(bytes, data_base,
stride): ONE scan of the whole container per stride, shared by every resource of
that stride, and it accepts the first candidate that validates. Nothing ties the
chosen block to the resource it belongs to, so two resources sharing (stride,
vertex count, index count) are interchangeable to this search.

The wrong block is not distinguishable by quality. Tracing the accept for
e303_wep_01:

  Stage_S01  vb=4600480   span   49 x   23 x   42   passes 0.85 = true
  Stage_S02  vb=18403456  span 1600 x 2100 x 4800   passes 0.85 = true

Both clear the strict winding gate, because the wrongly-taken block IS real
coherent geometry -- another resource's. That rules out a family of fixes: no
threshold, scoring, or best-of-N selection can help, which is exactly why the
previous iteration's attempt changed nothing.

The search space must be constrained instead. Two candidates recorded, ordered by
how much new format knowledge they need: per-resource data extents from the XPR2
resource table, or monotonic anchoring (resource k's vb after resource k-1's) if
data blocks follow descriptor order -- testable against the 556 resources that
already decode consistently.

Instrumentation reverted; only docs land here.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 00:08:38 +00:00
b5a4764567 re: the XBG7 silent mis-decode is in the per-block anchor, not the grouped-pool one
Tried the obvious fix: make anchor_grouped_meshes pick the best-scoring vb0
instead of the first candidate clearing the 0.85 gate. It changed nothing --
still 5480 of 6294 decoded, still 125 inconsistent -- and instrumenting the pivot
loop shows why: for e303_wep_01 that function never runs. The resource has a
single sub-mesh, so it goes through the per-block adjacency path
(anchor_pool_mesh) instead.

Recorded because the grouped-pool anchor is the prominent, well-documented one
and the natural first suspect; the fault is in the other path.

The change is reverted -- untargeted, unproven, and it added a scoring path for
no measured benefit. The idea behind it (several vb0 candidates can clear the
gate, and first-in-scan-order is an arbitrary tiebreak) still applies to whichever
anchor is actually at fault.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-12 00:00:37 +00:00
140856b3f9 docs(re): session log for 2026-08-11, and correct the capital-ship INDEX row
The capital-ship row still said placement was the open question. Today's work
says otherwise: placement is sound (hull static-exact, cross-id mounting is 2
pairs across 335 ships) and the user-reported "ships assemble wrong" is an XBG7
mis-decode instead. The row now says that and points at the backlog and the mesh
doc, and keeps the one-way-test problem visible.

SESSION-2026-08-11.md summarises the run for review, leading with the single item
that needs the user's decision (editing save slot 01, deliberately not done) and
separating findings, the two disc defects found, and the process notes.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 23:41:58 +00:00
4097e8503f re: a detector for silent XBG7 mis-decodes -- 125 of 681 shared resources fail it
Following the e106 slab to its cause. e303_wep_01 decodes from 14 containers: in
11 it is a 49x23x42 turret with organic vertices, in Stage_S02/S08/S26 the same
resource -- identical 172 verts and 330 indices -- decodes to 1600x2100x4800 of
axis-aligned box corners with (0,0,1) normals. The anchor scan found a different
buffer that happens to share both counts, so every size-based check passes. That
is the "declined for location, not format" risk succeeding wrongly instead of
declining.

The detector needs no ground truth: a resource shared by several containers must
decode to the same bounds. 681 resources appear in >=2 containers and 125 decode
to different bounds while reporting identical vertex/triangle counts -- a lower
bound, since a resource wrong everywhere is invisible to it. _rou_f401 is
62x25x10 in 16 containers and 4738x3147x4738 in 2; _rou_e011_wep05 gives four
different spans across 8.

Majority vote would resolve 104 of the 125 (14 are exact 50/50 splits) and agrees
with ground truth in the one case that has a render and a runtime capture behind
it. Recorded as a heuristic, not applied: for _rou_e302_base_break the majority
is the LARGER span and nothing yet says which is right. Flag, do not silently
rewrite geometry on a vote.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 23:34:31 +00:00
c9916bcb41 re: CORRECTION -- the e106 slab is a container-dependent mis-decode, not a stray volume
One iteration ago I concluded assemble_ship was drawing a non-renderable
collision volume. That named the wrong cause, and decoding the same resource from
every container that holds it settles it:

  Stage_S01  172 verts 110 tris  49 x 23 x 42        <- a turret, correct
  Stage_S02  172 verts 110 tris  1600 x 2100 x 4800  <- wrong
  Stage_S08  same                1600 x 2100 x 4800  <- wrong
  Stage_S26  same                1600 x 2100 x 4800  <- wrong
  eleven others                  49 x 23 x 42        <- correct

Same resource, same vertex and triangle counts, correct in eleven containers and
wrong in three. So the placement is legitimate (e303_wep_01 is a small shared
turret cross-mounted on e101/e106), the original author's vbase-dedup explanation
of the capture's silence stands, and my "dedup would show one, not zero"
objection does not survive -- at its true size the turret is ordinary geometry.
The defect is in the mesh decoder.

The wider point: the decoder can produce wrong geometry WITHOUT declining. The
XBG7 audit counted 814 honest refusals; this is the other kind, silently 100x too
large. A screen for the signature (bounds exact multiples of 50, span > 1000)
flags 22-32 models each in S02/S03/S08/S26/S27, but it also catches legitimate
e_rou_* composite proxies, so that is a candidate list and not a bug count.

Next: diff the anchor scan's chosen vb0 for this resource between Stage_S01 and
Stage_S02 -- same resource, two outcomes -- and turn whatever distinguishes them
into a post-decode sanity check so a silent mis-decode becomes a decline.

Kept from the previous entry: the test can only fail one way, and cross-id
placement is genuinely narrow (2 pairs across 335 ships).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 23:25:55 +00:00
c5a5065389 re: the format layer is NOT exonerated -- assemble_ship draws a non-renderable volume
Did the visual the backlog kept naming as the next step, and it overturns the
conclusion. Rendering e106 from the static assembly and from the baked runtime
capture: the capture has 8 placements, the static assembly 11 -- the same 8 plus
e303_wep_01 x2 and a second e106_eng_01. In the render the destroyer sits inside
a white slab that dwarfs it.

