The three orders the derived rule was built from all live in GP_TITLE.pak, so
they cannot confirm it - the rule was fitted to them. These two are from
GP_SAVE_LOAD.pak, read off the running game now that the Canary threading fix
makes the main menu dependable.
The 9-element slot-list header composites EXACTLY as the sort predicts, on all 6
instances of it, and nothing about this screen was fed into the rule:
measured 7 8 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
derived 7 8 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
including TWO tied groups (0xb102 x2 and 0xb210 x5) that both come out in
declaration order, and the unkeyed pfeff00.prm fade quad last.
The 13-element save/load frame differs in exactly the two open questions and no
new ones: two unkeyed pfbase.tbm backgrounds paint FIRST where the sort puts the
keyless last - the splash's palogo_eff0.prm behaviour in a different file type,
so implied_layer_key now covers it - and the 0xb100 group of four paints
10,11,8,12 where declaration order is 8,10,11,12.
That second point is a SECOND screen with a mis-ordered tie, which is what the
question needed, and it immediately kills a candidate: 10 and 11 are kind=0x2002
while 8 and 12 are 0x0000, so "descending kind then declaration index"
reproduces 10,11,8,12 exactly - and then fails both title groups, where every
element of 0x8083 is kind 0 and where 0x80a0 would predict 2,3,4,5,0,1,7 against
a measured 0,2,4,7,1,3,5. Seven candidates refuted now.
16 disc tests green.
resume_reliability.sh counts, per boot, whether the title's loader thread became
the CALLER of a kernel call. Counting boots where the press reached the title:
before the fix 1 of 5 ran the loader; after it, 5 of 5. Three of the post-fix
boots were driven far enough to classify the screen and all three reached the
MAIN MENU, each with the same shape - title at 216-252s, 40 kernel calls by the
loader, 6 ResolvePath reads. The failing boots before had zero of both, every
time.
Caveat kept in the doc: pre-fix runs were interleaved with compiles and a race is
load-sensitive, so the counts corroborate the mechanism rather than carry it.
Also fixes a self-inflicted confound. Two runs came back 'title_at_s=none' with
the emulator log ending in 'Killed', which I first read as the title detector
being too strict. It was not: an earlier copy of the script was still running
because 'pkill -f resume_reliability.sh' had matched the shell running it rather
than the script, and each of that copy's iterations kills the emulator BY NAME -
outside run-canary's lockfile. The harness now takes its own lockfile and refuses
a second copy, and the note records that pkill -f matches your own shell.
Two findings, the second only visible because of the first.
1. The harness has always had kernel logging switched off. log_mask DISABLES
categories (Kernel=1, Apu=2, Cpu=4, Gpu=8), so the long-standing --log_mask=13
meant Kernel+Cpu+Gpu off; kernel calls also log at Debug while log_level
defaults to Info. Seeing one needs BOTH LOG_MASK=12 and LOG_LEVEL=3, and no
boot log this project has taken ever contained a kernel call. boot_menu.sh now
takes LOG_MASK / LOG_LEVEL / EXTRA_FLAGS. A whole boot at Debug with Kernel on
is 23 MB, so the default was costing far more than it saved.
2. With that on, a captured failure shows the (A) handler doing everything right:
XamUserGetXUID(0, 7, ...)
NtCreateEvent(...)
ExCreateThread(..., entry=821748F0, ..., 00000001)
ExCreateThread Active: Thread Initially Suspended,
XThreadF80000CC (1F) Stack: 70880000-70900000
NtResumeThread(F80000CC, ...)
and the thread then never executing. Measured two independent ways: it makes
ZERO kernel calls - it appears 13 times in the log and every one is as an
ARGUMENT, never as the calling thread, while five other threads make 31905
calls after the resume - and its host thread has 00:00:00 CPU time while the
process sits at 546% and has burned 37 minutes of CPU in 6:46 wall.
A spinning thread burns CPU. This one has not run at all.
So the chain is: press delivered -> handler runs -> thread created suspended ->
resumed -> never scheduled. Input, the cache-flush crash and the game's own logic
are all excluded. A lost resume is a race, which is the first explanation that
fits the ~1-in-3 success rate.
Not settled: where the resume is lost, and no successful boot has been captured
with kernel logging to compare against.
"The title screen ignores (A)" is withdrawn. First-divergence across three boots
of the same binary says otherwise.
A slot-(1F) guest thread is spawned BY the press: exactly once per run,
immediately after the keydown, same stack base 70880000-70900000 in both runs
that got one, and never at all in the run that never accepted a press - which
rules out a periodic worker starting around the same time.
prm6, reached the menu: (A) at line 6498, (1F) at 6500, 6 ResolvePath after
opt2, stuck on the title: (A) at line 1287, (1F) at 1288, 0 ResolvePath after
opt, stalled before title: no (A) ever, no (1F) thread at all
In the successful run the loader immediately reads six paths out of the on-disc
cache and the menu appears. In the failed run the same thread starts and performs
no file I/O ever again. Total ResolvePath for the three boots is 90/84/78 - the
successful run's extra six are exactly the ones after the press, so the boots are
otherwise identical in I/O.
Refuted as the cause: the cache-flush std::out_of_range. All four of today's runs
have zero GUEST-THROW, zero CRASH DUMP and zero Access Violation, and the guest
stays alive throughout with its keystroke-poll counter climbing past 15000.
Next probe is neither input nor the crash: what the (1F) thread waits on.
The tie-break needs a fourth measured screen with a tied group, and OPTIONS is
three d-pad steps from the main menu, avoiding the NEW GAME hang. It was not
reached.
Advancing past the title is intermittent: 1 success in 3 attempts today with the
same binary, profile and procedure.
Attempt 1 stalled before the title existed. The guest was alive - RSS steady at
598MB and the keystroke poll counter climbing past 15000 - but the screen was
black and screen_children.py found ONLY the splash object resident. So that
failure is not a presentation problem: the game never constructed the title.
Being able to separate "stalled before building the screen" from "built but not
presenting" is new, and it is what the reader is for.
Attempt 2 reached the title at 265s and refused four presses - (A) at 0.25s,
0.25s and 0.5s, START at 0.3s - every one of them logged as DELIVERED to the
guest. Third independent confirmation that input delivery is fine and the game
simply does not act on the press. Waiting longer does not help either: presses
were spread from 10s to about 4 minutes after the title appeared, while the
earlier successful run's press landed within seconds.
Records the log as evidence and states the next probe: it has to be guest-side
now, on whatever consumes the keystroke, since the input path is excluded.