That slab is e303_wep_01: 172 verts, 110 tris, bounds X[-1000,600] Y[-1050,1050]
Z[-2400,2400] = 1600 x 2100 x 4800. A real e106 turret (wep_02_01) is 269x179x417
with 772 tris; the bridge is 105x76x305. So it is not a turret -- it reads as a
collision/trigger volume, and whatever it is the game does not draw it: the e106
capture contains no e303_wep_01 at all.

Why it was missed: assemble_ship treats every rou_* composite node as drawable,
the cross-id mount is documented as intended, and the test asserts
count("e303_wep_01") == 2. The capture's silence was explained as vbase dedup,
but dedup would show one instance, not zero -- and the test walks capture parts
looking them up in the static output, so EXTRA static placements cannot fail it.
Same shape as the earlier include_external gap: a test that can only fail one way.

Scope stated carefully: sweeping 335 ships for "ship-scale span with <400 tris"
flags 20 ships and 58 placements over 28 resources, but ONLY the e106 case is
proven (render + capture absence + geometry). Others may be legitimately large
low-poly parts and need the same three checks.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 23:15:22 +00:00
5b8b5e0ab1 re: measure the XBG7 declined set, and close off the descriptor shortcut
"A few multi-stream / quantized bodies remain" declined understates it. Across
all 166 resource3d containers: 6294 XBG7 resources, 5480 decoded (87.1%), 814
declined, in 31 of 166 containers. By name the declined set is 492 e* (enemy
craft), 142 f*, 73 n*, 23 eff*, plus *_dead destroyed variants -- not hero
bodies.

Also recorded as a dead end, so nobody repeats it: the descriptor's third word
looks like (streams << 16) | format -- decoded g001..g003 carry 0x00010001 while
declined t170/t180 carry 0x00020004 -- but histogramming it disc-wide puts
decoded AND declined at every value (0x00010001 alone: 4479 decoded, 328
declined). Its low half tracks sub-mesh count. Decodability is not declared in
the descriptor; it is whether the unit-normal anchor scan can locate vb0, which
the code already tests. 229 declined resources carry the most common word[2] with
under 1 KB of data, i.e. small meshes with too little signal to anchor rather
than exotic formats.

No decode gained this iteration; the gap is now quantified and one attractive
wrong turn is closed.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 23:03:58 +00:00
d9c69c566c lsta: the count was never unreliable -- it counts sprites AND PRMD primitives
The module said "a few entries disagree with the actual frame count, so we walk
by the T8aD magic instead". They do not disagree. An LSTA is a display list of
inline elements that are either T8aD sprites or PRMD primitives (the flat
coloured quad the UI bundles use to dim a scene), and the count at 0x04 counts
both: across all 64 lists on the disc, count == T8aD + PRMD, with no exceptions.

The six lists that looked wrong (GP_DEBRIEFING_PILOTLOG, GP_MISSION_SELECT, two
language builds each) each hold exactly one primitive, which is the whole of the
off-by-one.

Also measured after the T8aD rectangle-list fix: all 1281 sprite frames decode,
100%.

parse() still returns sprites and skips primitives -- that is the useful
behaviour -- but the docs now say so instead of blaming the header.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 22:52:02 +00:00
d9ffc223bc re: RATC "one level deep" is not a limitation -- measured, plus a second dangling asset
INDEX read as if the parser stopped at one level. Measurement says there is
nothing deeper: 2859 top-level bundles hold 18002 children at depth 1 and ZERO at
depth 2, with no blob failing to parse.

The children that are themselves RATC -- the .rat layout records -- are leaves.
They carry no child list and reference their siblings BY NAME (the sprite they
place, and via "opt " their focused variant): 3311 such leaves, every one
embedding sibling names, and 10144 of 10148 references resolve within the same
bundle. That is the same by-name convention used one level up (a screen config
naming .prt components) and one level up again (the movie table naming
<lang>.pak+<member>).

The 4 unresolved references are a disc defect, not a parse gap: pmbase.rat in
GP_STAGE_CLEAR.pak's four language builds places pmbase.t32, and that sprite
exists nowhere -- not a pak member, not a child of those bundles. Second such
dangling asset after SUBTITLE_S12B.tbl, so a reimplementation should skip a
missing sprite rather than call it a decode failure.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 22:44:19 +00:00
ac10d3bd19 t8ad: a surface is a list of sub-rectangles, not a 256 grid -- disc decode 96% -> 100%
The "~15% deferred variants" were not variants. Auditing every T8aD on the disc
gave 19216 surfaces, 18442 decoding (96.0%) and 774 failing in two clusters:
GP_DIALOG strips declaring 524x63 with a "tile count" of 1 or 2 instead of 3, and
small textures in the six *2D language paks whose pixels ran past the end of the
file.

Both fall out of the per-tile header, which is not opaque flags: it is four BE
u32 -- dst X, dst Y, width, height. A 15x18 icon stores a 13x18 rectangle at
(1,0); pdmes010 stores (59,6,256,54) and (315,6,149,54), the second beginning
exactly 16 + 256*54*4 bytes after the first. So 0x1c is a RECTANGLE COUNT and the
256-grid reading was an accident of most surfaces being stored as full-width
bands.

Parser rewritten to that model, still refusing to guess: a rectangle must fit the
declared surface and its pixels must fit the file, else None. Disc decode is now
19216/19216 = 100.00%.

Two test fixtures were built to the old model and are corrected rather than
worked around. lsta's t8ad_frame wrote NO offset-table entry, so the decoder read
"pixels" from inside the header -- the test passed only because it checked
dimensions alone.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 22:37:21 +00:00
9228255bfa re: validate the screen layout against the running game -- eight rows, +/-2 px
Booted to the ARSENAL and detected the eight teal category chips by colour, then
compared their row centres against the eight prbtn1..8.rat placements parsed from
eng\prmain_scr.prt. All eight fit

    screen_Y = placement_Y + pivotY(14) + chrome(45)

with residuals -1,-1,-1,-2,0,-2,-1,-2 px. The spacings are the real signature:
predicted 54,56,55,54,56,55,55 against observed 54,56,54,56,54,56,54 -- an
irregular alternating pattern, not a round number that could match by luck. The
one free parameter is the 45 px emulator window chrome, which is not part of the
game, and the residual is centroid measurement noise.

Confirms three things together: the declaration table is the element set, the
placement region gives real screen coordinates, and the pivot composes additively
(pivotY 14 = half the 28 px chip, so placement is top-left as documented).

Explicitly NOT confirmed: the max-dwell rule for animated elements. These buttons
are static -- every keyframe identical -- which is exactly what makes them a clean
ruler. That rule needs an element captured mid-slide.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 22:25:18 +00:00
35e2d1067f re: placement X/Y are SIGNED, the tail word is time, and the resting pose is max-dwell
Dumping the remaining Arsenal components turned up placements reading as
4294966780 and 4294966856 -- negative as i32 (-516, -440). X and Y are signed;
off-screen animation starts are negative, and read as unsigned a reimplementation
would draw them four billion pixels off.

The raw region then showed the rest of it. The trailing word is a TIME, and a
group is an in -> hold -> out animation: prselect_win1 runs
t=4:-516 -> 6:-71 -> 7:81 -> 8:127 -> 23:134 -> 24:134 -> 25:127 -> 27:81 ->
31:-71 -> 1:-516. So NEITHER the first nor the last keyframe is where the element
sits -- both are off-screen. The resting position is the max-dwell keyframe,
(127,155)..(134,155) here, which is where the weapon-list panel actually appears.

This corrects my own note from earlier today, which reported "final=" positions.
Static elements were unaffected (the pause menu's buttons have identical
keyframes) but animated ones were misread. screen_layout.rs now reports the
max-dwell pose plus the full timeline, and both captures are regenerated.

Also seen while dumping: kind 0x2, and a .sbo child (scrollbar) parented to the
list window.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 22:14:36 +00:00
de357ffdc9 re: the screen parse generalises to the ARSENAL, plus kind 0x4 and the component model
examples/screen_layout.rs dumps a bundle's declaration table and placement region
together. It reproduces the tutorial pause menu exactly and reads the ARSENAL the
same way -- 23 elements that match the running game: eight buttons prbtn1..8.rat
at X=242 evenly spaced (the config declares WEAPON_CATEGORIES = 8, and eight
categories are what the Arsenal shows), prexp3.t32 declared SEVEN times at X=726
34px apart (the DATA SHEET rows), prexp1 sliding (726,143)->(1286,143) with
prexp1a parented to it, and prmsg at (151,645).

Two additions to the format:

  kind = 0x4 marks a REPEATED INSTANCE of a sprite -- prexp3.t32 appears once
  with 0x0 then six times with 0x4, each with its own placement. So the element
  name is not a key; the declaration index is.

  A screen composes from named .prt components. GP_HANGAR_ARSENAL.pak has 510
  RATC entries because its config names components (Menu = prmain_scr.prt, etc.)
  and they resolve under the config's own PATH prefix: prmain_scr.prt is absent,
  eng\prmain_scr.prt is present -- the same <lang>+<member> convention the movie
  table uses. A sub-component reads identically: psselect_win1 declares 4
  elements, three parented to element 0.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 22:06:00 +00:00
f65387143e re: the UI screen gap is closed -- the bundle also carries every element's placement
Immediately after the declaration table the RATC bundle holds a placement region,
one group per element: a header of (u32 element index, u32 keyframe count)
followed by that many 40-byte keyframes carrying scale/tint/X/Y. The element
index is stated in the header, so the correspondence is read, not inferred from
order.

Tutorial pause bundle: 11 groups for 11 elements, every header index and count
matching the blocks present. The values are self-evidently right -- three menu
buttons at X=546 exactly 70 px apart (288/358/428), title (540,119), message
(451,545), and the eff* sprites carrying multi-position fly-ins.

Cross-checked: pgp_ttrl_btn10.rat places its own sprite at (546,288), identical
to its inline group, so the inline region is the same placement data and it
covers the eff*/deli*/msg elements that have no record of their own.

So a screen is fully reconstructible from its bundle alone: element list and
order from the declaration table, placement and animation from this region,
plus the sprites, with "opt " supplying focused states. This retires the caveat
added earlier today that only the order was known.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 21:58:21 +00:00
dd8770826b docs: INDEX — retire the stale 'loop1.rat not decoded' note
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 21:50:39 +00:00
8814df843b re: the RATC declaration table IS the screen's draw list, and +32 is a parent index
The doc's open gap was "where does the screen's draw list live" -- the eff/deli/msg
sprites have no .rat and loop1.rat turned out to be an animation. It is the
bundle's own declaration table, which is NOT the child listing: children are
grouped by type (all .t32, then all .rat) while the declaration table names
ELEMENTS in a plausible back-to-front order and contains exactly the missing set.
For the in-mission pause menu it lists 23 elements ending with loop1.rat, and it
omits the focused button variants -- those are reached via each base record's
"opt " link -- so it is the screen's element set, not an inventory.

Also corrects the entry layout: it is FIVE words after the name, not "u32 x4
flags", and word +32 is a PARENT ELEMENT INDEX (0xffffffff = none). pgpeff02a
carries 3 and element 3 is pgpeff02; pgpeff03a carries 5 and element 5 is
pgpeff03. Verified on two independent language builds, no out-of-range value in
any bundle, and the tutorial bundle (no "a" variants) is 0xffffffff throughout.

Bounded honestly: what is drawn and in what order is now answered; WHERE the
eff/deli/msg sprites land is not -- the declaration entry has a pivot but no X/Y.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 21:50:13 +00:00
8b7c9da067 re: clear mirror handling and the exhaust cones -- the viewer bug's static avenue is exhausted
Mirror handling: the concern was that apply() bakes R*(S*v)+T while the viewer
decides winding from det(m) alone and rotates normals by m alone, so a mirror
encoded as negative SCALE would reflect geometry without flipping winding. It
never happens -- across 1485 assembled parts in all 22 containers there are 22
mirrored parts, every one with det(m) < 0, and ZERO negative or non-uniform
scales. apply_twin_mirrors writes the reflection into m, so the flip always
fires and ignoring s for normals is harmless.