Read off the running game with screen_children.py and identified by pivot
signature as GP_TITLE.pak ratc-index 8, the NEW GAME / LOAD GAME / TUTORIAL /
OPTIONS / EXTRAS screen:
paint order: 1 3 4 2 5 8 9 6 7 15 10 11 12 13 14 0
It is the first measured screen carrying TWO primitives, and they land in
different places, which is the point. pteff02.prm (the 25% dim) paints 4th,
beneath the whole UI; pteff00.prm (the transition fade, resting transparent)
paints last. Both match their positions on the title screen exactly. So a
primitive's place is per-element and stable by role - backdrop first, dim at
slot 4, fade last - and there are now three permutations to test a derivation
against rather than two.
Wired into measured_paint_order, keyed by element names so both language builds
get it. The English build composited with --primitives edge-correlates at 0.9591
at shift (0,0) against a framebuffer capture taken in the same session - a third
screen confirming paint order, resting pose, fade alpha and primitives at once,
against a capture this project had not seen before.
13 disc tests green.
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.
Trying to read a third paint order off the running game turned up two bugs in
the capture harness, both of which fail in ways that look like the game
misbehaving rather than the script being wrong.
1. `--audio` is not a cvar in this tree, and eight boot scripts passed it.
Xenia calls ShowSimpleMessageBox from ParseLaunchArguments, BEFORE logging is
initialised, so the symptom is a 10x10 window, no log, no guest memory and a
dialog that blocks on XIfEvent forever - i.e. a hang deep in the emulator.
run-canary`s own header documents this exact trap; the scripts predate it.
Removed from all eight.
2. `vgamepad` no longer exists - the uinput pad was replaced by the --hid=file
driver and pad.py - but skip_intro.sh still called it. The script runs
without `set -e`, so the call failed silently and the title branch pressed
nothing while still exiting 0. A caller was told "TITLE -> A" with the game
sitting on the title screen. It now presses through pad.py and exits 6 if
that fails.
The first bug is fixed and verified: the boot now reaches the title screen with
PRESS (A) BUTTON. The second is fixed but does NOT unblock the title - see the
next commit.
fill_quad composites an untextured primitive as a solid rectangle of the
keyframes fade colour, pivot x 2 in size, placed and scaled exactly as a sprite
is. Behind ComposeOptions::include_primitives and screen render --primitives.
On the title screen, whose paint order is ground truth, it is measurably right:
mean luminance 76.30 -> 63.72 against the captures 64.58, i.e. from +18% to
-1.3%, and mean absolute difference 16.07 -> 13.08. The background was ~40% too
bright; pteff02.prm, a 25% black dim, was what was missing. The wordmark is not
dimmed by it because the measured order paints that quad at slot 4, beneath the
logo. Edge correlation moves 0.9538 -> 0.9480, which is not informative here: a
uniform dim scales gradients uniformly so a normalised edge score barely sees it.
OFF BY DEFAULT, and that is the finding. A primitive has no T8aD header, so no
layer key, and derived_paint_order sorts the keyless to the end. GP_DIALOGs
pzeff00.prm is a single keyframe of opaque black at full screen; painted last it
wipes the build. Of the 125 builds that draw a visible primitive, 36 come out
>99% one colour with the derived order.
No constant default works, because the two screens read off the running game
disagree: the splash paints its primitive FIRST (the black backdrop) while the
title paints one at slot 4 and another LAST (the fade-out). Declaration order
fails the title too. A disc test measures the damage rather than asserting the
feature works, so the number moves when the ordering is solved.
Also records a false alarm worth keeping: a first pass reported 36 GP_DIALOG
builds at "100% black", which was a crude near-black pixel threshold and not a
black screen - those dialogs are dimmed 50% and perfectly legible. The genuinely
wiped builds are a different set.
blit modulated by tint only, which is 0xffffffff on essentially every keyframe,
so the fade word was decoded, stored and then discarded. Applying it as an ARGB
modulate takes the title composite's edge correlation against the framebuffer
capture of the running game from 0.4597 to 0.9538, both at zero shift. The white
wordmark with its blue outline, the trademark, the copyright and the orange
exploding planet all appear -- the planet because a full-screen blue effect that
rests at alpha 0 had been painting over it at full opacity.
ARGB is measured: across a fade-in the high byte walks 0x00 -> 0x80 -> 0xc0 ->
0xe0 -> 0xff while the low three stay ffffff, and the low 24 bits are 0xffffff on
5276 of the disc's 5453 resting keyframes.
A modulate can only remove pixels, so the risk is a blank screen. Measured: no-op
on 4060 of 5200 sprite elements, partial on 453, hides 687 -- transient HUD
indicators that should not be lit at rest -- and NO build is left with nothing
visible. A disc test asserts that, and that the no-op share stays high, which
also guards the resting rule against drifting onto ramp frames.
Both changes are in one commit because the second is invisible without the first.
Applying fade erased the word PAUSE, which the running-game capture plainly
shows: pgptitle.rat has three runs of two identical keyframes -- pre-roll, hold,
exit -- and the 'later run wins' tie-break grabbed the exit. A group carries the
screen's entry animation AND its exit, so a run ending on the last keyframe is
now excluded unless it is the only one. The title correlation is unchanged.
Element::rest() picked the keyframe with the largest gap to the next keyframe's
time. That reads a keyframe as a value held until the next one; it is the start
of a ramp toward it. A long gap after keyframe k means the screen spends that
time arriving at k+1, so the settled pose is at the far end of the gap.
The title wordmark zooms in over five frames and holds at (184,193) at 100% from
t=251 to t=264. The old rule picked the frame before the long gap: (179,186) at
101%, still mid-zoom.
Measured against the framebuffer capture of the running title screen, which is a
1:1 crop so frame coordinates map directly (confirmed: the copyright line lands
on row 669 in the capture and in both composites). Edge-correlated over the
wordmark box:
plateau (landed) best 0.4597 at shift (0,0)
longest dwell (old) best 0.1511 at shift (+3,+8), 0.1268 at (0,0)
The old composite scores 3x lower and only peaks after being moved, by about the
(-5,-7) that picking kf4 instead of kf5 predicts.
It also fixes six title elements the old rule rested at alpha 0x00 where the
capture plainly shows them, and pteff00.prm - the full-screen fade quad painted
last - which rested at opaque black. That was the blocker on .prm compositing.
Adds tools/re-capture/align_to_capture.py, which is how this was scored, and
turns the .prm test that deliberately asserted the old defect into a guard on
the fix.
Not settled and now the next item: compose ignores the keyframe fade alpha
entirely (blit modulates by tint only), which is why choosing the wrong keyframe
was invisible until now.
The developer-logo splash declares its sprites directly and has no .rat layout
child, so is_build rejected it and no screen command could render it — despite
it being one of only two screens whose paint order has been read off the running
game, and the one where the layer key explains the whole permutation.
Adds ui_layout::is_composable (a declaration table plus at least one element
resolving to a T8aD the bundle carries) and an opt-in --all on screen
list/info/render. Measured on the disc: 2859 RATC bundles, 965 pass is_build,
2751 pass is_composable, and 0 pass is_build without passing it — a strict
superset. It is opt-in because the 1786 extra bundles are mostly two-element
fragments (a button and its glow), and because widening the default would
renumber --build for every pak, invalidating the build indices the corpus's
notes cite by number.
The splash now renders 6/7 elements, painting its glows first in the order
measured off the game; a disc test pins that order.
`compose` skips focused-state records by default, so whatever that flag matches
vanishes from every composite. It matched a trailing `f` in the name and nothing
else, which is not the convention — it is a letter.
Measured across the disc: 2458 elements match the suffix and only 54 of them
have the base element they would be the focused version of; all 54 are
`pgmenu_btnNNf.t32`. The other 2404, spread over 864 bundles, are `_eff` glow
layers whose names end in the same letter — `pb_name_eff.t32` alone accounts for
1122 of them, and `palogo_gamearts_eff.t32` is one the draw capture shows the
game painting, before its logo, with its own layer key.
Requiring the pair recovers 587 glows in the composable builds. GP_OPTIONS is
the plainest case: without `pbmwindow_eff.t32` the panel had no window at all,
just two floating brackets (captures/ui-layout/options-with{out,}-its-glow-layer.png).
Two other candidate rules were tried and refuted first. The `opt` link is not a
focus link: 221 elements are opt-targets, only 2 of them suffix-match, and the
targets include `pjnet_bg.rat` and `pv_loading_loop1.rat`. And the suffix alone,
as shown above, is unrelated to anything.
compose now sorts elements by the word at +0x08 of their sprite's T8aD header
instead of painting in declaration order, for every build except the two whose
measured order is hard-coded. That word is non-decreasing in the order the game
actually paints both measured screens, so every screen nobody has captured now
gets its layering from the file rather than from the declaration table, which is
provably not the paint order.
Verified with artifacts and both ways, not by a green build: the disc test
asserts the measured orders never invert the key and that the composite's key
sequence is sorted, and reading the word from +0x0c instead makes it fail; the
title composites identically; and GP_MISSION_SELECT — uncaptured — now composites
cleanly, committed as a capture.
Two things recorded rather than smoothed over: ties keep declaration order
because the game breaks them some other way that is not known, and the
developer-logo splash has no .rat child, so is_build rejects it and the
compositor never sees that bundle at all — its measured order is inert in
practice and screen render cannot draw it.
Driving menu -> NEW GAME -> DIFFICULTY -> SELECT DATA -> slot 01 with plain flags
gets further than any run so far: SELECT DATA is reached with ZERO crashes (the
screen is alive — a log_ui_draws probe there records 140 draws over 8 frames),
and then choosing a slot lets the game proceed into a cinematic or load, where it
crashes at 0x82307128 — the same cache-flush std::map erase.
So the crash is intermittent in WHERE it fires, not whether: boot, SELECT DATA,
and now after slot selection. There is no safe path through the menus to be found
by choosing different options.
And it is the blocker for every mission-side experiment — the second capital-ship
capture included. Navigation is not the obstacle any more; it is scripted and
works.
Not settled and said so: how to get past it. --mem_watch=false does not (twice).
--eh_dispatch is still untested because no run with it on has reached a throw.
The black-screen hang is a separate intermittent failure with no diagnosis. A fix
is emulator guest-race work, not RE.
The run with --eh_dispatch=true produced zero crashes and zero throws, which is
not the result it looks like: the crash path was never reached, so the flag is
UNTESTED. Recording that rather than banking a false pass.
What the run did establish, with screenshots: TUTORIAL leads to a lesson list
(a fifth screen nobody had captured, committed), and selecting BASIC CONTROLS
puts the guest on a permanent black screen — no crash, no GUEST-THROW, emulator
healthy. That gives the black screen a trigger it did not have before: it follows
a CONTENT LOAD, which also fits the earlier black screens.
So the two blockers on the way to a mission are distinct and both unbeaten: the
SELECT DATA crash when the path goes through save-slot enumeration, and the
black-screen hang on loading content. The eh_dispatch test needs a run that
actually reaches SELECT DATA.
Driving toward a mission for the second capital-ship capture works as far as two
screens nobody had captured — DIFFICULTY, then SELECT DATA — and then the guest
dies at PC 0x82307128, the SAME std::map/set erase as the boot-time throw, with
537 stacked dumps. Both screenshots are committed.
So the ship item's blocker is the crash, not navigation: the game reaches the
save-slot screen and dies enumerating save data. mem_watch stays eliminated —
this run had it off. And the save/cache path is the common factor across both
firings.
Stated as unsettled: whether a warm cache prevents this firing the way it
prevents the boot-time one. The cache WAS warm here, so it looks like no, but
that is a single run and the cold/warm A/B was only ever run against the
boot-time throw.
The compositor painted in declaration order, which the draw capture proved wrong
— the title's background is declared ninth and paints first. The order the game
uses is its runtime child list, and no decoded field reproduces it, so rather
than leave the screen composited wrongly this lands the orders that HAVE been
read off the running game and falls back to declaration order everywhere else.
Two builds are covered: GP_TITLE's title build and the GAME ARTS / SETA / studio
anima splash. Keyed by element names, which identify a build across paks and
language variants.
Rendering it exposed a second defect, and the same capture settles it: the
kind = 0x4 elements are motion-trail ghosts, not resting content. The bundle
declares three instances of each wordmark; the capture shows exactly ONE quad at
each wordmark's position. Drawing them at their resting keyframe put three
oversized PROJECT SYLPHEED copies across the composite. They are now skipped.
Verified with an artifact, not a green build: the composite is committed
(captures/title-composited-measured-order.png) and now reads as the title screen
— background, planet, ship, wordmark, TM, copyright, correctly layered.
The test is disc-gated and was checked BOTH ways: it passes as landed, and
disabling the order table makes it fail. It reads one pak rather than every
build on the disc — the first version used the all-builds helper and got the
test process OOM-killed running alongside the other three.
The plan was to separate ptlogo_back2eff from ptlogo_back2eff5 (same 1133x280,
declaration 20 vs 18, either side of ptlogo_back2 at 19) by their resting fade
alphas. Carried out, and refuted: both quads come back at alpha FF, and reading
the bundle again, both elements REST at 255 under this project's own max-dwell
rule — back2eff5's longest hold is t=74 at 255, and the 192 I had quoted is a
later, shorter keyframe, not its resting value. The ambiguity stands.
What the colour did buy is worth more than the tie-break: the first check of the
fade/keyframe decode against the RUNNING GAME rather than against another parse.