Exhaust cones: the only geometry the viewer invents, drawn at GN_Jet/GN_SJet
frames because the real engine geometry is recessed. Across 335 assembled ships,
192 with exhaust frames, not one cone sits outside its hull bounding box (10% of
span tolerance). Caveat kept in the doc: inside-the-box does not prove a cone is
correctly oriented or sized -- it rules out the reported symptom, no more.

Every mechanism the diagnosis proposed is now eliminated (include_external,
duplicate names, mirrors, cone placement). The visual comparison is no longer
the next step but the only remaining one, and if it agrees the original report
needs re-grounding against a specific ship and expectation.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 21:41:20 +00:00
a7905d0f6b re: kill the duplicate-resource-name hypothesis for the viewer bug, and reconcile 22 vs 16 stages
build_ship_model resolves each placement with find(|m| m.name == p.resource) --
first match wins -- so a repeated resource name inside a container would draw
the wrong geometry. It cannot happen: decoding every XBG7 resource in all 22
stage containers gives 4603 resources and ZERO repeated names. Per ship it is
tighter still: e106 wants 9 distinct names and decodes exactly 9 models for 11
placements, e105 9 for 9, f105 5 for 6.

Two of the three remaining candidates for the user-reported viewer bug are now
gone (this and include_external), leaving mirror handling and the exhaust cones,
plus the untried visual comparison.

The container sweep also reconciles a number I flagged earlier: the disc has 22
stage CONTAINERS -- Stage_S01..S16 plus Stage_S24..S29 -- i.e. 16 story stages
plus 6 extra. The save screen's 16 STAGE sprites and the notes' "22 stages" are
both right and count different things; neither gets edited to match the other.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 21:31:18 +00:00
671891f9bf re: XPR2 channel order confirmed against the running game -- the second "dynamic unknown" closed
INDEX carried XPR2 as "colours unverified (dynamic item)". The failure mode that
matters is a swapped red/blue channel: invisible on greys, invisible without
ground truth, and it poisons every asset silently.

Method: pick an asset that is strongly asymmetric in hue and has known in-game
appearance. DeltaSaber_T.xpr (1024x1024 Dxt1, 11 mips) decodes to white/grey
panels with orange-rust accents; the game renders the same hull in the ARSENAL
scene.

  decoded texture : 1073 warm px, 0 cool, median saturated hue 23.3 deg
  in-game render  :  916 warm px, 124 cool, median saturated hue  9.3 deg

Both orange/red; a red<->blue swap would put the texture at ~200 deg. The cool
pixels are the blue UI behind the model and the 14 deg offset is the hangar's
red key light -- neither can move a hue by 180.

Stated as a bounded result, not "colours are correct": a hue-family comparison
cannot see a gamma/sRGB error, premultiplied alpha, or a per-channel scale, so
exact fidelity stays open and needs a flat unlit known-value surface. Cubemap
face ordering untouched. BG_Earth.xpr (A8R8G8B8 cubemap face) decoding to a
coherent nebula is corroboration for the de-tile step, not proof.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 21:21:55 +00:00
38f58ea559 re: the movie/subtitle/voice link is solved statically -- INDEX called it a dynamic unknown
INDEX carried IXUD as "movie<->track link unknown (dynamic item)". It is a
config record on the disc: tables.pak schema 0x067025b9, whose keys match the
movie game-part symbols in the executable (MOVIE / TELOP / SUBTITLE /
VOICETRACK, plus SUBTITLE_FONT / SUBTITLE_Y / SUBTITLE_HEIGHT next to
silph::GamePart_Movie::Impl::OnPrepare).

101 movies mapped: 94 with a subtitle, 83 with a voice track, 21 with a telop.
Every subtitle reference was looked up in dat/movie/<lang>.pak and 93 of 94
resolve -- SUBTITLE_S12B.tbl resolves in NONE of the six languages, a dangling
reference on the retail disc rather than a decode failure.

Naming is SUBTITLE_<base>.tbl and VOICE_<base>, with the staff roll and five
supply movies (VOICE_D_450..454) as documented exceptions, so a reimplementation
can resolve by convention and fall back to the table for those six.

Deliberately NOT published: the record's ~104 script ids paired to movies.
Positional pairing drifts by three -- visible at the tail, where
S24/S27_SUPPLY_ACROPOLIS would have to map to hokyu_LS_s24A/s27A and do not --
because the IDXD pool dedupes repeated values and an id whose movie was already
named contributes no token. The CSV is keyed by movie file instead.

For the intro-movie work: ADV.wmv has VOICE_ADV and no subtitle, no telop.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 21:10:08 +00:00
bb9e75fe6a re: the title-menu screens read the auto-save (slot 01), and the high score is computed not stored
Two results, both from a safe probe.

Slot 03 was given SHAB[0] = (a=1, b=12345, c=60000) -- a one-minute best time --
and MISSION SELECT still showed 4612 P EASY / 05:24.77 EASY, i.e. slot 01's
numbers. So the title-menu screens read the AUTO-SAVE, and any probe written to
a throwaway slot is invisible there. The previous SHAB identification is
unaffected: it matched slot 01's own bytes, which is what the screen renders.

The consequence is a decision, not a task: mapping the difficulty enum (a) or
testing b needs slot 01 itself edited -- the only save with real progress. Left
undone deliberately and flagged in the doc; a full content backup exists and
slot 01's bytes are archived, so it is recoverable, but it is the user's call.

Also: High Score 4612 is stored NOWHERE. It is absent from both .gpd profile
files, all three saves (compressed and inflated) and xconfig.settings, while the
best time 324773 is present in slot 01 alone. The score is computed at display
time, which is why SHAB[0].b = 4101 does not equal it.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 21:00:16 +00:00
df45a1986b re: SHAB is the per-stage record table -- record 0 is Stage 01, and c is its best time
EXTRAS -> MISSION SELECT renders per-stage records and they match the table.
Stage 01 shows "High Score 4612 P EASY / Best Time 05:24.77 EASY" while SHAB[0]
is (2, 4101, 324773, FILETIME): 324773 ms IS 5m24.773s, the displayed best time.
Sixteen records, sixteen story stages -> the table is indexed by stage, and
record 0 is Stage 01, the only stage this save has cleared.

  a = 2       difficulty of the record (both entries tagged EASY)
  b = 4101    NOT the displayed high score 4612; equals GHAD +24/+28
  c = 324773  best clear time in ms -- confirmed against the screen
  d,e         FILETIME

This also explains the probe that filled SHAB[1] and changed nothing: the table
holds stage RECORDS, not progress, and Stage 02 has never been cleared so its
record is legitimately empty. Promotes the earlier "per-stage result record"
guess to confirmed for the layout.

Route: title -> EXTRAS -> MISSION SELECT. Only cleared stages are selectable (16
d-pad presses never left Stage 01) and the screen has its own difficulty
selector (Y).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 20:50:06 +00:00
98b3cf56ac re: name the save read path, and locate the save state at game_object+304
Disassembling around the serializer names its mirror and the whole read side:
deserializer 0x822C0380 (reads GDAA + phase string), GHAD reader 0x822BF858
(called with save+8, pairs with the writer 0x822BF678), SHAB reader 0x822BFD60
(save+136, count 16).

The GHAD reader is a plain unrolled byte copy with no clamping or validation
anywhere, which is why hand-written field values survive into the object exactly
as written.

The deserializer's only caller builds its argument as
lwz r11,4(r30) / lwz r11,0(r11) / addi r4,r11,304, so the save state lives at
+304 of a game object and every field now has a fixed absolute offset there --
Points at +336, clear ratio at +320, the develop blob at +380, the SHAB table at
+440. That is what a live-RAM read of the save state needs.

Recorded as a negative too: searching those absolute offsets does NOT find the
panel's populate code. lwz rX,336(rY) has 193 matches, and the windows holding
several right offsets at once are a vtable thunk table (slots 308-340) and a
float-parameter block. The stage/difficulty fields need the screen-side path.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 20:24:47 +00:00
bc42c0970e re: the save screen's key table is compiled into the executable -- a 4th difficulty, 3 states, 16 stages
Static, no emulator. The LOAD/SAVE screen's config keys sit in .rdata as a
pointer array at 0x820a0074, identified as config keys (not loose strings) by
the Arsenal's own key list sitting a few hundred bytes earlier and matching its
pak record exactly.

  - GAME_VERY_HARD exists alongside EASY/NORMAL/HARD, while the stage tables
    only carry BonusPoint_EASY/NORMAL/HARD -- a fourth, unpriced tier.
  - Game Status is a 3-valued enum: STATE_STAND_BY (our save's "At Standby"),
    STATE_STAGE_CLEAR, STATE_GAME_CLEAR.
  - Exactly 16 STAGE sprite keys, matching weapon.tbl's stage01..16 (plus 6
    tutorials and 6 challenges). So 16 is the story-stage count and the "22
    stages" figure used elsewhere counts a different set -- flagged, not
    silently changed.

Also recovered: the panel's field names and positions (Points, FlightTime
%03d:%02d:%02d, ClearTimes, CompletionRate, RatioOfClear, Index, Label, Date,
BrokenData).

It does NOT name the stage/difficulty save fields, and it explains why the probe
sweep could not: the screen picks a sprite key BY INDEX through a config lookup,
so there is no lis/ori immediate to xref back to the selecting code.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 20:13:01 +00:00
2da9b8a9b8 re: the whole GHAD block is neither stage nor difficulty -- sixteen probe saves
Extends the previous refutation to a sweep. Probed with no effect on STAGE 02 or
Difficulty EASY: every scalar in the GHAD block (+0, +12, +16, +20, +28, +32,
+36 at 1/3/9, +40 u64, +48, +52, +56, +60, +64 raw), SHAB[0].a, and the SHAB
FILL COUNT in both directions -- record 1 filled with a copy of record 0, and
record 0 cleared. The "stage = filled-record count + 1" idea dies with it, and
so does the reading that made SHAB a per-stage result table by that route.

The panel does re-read each slot: slot 02 holds Points 4101 / Clear Ratio 5 %
and displays exactly that while its neighbours show 101 / 6 %.

Left: the phase string, the trailer, or the blob. Recorded caveat -- every save
on disc is genuinely Stage 02 EASY, so "field not found" and "panel does not vary
those two labels per slot" are not yet separated, and another probe round cannot
separate them. The next move is static: find the code that formats STAGE %02d
and read which offset it loads.

savegame_edit.py --set now packs an int into raw_* byte fields.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 20:01:26 +00:00
eac3435cc7 re: +36/+52/+56 are neither stage nor difficulty -- refuted with eleven probe saves
Those three fields all hold 2, and "difficulty or stage, undecidable from one
save" has been the reading since the format was parsed. Writing saves makes it
decidable and the answer is neither.

boot_menu.sh boots to the title menu WITHOUT loading anything, and LOAD GAME's
slot list renders each slot's Details panel from that slot's payload. Extra
slots can be fabricated (copy the directory plus a gameNN.header with its
UTF-16BE display string and ASCII name patched), so four probes fit in one boot,
read-only.

Probed: +36 at 1/3/9, +52 and +56 at 1/9, and +0, +16, +32, +48, +28,
SHAB[0].a. Every one left the panel at STAGE 02 / EASY / At Standby /
Times Cleared 0.

The negative is meaningful because the panel does read each payload -- slot 02
shows 5% clear ratio against the others' 6%, and Points tracked +24 exactly.
Two controls: patching a slot header to "STAGE09 HARD" changed nothing (the
display is payload-driven, not header text), and the row date follows the
container FILETIME.

Remaining candidates: +12, +20, +40 (u64), +60, +64, or the phase string.

Also here: savegame_edit.py --slot for SHAB records, and boot_menu.sh itself --
nav_probe.sh's boot loads a save, which with probe slots on disc loads a probe,
and a dropped d-pad step there put A on TAKE OFF and spent a boot loading a
mission.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 19:37:06 +00:00
6e0fbe52a6 docs: retire the last three sentences that predate the solved index space
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 19:01:43 +00:00
841156a95d re: the develop blob's index space is SOLVED -- it follows strings.tbl, cut items and all
Three hand-written probe saves settled what a mission payout could not.

  all 54 owned  -> every tab fills and the lists WRAP, giving exact counts
                   (GUN 8, BEAM 8, LASER 4, MPM 5, ASM 5, B/R 7, CANNON 6,
                   SPECIAL 6 = 43 displayed) and confirming the display order is
                   weapon.tbl's order item-for-item. It also killed the idea
                   that gate-unmet owned flags are suppressed: Maelstrom Bomb
                   (Stage 6) and Grav Cannon XGS (Stage 12) both rendered at a
                   Stage-2 save.
  only 9 + 39   -> STILETTO BG1 Developed (control) AND TOMAHAWK ALPHA RAIL GUN
                   Developed. The CANNON block starts at 39, not 38.
  only 39 + 48  -> JAMMING SYSTEM Developed. SPECIAL starts at 48, and with six
                   SPECIAL items the array closes exactly at 53, nothing spare.