Every static element draws at exactly the resting alpha the bundle predicts, and
the only two quads whose alpha moves between consecutive frames (88->88/86->87
and 3C->38) are the rotating effect pair and the PRESS (A) glow — the two things
visibly animating on screen. Nothing had confirmed before that the alpha channel
of a keyframe is what drives that throb.
Two results, one of which closes the navigation problem the last three
iterations kept hitting.
**The title states.** The hypothesis was that the attract-loop title is a
non-interactive presentation that omits the PRESS (A) plate. Half right:
* the state distinction is REAL — a single (A) on the title that ends the boot
opens the main menu, 2 of 2 in independent runs, one of which never pressed
F10; the title the attract loop returns to accepts nothing, not (A), START, B,
BACK, X or Y, across dozens of delivered presses;
* the proposed tell is REFUTED — capturing the draws in both states in one run
gives 13 quads at identical rects, ptbtn00 and ptbtn00f included. The two are
identical to the renderer and different only to the guest.
So there is now a reliable route to the menu: first title after boot, one tap.
**The main menu's paint order**, captured with it. Its sprites are GP_TITLE
build 5's, and ptframe1/ptframe2/ptbtn01f land within 4 px of their declared
resting placements — an independent placement check on an untouched bundle.
It does NOT settle the ordering question, and the entry says so: build 5 lists
its background at indices 1-2, so declaration order and "background first"
predict the same sequence here. Same failure mode as GP_READY_ROOM/GP_OPTIONS.
What it does establish is that the title's disagreement is not a decode
artefact — same pak, same engine, one build that follows its table and one that
does not.
The previous entry named the next step: "tap (A) once per second and see whether
the success rate goes to 1". It was run. The answer is no.
40 presses at 1/s on the title change nothing, and neither does one each of
START, B, BACK, X and Y. Every press was delivered (the driver logs down/up for
each) and the new [RE-INPUT] diagnostic never fired, so nothing was swallowed —
the guest received them and ignored them.
Also recorded, because it destroys a run rather than merely wasting it: tapping
(A) through the boot (88 presses over the intro) ends on a permanent black
screen with no crash and no throw.
What is left is a difference in STATE, not in input: the one success came on a
title that appeared ~83 s into a warm boot, the failures on titles that appeared
after a full attract cycle. "The attract-loop title is a non-interactive
presentation" is written down as a hypothesis with the experiment that would
settle it — a log_ui_draws capture in each state, looking for ptbtn00.
The previous entry called the title's Ⓐ a hard blocker. It is not: the main menu
is reached and screenshotted (NEW GAME / LOAD GAME / TUTORIAL / OPTIONS /
EXTRAS). What is true is narrower — Ⓐ advances the title only intermittently,
about one attempt in four, with the press verifiably delivered every time and no
Xenia UI active.
Three candidate causes were eliminated with measurements rather than argument:
* IsUIActive is now observable (Canary logs when it swallows a keystroke) and it
never fires on the failing runs;
* the driver filter is fine — the game polls with flags=3 and the file pad
reports Controller=1, so FilterDrivers keeps it;
* the game makes no content/user/signin call on the press at all — tracing every
Xam call around it shows only input polling.
And two traps in my own measuring rig, which cost more than the bug and are
written down so nobody repeats them: a FIFO trace consumer that exits STALLS the
emulator (the guest stops polling — indistinguishable from a dead pad, and it
produced two runs of false evidence), and phase-A's kernel.return events carry a
placeholder return_value of literally 0, so "every keystroke call returns
SUCCESS" was an artifact of the logger, not a finding.
Chasing the title-screen crash into the emulator's own diagnostics turned it
from a mystery into a controlled experiment, and knocked over two things this
corpus said yesterday.
Withdrawn #1: "the fault address 0x1_0000000C is a pointer with a stale high
word". The crash dump prints r25 = 0x0000000C, clean. Xenia maps the guest's
4 GiB at host 0x1_00000000, so that IS guest address 12. The guest dereferenced
the small integer 12.
Withdrawn #2: "with --mem_watch=false the crash does not happen at all", which
named the crash-oracle handoff's suspect #1 as measured. It was confounded —
every --mem_watch=false run had also had a warm cache. Held cold, the throw
happens with the probe off (2 437 crash dumps). mem_watch is eliminated for this
crash.
What it actually is: the access violation is the guest's own `throw` RETURNING,
because this build logs guest C++ exceptions and continues rather than
unwinding. So the event is the throw, and with --cache_throw_diag=true the guest
names it: std::out_of_range, from the cache-manager flush, with a deque of 38
entries (37 distinct, one duplicated) against a 37-key map, every one of them
absent from the flush's snapshot but present in the live map — the TOCTOU race
the logger's own message describes.
And the new, useful part: the trigger is the on-disc cache. Complete cache, no
throw (2 runs). Directory moved aside or half-rebuilt, throw ~100 s into the boot
(3 runs, including one that threw with NO access violation behind it — which is
why crash dialogs are the wrong thing to count). A suspect in that bisection plan
now costs a `mv` and two minutes instead of a mission.
Each of these presents as "the pad is dead", and each has a different cause.
1. **F10 opens the emulator's menu bar.** It is the RE capture hotkey AND the
toolkit's menu key. With that menu open — or any Xenia UI window, the
Profiles Menu included — `IsUIActive()` is true, so XamInputGetKeystrokeEx
returns SUCCESS with a ZEROED keystroke before the pad driver is asked. The
guest polls, gets nothing, and does nothing, with no error anywhere. Escape
does not close it; a click on the game surface does. This cost most of an
iteration.
2. **The file-pad was never the problem.** It delivers (vk=5800 down/up per tap)
and A skips movies in the same runs.
3. **(A) at the title needs a signed-in profile.** Without one the guest calls
XamShowSigninUI and Xenia's dialog appears — which is also the proof the
guest reads the button. That dialog cannot be completed here: the gamertag is
an ImGui text field and synthetic X key events never reach it. Hence Canary's
new --create_profile_if_none.
And the blocker, stated as measured rather than as a theory: with the profile
signed in, (A) still does not advance the title across four boots. The
reproducible failure is next door — with the default --mem_watch=true the guest
crashes in the boot content path (read of 0x10000000C at 0x82307128, thread 9,
after a guest C++ throw), and with --mem_watch=false it does not. That is a
second, far cheaper reproduction of the Ready-Room crash the canary handoff
blames on the mem_watch probe: 40 s from a cold boot instead of after a mission.
One observation kept because it did not reproduce: a single (A) once crashed the
guest at a DIFFERENT PC (0x824578A0, thread 6). Two attempts to reproduce it
gave neither a crash nor a transition.
Next step named: those two PCs in xenia-rs/sylpheed.db, and the content exports
around the press.
Three findings and two corrections, all against the same capture.
Corrections first, because one of them invalidates numbers already written down:
* **the running screen is build 4, not build 7.** `screen info` defaults to the
largest build; the game runs a different one, and the two disagree on sprite
sizes (ptlogo1 822x100 vs 919x113 — the capture says 915x115). Every
declaration index in the previous entry was against the wrong table. The
conclusions survive unchanged; the indices are restated.
* **the ship capture does NOT skip these UI draws.** This entry justified a new
hook partly on "it requires an f32x3 position stream, which a 2D quad does not
have". These quads have one: armed on the title, xenia_ship_capture_01.log
holds 1150 records of which 965 are the UI sprite shader. The new hook is
still the right tool — frame brackets, submission order, texture identity —
but it was justified with a wrong reason.
Findings:
* **no depth in the geometry.** Attribute 0 is k_32_32_32_FLOAT, so every quad
carries a Z, and every Z is 0.00000. Submission order is the whole ordering.
* **no ordering field in the bundle.** Every word of build 4's declaration table
dumped (committed as evidence): the unknowns are constant. The placement
region's per-group lead word — never read before — is 0 for all 24 groups, and
the region is followed straight by the RATC child stream, so no table hides
behind it.
* **the batching rule**, which is what makes the order readable: a draw holds
one or two quads, and a two-quad draw always holds two elements adjacent in
paint order that share a texture page. The engine flushes when the page
changes; it does not sort by page (pages alternate).
Reproduced in an independent run — same order, same rects — which is the second
observation the CONFIRMED bar asks for.
BACKLOG's UI-ordering item ended at "the next step is no longer static — it is a
per-draw capture of the title screen showing the order the game submits". That
capture now exists.
The order, in submission order: a full-screen background layer, a rotated effect
pair, a second full-screen layer, ptlogo_back2eff + ptlogo_back2, ptlogo1 +
ptlogo_tm, ptlogo2, ptcopyright, and the PRESS (A) BUTTON plate — declaration
indices 13, 22|24, 23, 0, 11, 1, 28, and then two elements that are not in that
build at all.
Two more candidate orderings die on it (keyframe start time, resting-keyframe
time), and one structural fact reframes the item: the visible screen composites
TWO bundles — build 7 plus the one-element build 2 that is the button — so no
single build's element table can be the paint order whatever its order. The
button's quad lands at (384,551) against a declared rest of (383,550), which is
a one-pixel agreement between the static placement decode and the running game
on a bundle nothing had checked.
INDEX's "the screen's draw list is the bundle's declaration table (back-to-front)"
is demoted in place rather than edited away.
Still open and said so: the rule that produces the order; three of twelve quads
unidentified; one screen only.
`BACKLOG.md`'s "the declaration table is not a paint order on every screen" had
been reasoned about but never measured. It is now measured, and the entry says
so both ways.
Confirmed: a framebuffer capture of Canary on the title screen shows the
`PROJECT SYLPHEED` wordmarks over the full-screen background, so declaration
order is not the paint order there.
Refuted, and recorded rather than quietly dropped:
* the `0x10`-adjacency first step this entry proposed. The background *is* next
to a `kind = 0x10` `.prm` on both screens that have one — but on opposite
sides (`GP_TITLE` puts the background after it, `GP_MISSION_SELECT` before),
so no rule keyed on the `.prm` orders both. `GP_READY_ROOM` and `GP_OPTIONS`
cannot serve as the third and fourth witnesses: neither carries a `.prm` or a
full-screen background at all.
* the placement-region group order and the RATC child order, as above.
* reverse declaration order, by the same capture — it would draw the background
over the copyright line, which is visible.
And separated out: part of what the bad render showed was not ordering at all
but the pivot/scale defect fixed two commits back. `ui-rat-layout.md` gains that
rule, the correlation evidence, the unmeasured pivot-vs-centre gap, and the
disc-wide demotion of "pivot is exactly half the texture" (49 % agree, 37 % are
off by more than 16 px — `ptcopyright` is 694 px wide in the framebuffer and
`pivot*2` says 618).
Captures: `title-screen-oracle.png` (the game surface cropped out of the
emulator window at (1,45), 1:1, bottom 45 rows clipped by the display) and
`title-screen-composite-2026-08-18.png` beside it.
To separate "a 1 s burst never reaches the steady rate" from "a per-axis
multiplier", measure inside ONE hold: successive 0.25 s windows of a single 3 s
press, holding speed, attitude and starting conditions constant by construction.
rep0 rate 16 59 325 209 130 322 238 110 310 151 183
rep1 rate 52 181 231 246 236 169 368 195 181 255 182
Not usable. At 0.25 s the windows do not contain enough guest updates to average,
so rate and speed both swing 3x window to window -- the same aliasing that once
manufactured a rate-vs-speed curve, reappearing at finer resolution. The first
window is lowest in BOTH repeats, which is what a ramp would look like, but the
sequence never plateaus, so the signal cannot be separated from the sampling. No
claim either way.
Widening the window does not rescue it: 0.5 s averages well enough, but a hold
long enough to contain several 0.5 s windows bleeds speed -- and speed is the
variable under test. The two effects are entangled at this observation rate.
So the residual needs a different INSTRUMENT, not another script. Live-RAM polling
samples an unsynchronised snapshot; the question wants the craft's angular
velocity as the guest computes it, once per frame. That is a Canary-side hook --
the same shape as the existing F10 ship-capture patch -- and the rebuild toolchain
already makes it cheap. Recorded as the recommendation rather than attempted as a
seventh variation of the same measurement.
Burst design repeated with the HUD clock bracketed (01:01.86 -> 02:10.61, ~x1.26)
and roll measured in the same flight.
pitch 87.0 @ 85 82.8 @ 308 47.0 @ 1077 min:max 1.85
roll 125.0 @ 76 119.0 @ 291 82.6 @ 1023 min:max 1.51
SHAPE CONFIRMED on both axes: the rate interpolates between _Min (at minimum
speed) and _Max (at maximum speed), matching to 1.6% for pitch (vs PitchMinus
75/40 = 1.88) and 5.6% for roll (vs 200/125 = 1.60). Both ratios are
clock-independent so they stand regardless of the conversion, and pitch's
re-confirms ly+ = pitch-MINUS (reproducing 1.82 from the previous run).
ABSOLUTE SCALE DOES NOT MATCH, and not in the same direction:
pitch measured/predicted = 1.15, 1.21, 1.07 consistently OVER
roll = 0.62, 0.64, 0.60 consistently UNDER, very flat
A clock error cannot explain this -- it would move both axes together and these
go opposite -- so the discrepancy is per-axis. Candidates, neither measured: a 1 s
burst not completing the angular-acceleration ramp (would under-read; fits roll's
flat 0.62, not pitch's excess), or an unidentified per-axis multiplier. Left as an
open question with the separating test named: 1 s versus 3 s bursts at the same
throttle, where the ramp hypothesis predicts the longer burst reads higher.