So the blob is indexed by strings.tbl's item order -- the display order PLUS the
items only the localisation file carries (Adhesive Mine B2A, and three of
Ballista GSH / Designator LH / Smoke Marker Launcher / Bumble UV). They never
appear in the Arsenal but they hold slots, which is the entire reason the tail
looked broken. It also explains the retail save's five "unexplained" owned
entries at 33 and 45/46/47: cut items, shipped flagged owned, never rendered.

That weapon.tbl's No_Equipment..Wep_83 run is ALSO 54 long is a coincidence, and
it cost real time -- the two orders agree only to index 32. Recorded as such.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 19:01:14 +00:00
dc97dc215d docs: reconcile the 'free items are granted' wording with the 0 P purchase the probe caught
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 18:10:58 +00:00
f5f95be0a1 re: saves can be written back, which settles what the develop blob's 4s mean and refutes the tail
The container's derived fields turned out to be reproducible -- length+10 at
+0x30, payload length at +0x8c, adler32(payload) at +0x8e, everything else
copied -- and savegame_edit.py re-wraps a real save BYTE-IDENTICALLY, which is
the check that those three are the only ones. A hand-written save then loaded.

That replaced a blocked experiment (the tail question needed a mission payout,
and none of the currently developable items even sit in the disputed range) with
a direct one: write the blob, read the Arsenal.

  - controls: 4 at index 9 -> STILETTO BG1 Developed, 21 -> FALCON 9AM
    Developed. A hand-written 4 reaches the screen.
  - tail: 4 at 33 and 45 left their rows dashed (both on screen, not below the
    fold), and 38 left TOMAHAWK ALPHA RAIL GUN at "0 P" -- not owned. So the
    tail is not the weapon.tbl order continued.
  - clearing the real save's {22,26,39,46,47} cost the Tomahawk its Developed
    status, which puts its flag in that set (39 positionally) -- but a uniform
    +1 fails for SPECIAL, so no shift is asserted. Indices >=32 stay marked.

Two behaviours fell out. The title RE-DERIVES developable state on load and
announces it ("You can now develop Broad Sword ..."), so only the 4s are stored
state and a written 2 is pointless. And a no-cost item is bought for 0 P rather
than granted -- TOMAHAWK at "0 P" is what unowned looks like -- which is the
actual reason items read Developed in a save where nothing was spent.

Slot 03 was restored from its archived original (md5 verified); slots 01/02 were
never touched.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 18:10:28 +00:00
f88f4f6847 re: the Arsenal develop economy, and the save blob's index space (first 32 confirmed)
GP_HANGAR_ARSENAL.pak's screen config points at weapon.tbl (item ids, in the
8-category display order) and strings.tbl (names, descriptions, and a
"Conditions to obtain" block per item). The id run No_Equipment .. Wep_83 is
exactly 54 long -- the save blob's length -- and all 60 conditions blocks are
extracted to a CSV: gates are stage completion, a predecessor item, or an ace
kill; costs run 3000-350000 P, and 20 items cost nothing once gated (which is
why items the player never bought read as Developed).

Predicting the save state from those conditions -- before looking at the blob --
says exactly six items are developable here, and the blob's six 2s sit on those
six, in weapon.tbl order, at indices 1/5/10/12/27/31. With the four obtained
items and the differential's own two transitions that is twelve concordances
over indices 0-31, nothing fitted. Broad Sword SG1 at index 5 needed scrolling
the GUN list to see, which is the only one the first screenshots missed.

The tail is NOT settled and is marked so: the Tomahawk is weapon.tbl index 38
and the screen shows it Developed, but blob[38] = 0, and the other tail 4s
(33/39/45/46/47) land on items the Arsenal shows as locked -- the SPECIAL tab is
entirely empty. A +1 shift does not repair it either. Settling it needs a second
development in a late category, which needs a mission payout.

Also recorded: IDXD string pools dedupe repeated values, so only the first
record of a table can be read from the token stream -- record 2 shows just its
unique values, record 6 no cost at all.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 17:38:45 +00:00
6ebf2ba00a re: capture the Hangar screen — it is a loadout picker, not a craft data sheet
The Hangar lists NOSE / MAIN WEAPON 1-3 with the mounted weapon and a derived
'Gross Weight: Light'. It shows no craft stat fields at all, so the Hangar is
not a route to the unit definition's defaulted fields — the Arsenal DATA SHEET
(weapons only) and the live-RAM route remain the only two.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 17:19:21 +00:00
f0ceda1c6f re: developing one Arsenal weapon separates Points from its twin and names the save blob
A third save, taken in the running game after developing exactly one item
(Light Machine Gun MG I, 4000 P) and declining the mount prompt, moves exactly
three things against the same-state save:

  +24  Points      4101 -> 101   and +28 does NOT move, which separates the
                                 pair one save could not tell apart; the
                                 Details panel then reads Points 101 P, so
                                 +24 is the spendable balance
  +8   clear ratio 5 -> 6        so the ratio counts collection, not stages
  +68  blob[1],[2]  2->4, 0->2   the item bought, and the successor the game
                                 announced as newly developable

One action, two blob transitions, two on-screen events in the same order — which
is what makes 0 locked / 2 developable / 4 developed a reading rather than a
guess, and rules out a plain owned-bitmask (it could not hold the middle state).
Which item each of the 54 indices is stays open: the arsenal id lists in
GP_HANGAR_ARSENAL.pak union to 35, and MG I sits at index 1, not 0.

Also recorded: inside a modal yes/no dialog a 60 ms d-pad tap is ignored (the
list menus accept it), and the develop confirm starts on NO while the mount
prompt right after it starts on YES.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-11 17:16:57 +00:00
5cc995e864 docs/re: INDEX — reflect the named save fields and the pure-state result 2026-08-11 06:02:31 +00:00
882dbc2ae2 re: a second save names Points, flight time and clear ratio — and shows the payload is pure state
Made a second save in-game (READY ROOM -> SYSTEM -> SAVE GAME -> empty slot) so
the format had a differential to read against. nav_probe.sh drives it: boot to
the READY ROOM, walk a scripted step list, screenshot after every step and stamp
every save file's md5, so the trail says which keypress wrote a save. That stamp
is what caught the first attempt failing -- the save confirm starts on YES,
unlike the load confirm which starts on NO, so the load flow's extra up-press
selected NO and wrote nothing.

Result 1: saving the same loaded state into a new slot produces a BYTE-IDENTICAL
545-byte payload. Only the GDHA header moves, and every byte that moves is either
the container FILETIME or one of the guest-pointer words -- which empirically
confirms those words are uninitialised padding rather than data. So the payload
holds no timestamp, no slot number and no name; a save's identity is entirely in
its content header.

Result 2: the LOAD/SAVE screen's Details panel prints Points 4101 P, Flight Time
000:05:24 and Clear Ratio 5 % for exactly this state, which names GHAD +24
(Points), +4 (flight time in ms -- 324773 ms = 5m24.773s) and +8 (clear ratio %).
Difficulty EASY and STAGE 02 both being 2, and three fields holding 2, is left
undecided on purpose: one save cannot separate them.

Result 3: the 16 SHAB records are not the UI's save slots. The UI has 20, slots
are separate gameNN files, and record 0's FILETIME stayed at 2026-07-23 in a save
written on 2026-08-11 -- so the table is part of the game state, most likely a
per-stage result record (one stage finished, one record filled), which the next
cleared stage will falsify or confirm.

The original save was backed up first and is untouched; the new save went to an
empty slot.
2026-08-11 06:02:21 +00:00
398e8ae0af re: the save file is a GDHA/zlib chunk stream — layout read off the title's own serializer
The whole retail save is 545 bytes: a GDHA container wrapping a zlib payload,
which is a chunk stream — 'GDAA', a length-prefixed game-phase name (GP_BUNK,
one of the title's GP_* screen ids), a 'GHAD' 122-byte progress block, a
count-prefixed table of 16 20-byte save slots, and a trailer.

None of it is guessed. The layout comes from the serializer at 0x822C00E8 and
its callee 0x822BF678: the writer primitive is 0x821885A8(stream, buf, len), the
slot count 16 and the 20-byte stride are literals, and the GHAD block is ten u32,
a u64, four u32, a raw 4-byte field and a raw 54-byte blob = 122 bytes, which is
exactly what the file carries. savegame.py re-serializes the parse and asserts
byte-identity.

Because the struct is written field-by-field with no packing changes, a payload
offset is also the offset in the live save object -- save+8 for GHAD, save+136
for the slot table, and 136+16*20 = 456 is the serializer's very next access.

Confirmed independently: slot 0's trailing two u32 decode as a FILETIME to
2026-07-23 20:07:23 UTC, and the content header's display string (written by the
game) says 07/23/2026 21:08 at UTC+1; the 15 empty slots hold 2006-01-01 rather
than zero.

Field meanings are left  on purpose -- the naming oracle is a diff of two
saves, and all four copies on disk are byte-identical, so a second save has to
be made first. Nothing has been written back to any save.
2026-08-11 05:40:26 +00:00
5c3e3dfe47 re: making turrets targets does not save the escort — the effect is inside the noise
The Stage-02 outcome write-up ended by naming "turrets near the asset must
become targets" as the fix worth ~50% of the escort damage. That was an
inference from a co-presence attribution, not a measurement. Run it and it
does not hold.

Also corrects the run labelling: pilot.py gained the SYLPH_KILL_TURRETS gate
two minutes before mission02 started, so mission02 was already a treatment run,
not a second baseline. Only mission01 (0 of 3968 pilot frames targeting a
turret) is the baseline.

At a common t=428s: baseline 46.9% escort hull, treatment 44.5% and 53.0%. The
two runs of the same arm differ by more than either differs from the baseline,
and the escort still reaches zero at t~590-670s in all three. So the
transferable finding is the power limit: one 430s flight cannot resolve an
effect below ~9 percentage points, and every single-run pilot conclusion,
including this one's, is inside it.

What does reproduce: the assault is scripted (onset 166/167/166s), and the
e007/e010 damage split is 50/50 in all three arms including the one that never
fires at a turret -- so that attribution measures the wave script, not us.

Also records that the viewer's include_external hypothesis in BACKLOG is dead
(it defaults true and is threaded through unchanged).
2026-08-11 05:29:52 +00:00
f4d59c5783 re: Stage 02 is lost at ~11 minutes, and the pilot's survival rule is what guarantees it
First session whose deliverable was the mission's ENDING rather than a
measurement (mission_run.sh, 500 s, hull of every entity at 2 Hz). The ACROPOLIS
is untouched to t=170 s then falls at ~53 HP/s with no let-up, reaching zero at
t=640-720 s — so "no mission completed" is not an artifact of the 240 s
time-boxes, and not of the 600 s cap on a blocking tool call. A longer session
would only watch the loss arrive.

Attributing the damage by co-presence, exactly two classes are ever near the
asset: e007 turrets (8483) and e010 bombers (8334). pilot.py treats turrets as
keep-out zones at 2500 units and never as targets — the rule that made it
survive — so roughly half the escort damage comes from the one class it is
designed to avoid. Survival and the objective are in direct conflict and the
pilot resolves it entirely for survival: WARSHIPS 0000, WARPLANES 0009,
REMAINING OB rising 004 -> 008, our hull untouched at 1500/1500 with 120
missiles spent. That is unspent risk budget, not a good run.