Also noted: the roll run correctly REFUSED on a WEAK row pin after the pitch
bursts left the craft tumbled -- and roll is immune to that labelling, which the
guard's own message says, so ALLOW_WEAK_PIN=1 is its documented exception. A guard
that states its own exception is worth having.
The design the sweep could not provide: settle the throttle, measure the settled
speed, pitch for ONE second so speed barely moves inside the burst. Three
throttles, two repeats, row pin CONFIDENT, fresh flight.
LT min burst speed ~105 rate 113.6, 109.5 deg/wall-s
cruise ~383 100.2, 88.4
RT max ~1483 52.2, 70.5
Rate falls monotonically with speed -- 111.5 -> 94.3 -> 61.4 -- at three KNOWN,
SETTLED speeds instead of smeared across a bleeding one.
The decisive comparison needs no clock. Absolute rates depend on the run's clock
ratio, but the min:max RATIO cancels it:
measured min:max = 1.82
AV_PitchMinus_Min/Max 75/40 = 1.88 -> 3.0% apart
AV_PitchPlus_Min/Max 150/70 = 2.14 -> 15.1% apart
Two conclusions, neither resting on a clock measurement:
- _Min/_Max really do mean "at minimum / at maximum speed", with the rate
interpolating between them: shape confirmed to 3%.
- ly+ drives pitch-MINUS, not plus. The craft has asymmetric pitch authority
(75/40 down vs 150/70 up) and the ratio picks the pair cleanly.
Absolute magnitudes remain open: this run did not bracket the HUD clock, so
deg/GAME-second cannot be computed from it, and picking a ratio that makes the
numbers fit would be circular. The probe now screenshots the clock at both ends.
Also: fly_stage.sh now waits for the TAKE-OFF load too. Guarding only the stage
load left a run pressing A into a black screen and then reporting "player entity
not found" from a game that never reached flight.
Fresh flight, row pinning CONFIDENT (margin 0.413), one sweep and nothing before
it. axis_probe now REFUSES to measure on a WEAK pin (ALLOW_WEAK_PIN=1 overrides)
since it is a precondition, not a warning: roll is immune to the up/right
labelling but pitch and yaw are not.
Clock x1.26. Binned by speed, both in game units, against the linear
interpolation of AV_PitchPlus_Min 150 (at MinimumVelocity 100) to _Max 70 (at
MaximumVelocity 1200):
speed ~435 measured 100.8 predicted 125.6
speed ~572 113.8 115.7
speed ~709 126.3 105.7
speed ~846 83.1 95.7
speed ~983 72.7 85.8
Supported: the magnitudes (73-126 measured vs 86-126 predicted) and a falling
high-speed end. NOT supported: the interpolation law. Scatter is +-25%, the two
fastest bins hold 1 and 2 windows (the first moments before the speed bled), and
the slowest bin misses in the wrong direction.
The flaw is structural, not statistical: a sweep DRIVEN by the speed bleeding
cannot dwell at either extreme, which is exactly where the law is most testable.
What would settle it: hold a settled throttle and pitch for ~1 SECOND, so speed
barely moves inside the burst and each burst gives one honest (speed, rate) point;
repeat at LT / neutral / RT for three clean points at known speeds. Recorded as
the next design rather than attempted as a fifth variation of the same sweep.
Fitting rate against instantaneous speed produced a tidy "rate rises with speed"
relationship, with speeds up to 4795 when the craft's maximum is 1200. It is
entirely an artefact: 20 Hz polling is faster than the guest updates these fields,
so a per-read delta is either exactly zero (no update yet) or a whole frame's
worth divided by a fraction of a frame. 111 of 352 reads were zero on BOTH
channels -- position and attitude update on the same frame, so the two are
perfectly correlated, and dividing each by the short wall dt produced the
correlation out of nothing.
Fix: aggregate over windows spanning many frames (0.5 s). A sum of |delta| over
such a window is right however the updates fall inside it.
This does NOT affect the swept-total probes (roll_axis.py, rate_probe.py) -- they
already summed over the whole dwell, immune for the same reason. Only per-sample
instantaneous rates were ever wrong, so no earlier number moves.
The windowed re-run is NOT yet claimed as a result. It gives plausible magnitudes
but still shows rate rising with speed, against the definition's PitchPlus_Min 150
> _Max 70, and it has two disqualifiers: it ran on an instance where the craft was
already tumbling from the previous sweep, so pinning reported "WEAK -- craft may
not be level", and the sweep started mid-range rather than at maximum. A clean
answer needs a fresh flight with pinning CONFIDENT and nothing before it. Since
what is in doubt is precisely what _Min/_Max mean, a measurement through a
doubtful instrument cannot settle it.
Both datasets kept, the bad one labelled, because the aliased curve is a good
example of what a manufactured correlation looks like.
Measured pitch with the rows properly pinned, against this craft's own disc caps
(AV_PitchPlus_Min 150, AV_PitchPlus_Max 70):
min speed (LT) 1391.0 deg / 8.00 s, clock x1.326 -> 131.1 deg/game-s vs 150
max speed (RT) 989.0 deg / 8.05 s, clock x1.318 -> 93.2 deg/game-s vs 70
A rate 33% ABOVE a cap is not a finding, it is a broken instrument. The HUD speed
is in the same bracketing screenshots that give the clock, so read it:
slow phase 102 -> 18
fast phase 1193 -> 589
The speed is NOT constant during the dwell -- pitching halves it in 8 seconds.
The cap is speed-dependent, so as the craft slowed its cap rose, and an 8-second
average necessarily lands between the max-speed cap and a mid-speed one. The 133%
is entirely the instrument.
This also weakens the roll result committed earlier: same method, so 120.9 vs
AV_Roll_Max 125 is CONSISTENT but is not a tight test -- the true cap could be
lower and still produce that average. Said plainly in the doc rather than left
standing as a clean confirmation. Min-speed figures are less affected; there is
little speed left to lose.
Proper fix, not yet done: dwell ~1-2 s so speed barely moves, or sample HUD speed
continuously and fit rate against INSTANTANEOUS speed -- which yields the whole
rate-vs-speed curve instead of two points.
Separately this is a flight-model finding: TURNING COSTS SPEED, steeply, with the
throttle still at maximum. A reimplementation treating the throttle as a speed the
craft simply holds will be wrong during manoeuvres.
The probe now pins which non-forward row is up and which is right, instead of
taking the D3D convention on faith:
row world-Y means: [0.469, 0.883, -0.000] forward = row 2
-> up = row 1, right = row 0 CONFIDENT
That is the OPPOSITE of the assumption the previous run used, so that run's yaw
and pitch columns were swapped -- under the correct labels its ly+ reading of
154.1 deg/wall-s is PITCH, which is what a left-stick Y should do.