Also corrects launch_mission.sh: a harness-tracked BACKGROUND task does not keep
the display alive (lost 11 s in, at the turn boundary) — the
one-blocking-foreground-call rule stands.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-10 20:57:43 +00:00
530555de9f re: the weapons are the control — sibling-default inheritance is unit-schema-specific, not engine-wide
Four rules from 21 units invites the coincidence objection, so run the identical
sweep against the Weapon/Shell capture, which has COMPLETE coverage (126
records). It finds no sibling rule at all: the one 100%-agreement candidate has a
single distinct value and is really a constant default. Weapon defaults vary per
record exactly as unit defaults do, so "defaults are computed" is general while
"defaults come from a sibling field" is not.

Size_Y <- Size_X survives, and is now checked at the raw-token level rather than
through the sub-record merge: e105, f105 and f101 each declare Size_X/Size_Z/
Size_Radius and no Size_Y, and each reads back its own Size_X at runtime. The
two two-unit hypotheses are demoted to coincidence-not-excluded.

Also records a negative for planning: Stage 01, the only other reachable stage,
adds four uncaptured units that are variants of already-captured ones, so it
would re-measure rather than test the rules.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-10 20:09:14 +00:00
69b4a2e569 re: a unit field left unset on disc is not a global constant — Size_Y inherits Size_X
Attacks the 21/110 unit-coverage limit from the cheap side: if a defaulted field
always took one runtime value, the captured units would pin it for all 110. Only
6 of 24 confirmed defaulted fields behave that way. The other 18 vary per unit,
so the default is computed.

Asking which OTHER field of the same unit holds that value — counting only
non-zero cases, and checking the two fields sit at different offsets so the
layout solver cannot be aliasing them — gives four rules. Size_Y <- Size_X is
solid: seven unrelated ships (e105 600, e106 300, e108 80, e201 300, f101 400,
f105 700, f106 200) each omit it on disc and each shows its own Size_X live,
while the two fields differ freely when both are on disc. Size_Radius fits both
min(X,Z) and the median of the three axes and cannot yet be separated;
e010_ADAN_Attacker_S is what rules out the simpler Size_X rule. FCSRange and
DefencePoint rest on two independent units each and ship as HYPOTHESIS.

Applied across the disc the rules recover 65 (unit, field) values in units that
have never been visited. Falsification test recorded: load any uncaptured stage
and compare one predicted value.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-10 19:44:24 +00:00
ca500c171e ship: index-less brg/eng/sld parts never matched their GN frame — 34 ships assembled without a bridge
Tier 3 matched a part to its hardpoint by trailing index, so `e105_brg`
compared "01" == "" against GN_Bridge_01 and fell through silently. The runtime
capture is what exposed it: the game draws the bridge and places it at
[0, 70, -1850] rel e105_bdy_01, and assemble_ship emitted nothing there.

With no index to match on, take the lowest-numbered frame of the category.
Diffing assemble_ship part counts across every container: 34 (stage, ship)
entries gain parts — e102 +2 (bridge and engine), e104 +1, e105 +1, Stages
02-29. ship_audit is unchanged, so nothing regressed, and the capture now agrees
to dT 0.03 / dR 0.000.

Also fixes the diff itself: correlate_frames compared static against a rotation
sampled from the first block, which can belong to another INSTANCE of the class.
Scoped to the position-agreeing cluster, e105_eng_01 goes 1.711 -> 0.000 and
both e106 nacelles to 0.000. The one remaining rotation delta (e106_wep_02_01,
0.134) is a turret whose rotation varies by 0.182 between blocks that agree on
its position — the runtime disagrees with itself more than with the assembler.
The new rotVar column makes that distinction visible.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-10 19:16:06 +00:00
3d9f21f030 re: control the range, segment the frames — f105/e105/e106 all match static assembly
A capture at controlled range (ship_capture_close.sh: lock a capital ship, close
on it, F10 per range band) finally draws capital-ship hulls at full detail. Two
correctness fixes were needed before the numbers meant anything:

* one F10 log is ~14 frames with no delimiter, and WV_ref^-1 . WV_p only cancels
  the camera within one frame — segment_frames splits on vertex-buffer
  recurrence, and correlate_frames cross-checks the blocks against each other
  instead of trusting a single shot;
* aggregate by consensus, not median: a stage holds several ships of one class
  sharing vertex buffers, so a block can mix two instances.

Result: f105, e105 and e106 reproduce assemble_ship to <=0.43 units in
translation and 0.000 in rotation for every part that does not move. The e106
rules generalise, and the viewer bug report now points at the viewer. Narrow
leftovers: e105_brg is missing from assemble_ship, e105_eng_01 rotation differs
by 1.711.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-10 18:19:26 +00:00
1d4b35df0f re: the Stage-02 capture drew no capital ship at all — invert the match, then control range
Inverting the capture↔part question (invert_capture over one container,
vcount_index over all 166) identifies every large draw in the 2026-07-31
capture: the player's own DeltaSaber (10891 verts), its weapon packs, the
backdrop and particles. Of f101/e105/e106 only 1-3 of 15-37 resources have a
drawn vcount, each a 44-225-vertex far-LOD/effect piece whose count collides
with dozens of unrelated resources.

So the zero-correlation was not an LOD-list gap, not over-strict position
validation and not a different draw path: the ships were too far away to be
drawn. approach_capture.py flies at a locked capital ship and presses F10 per
range band, stamping each capture with its distance.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-10 18:04:58 +00:00
Claude (auto-RE)
bbfeb1c387 re: ship-placement generalisation — static audit + first Stage-02 F10 capture (WIP)
Working the BACKLOG item "capital ships assemble wrong in the viewer".

- ship_audit over all 22 stage containers: only ONE outlier ship
  (f002_bdy_05, Stage_S03/S27, dist 6540 vs cluster spread 1071), so static
  assembly is not grossly broken class-wide. Recurring MULTIKEY joint tracks on
  f104/f105/f106/e102 are the standing hypothesis for class-specific error —
  e106, the one validated ship, has none.
- new tools/re-capture/ship_capture_session.sh: one blocking session that boots
  Stage 02 and fires N F10 ship-captures with screenshots. Boot to in-flight was
  24 s; 3 of 5 presses produced logs (2964/3111/3668 draws).
- NEGATIVE, unexplained: correlate_capture matched ZERO parts for f101/f105/
  f106/e105. Documented with the collected facts and the next step (invert the
  match: largest capture vcounts -> which decoded part has that count).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-31 05:16:20 +00:00