Measured with the unknown inputs FIRST, each passing a liveness check:
rx 0.0 0.0 0.0 ry 0.0 0.0 0.0
LB 0.0 0.0 0.0 RB 0.0 0.0 0.0
lx roll 209.8 ly pitch 154.1
These zeros are trustworthy where the previous run's were not: the craft was
verified alive between inputs, and the probe aborted the moment it stopped moving
rather than reporting the clean zeros a destroyed craft produces (it did abort,
after lx+, which is why lx/ly are carried from the earlier run rather than
re-measured).
So NO PAD INPUT YAWS THE CRAFT. AV_Yaw_* (45/25) exists in the definitions but
nothing on the right stick or the shoulders drives it, which upgrades the old
"yaw: no input found" from a failure to find one into a measurement that the
remaining candidates do nothing. The natural reading is that yaw is a consequence
of banking rather than a commanded axis.
Not covered, and not claimed: the d-pad (tactical map) and the face buttons
(fire/weapon select). Neither is a plausible flight axis; neither was measured.
New probe (axis_probe.py) decomposes every held input into all THREE rotation
components at once, instead of measuring one axis at a time through a non-forward
matrix row -- the flaw that once made roll and pitch produce identical numbers.
For previous rows (f,u,w): roll = atan2(u.w_old, u.u_old), and forward's rotation
toward each of the other two rows gives the remaining pair.
Stage 02, file pad, full deflection on exactly one channel at a time:
lx+ roll 209.8 b 0.9 c 10.1 deg/wall-s
ly+ roll 0.0 b 154.1 c 0.0
rx+ roll 0.0 b 0.0 c 0.0
ry+ roll 161.1 b 87.0 c 37.1
LB/RB all zero
What this supports: lx = ROLL, cleanly (~0 on both other channels), agreeing with
the independent roll measurement. ly drives ONE axis, cleanly.
What it does NOT support, and I am not claiming:
- WHICH axis ly drives. entities2 measures row 2 = forward against velocity, but
rows 0 and 1 are labelled up/right by the D3D convention rather than by
evidence, and yaw/pitch SWAP if that is wrong. Roll is immune (rotation of
either non-forward row in their shared plane is roll either way).
- anything about rx/ry/LB/RB. The run ended on GAME OVER: full-deflection spin in
a live combat mission gets the craft destroyed, and the only symptom is "0
player candidates" AFTERWARDS, so late rows may be post-death. rx+ reading all
zeros and ry+ reading mixed are exactly what a dying craft would produce.
So "yaw: no input found" is NOT resolved. Both gaps are now written into the
probe's header with what would fix them: a liveness check between inputs, and
pinning up-vs-right against world Y.
Measured about the FORWARD axis (roll_axis.py), which is the fix the withdrawal
specified: express the new up-vector in the old (up, right) basis and take
atan2(u.w_old, u.u_old), so the component along forward -- what pitch produces --
is dropped by construction. The old probe watched a non-forward matrix row, which
sees any rotation that moves it, and that is why two different stick axes produced
the same numbers.
Stage 02, file pad, single-axis holds (lx=32767 with every other channel exactly
0, trigger held in the same write since the pad state is written whole), 5 s
settles, 8 s dwells, each phase bracketed by HUD-clock screenshots:
min speed (LT) 1 856.9 deg / 8.01 s wall, clock x1.247 -> 185.9 deg/game-s
vs AV_Roll_Min 200
max speed (RT) 1 181.2 deg / 8.02 s wall, clock x1.218 -> 120.9 deg/game-s
vs AV_Roll_Max 125
So roll behaves exactly like pitch: the rate cap falls as speed rises and
_Min/_Max mean "at minimum / at maximum speed". The withdrawn claim that roll
shows NO speed dependence is reversed, and the axis rule is now confirmed on a
second axis instead of contradicted by it.
Both land just under their caps (93% and 97%), the right side for a rate limit.
The shortfall is NOT explained and no claim is made about it: candidates are the
craft not being exactly at min/max speed after 5 s, and the 20 Hz swept-angle sum
undercounting.
The tell that the old result was broken was two conditions agreeing too well. The
tell that this one is sound is that they disagree in the direction the definitions
predict, on two independently bracketed phases.
The scripted route now reaches FLIGHT unattended: boot -> main menu -> poke the
cleared-stage mask -> EXTRAS -> MISSION SELECT -> stage -> briefing -> READY ROOM
-> TAKE OFF -> flight, verified by a full HUD (TIME 00:52.54, speed 350, shields,
REMAINING OB 018) on stage 01.
Two things that cost a run each:
START skips the briefing; A does not. A pages through the brief, and ten A taps
still left the run sitting on a briefing screen -- twice, on two different
stages. One START press lands on the READY ROOM. fly_stage.sh now presses START.
entities2.py's `self` locked on `"Player" in name`, and that suffix is
STAGE-SPECIFIC: stage 02 fields UN_f002_TCAF_DeltaSaber_W_Player, but stage 01
fields UN_f001_TCAF_DeltaSaber_T with no suffix, so the filter found nothing
while the game was visibly flying and reporting 64 typed live entities. Falls
back to the craft class and prefers the instance that is actually moving (a
mission holds more than one). Recorded rather than worked around, because the
same assumption is embedded in several probes.
roster_target had flagged a contradiction: S10, a STORY stage, still fielded an
unharvested unit, which the "story campaign complete at 68 units" claim did not
account for. S10 was simply never flown. Flying it settles it:
UN_e005_ADAN_ElanTypeQ_Margras is in the snapshot, 144 rows, and the merge takes
the file 68 -> 69 units, 9 393 -> 9 537 rows, 7 115 -> 7 204 defaulted-on-disc
values, with 154 disc cross-checks agreeing and 0 disagreeing. roster_target now
reports S10: 0 missing, and every remaining gap is a CHALLENGE stage
(S24/S25/S27/S28/S29).
A much simpler way to fly a story stage, replacing the save-editing route
(tools/re-capture/fly_stage.sh): poke ONE word -- 0x828F40C0 = 0x0001FFFE marks
stages 1-16 cleared -- and MISSION SELECT will launch any of them. Nothing is
written to disc, so there is no save to back up and restore, and TRAP 1 from the
old recipe (launch_mission.sh silently loading the last-used slot) cannot happen.
Route, learned by screenshotting each step: MISSION SELECT -> pick stage -> A ->
mission briefing (A: Continue) -> READY ROOM -> TAKE OFF -> flight. The READY
ROOM carries an "EXTRA" watermark, which is the static analysis's mission-KIND
= 3 ("EXTRA" config section, docs/re/challenge-mission-gate.md section 4) visible
on screen -- an independent confirmation of that field's meaning.
Also recorded: a snapshot taken at the BRIEFING yields 0 runtime objects. Unit
definitions are instantiated at stage load proper, so the snapshot has to wait
for flight; the briefing screen is too early.
Two results from the running game, one positive and one a clean negative.
POSITIVE: with word A = 0x0001FFFE (stages 1-16) every entry Stage01..Stage16 is
selectable, where the control run had only Stage01 and the rest greyed. Stage16
reads "Lonely Blue Planet - NO RECORD". So any story stage can be launched from
the menu by poking one word, with no save editing at all -- a simpler lever than
the GHAD stage-field patch used until now.
NEGATIVE: with word B = 0x3F (challenge stages 24-29 marked cleared) the list
still saturates at Stage16 -- the cursor stops there and further presses do
nothing. That matches the disc: the debriefing config declares exactly
px_deb_stage01..16, so the list is capped by data, not by the mask. The
challenge missions are NOT reachable through MISSION SELECT, and word B does not
feed it.
Also mapped, without finding the caller: the GP_DIALOG registry (tables.pak #41)
gives DLG_GO_CHALLENGE_MISSION_MENU = 41 and DLG_CHALLENGE_MISSION_AVAILABLE = 42
(0-based, in config order). No raw immediate 41/39/37 appears anywhere in the
GamePart code region, so dialogs are raised through a computed index and the
entry point to GamePart 26 is still unknown. New probe: examples/screen_configs.rs
dumps any tables.pak screen config by substring.
With word A = 2 the screen lists Stage01 SELECTABLE, carrying a High Score and a
Best Time, and Stage02-Stage08 GREYED OUT. One cleared stage, one selectable
entry, at the bit index that names it -- the mask's meaning is now visible on
screen rather than inferred from disassembly.
Two runs, identical navigation, fresh boot each:
control word A 0x00000002 -> MISSION SELECT opens normally
poked word A 0xFFFFFFFF -> MmAllocatePhysicalMemoryEx fails on 128 MB,
guest throws, Xenia shows "Disc Read Error"
So last commit's heap failure was caused by the poke, and by a careless one:
0xFFFFFFFF claims stages that do not exist (0, 17, 24-31 in word A). Poking only
real story ids (0x0001FFFE = stages 1-16) does not blow the heap. That the list
screen changes behaviour with the mask is itself evidence word A feeds it.
Getting a trustworthy control took three tries, and every failure produced a
plausible wrong answer rather than an error:
1. the title-glyph oracle fired during the ATTRACT MOVIE, so A was pressed at
nothing and the run "reported 0 failures" for a screen it never reached;
2. Xvfb keeps the previous instance's framebuffer until the new one draws, so
a screenshot seconds after launch showed the OLD run -- "MAIN MENU reached
after 1s", against a process that no longer existed;
3. a single-pixel "is NEW GAME white?" test matched a white LOADING FLASH.
Fixes, all in challenge_probe.sh: blank the root and refuse screen oracles for
the first 40 s; identify a screen by a PATTERN of sampled points (white text AND
the dark panel behind it), not one pixel; require two consecutive samples. The
new oracle was validated offline against all six saved screenshots and accepts
exactly the one real main menu.
General lesson worth the words: a navigation oracle that can only fail by
returning the wrong screen will happily produce a whole run of confident,
meaningless results.
Booted the title and read the two gate words live:
0x828F40C0 = 0x00000002 word A
0x828F4814 = 0x00000000 word B
Word A = 2 = bit 1. The profile's save is Stage 02 "At Standby" -- stage 01
cleared -- so the mask is exactly one bit, at the index of the one cleared
stage, 1-BASED. Reproduced across two cold boots. That confirms against a known
progress state, on the real game:
- the singleton is the static object at 0x828F4070, as derived statically;
- word A is a cleared-stage bitmask (not achievements, not a stage number);
- bit index = stage id, 1-based, so TimeAttack's REQUIREMENT 16 means "clear
stage 16" -- the last story mission;
- word B is the challenge half and is 0 on a story-only profile.
New tools: gpoke.py (live guest-memory WRITE, companion to gmem.py, prints
before/after for every word), pad.py (drives the new --hid=file pad; replaces
vgamepad, which leaked to the host through /dev/uinput), challenge_probe.sh
(one blocking session: boot, wait for title, drive in, poke, screenshot).
Poking both words did NOT surface a challenge entry in EXTRAS -- and that menu
was built 26 s after the poke, so it is not staleness. Entering MISSION SELECT
then failed, but the log names the real cause and it is not the gate:
MmAllocatePhysicalMemoryEx could not satisfy a 128 MB request (parent free
30633/131072 pages), the guest threw a C++ exception, and Xenia surfaced its
generic "Disc Read Error". It is preceded by "BaseHeap::Release failed because
address is not a region start" -- a failed release leaking the range. Recorded
as an emulator heap problem, with the control run (same navigation, no poke)
named as the next step.
Static only. Last commit left "REQUIREMENT is a bit index into a progress
bitfield" with the space unidentified. It is the achievement space, and both
halves are now readable off the disc and the executable.
- GamePart_Debriefing (0x8218CF38-0x82191B18) awards them: sub_8218F9A8 walks
the on-disc ACHIEVEMENTS_REQUIREMENTS list (tables.pak #16, schema 744c0519),
and for entry index n tests bit n, evaluates the entry when clear, and sets
the bit when satisfied. The list is literally ACHIEVEMENT01..ACHIEVEMENT24 --
24 entries, which is exactly where the challenge gate splits word A from
word B.
- The XEX carries the definitions: XACH at .pe 0x8FBCBC, 36-byte records
{id, name_id, unlocked_desc_id, locked_desc_id, image_id u32, gamerscore u16,
pad, flags u32, 16 zero bytes}, strings from one XSTR per language (English is
table #5). tools/xach_dump.py parses it. SELF-CHECK: the 24 gamerscores sum to
exactly 1000, the retail total -- a wrong stride does not land on a round 1000.
- The two sources agree on ORDER independently: the requirement types
ShootDownAircrafts 1000/10000, ShootDownShips 100, ShootDownWeight MegaTons,
GetAllWeapons and GetAllAchievements line up with ids 19-24 exactly as XACH
names them. So bit n <-> achievement n+1 is evidence, not inference. (Those
last two are requirement TYPES, not debug cheats, despite how they read.)
- Corollary: TimeAttack's REQUIREMENT 16 -- the one value that sits in direct
value-before-key adjacency, so it survives IDXD dedup -- is bit 16 =
achievement 17, "Solar System Defense Award", i.e. finish the story campaign.
The other five values (25-29) are >= 24 and so index word B, a second flag
space, plausibly a challenge-clear chain. Still 🟡.
REFUTED, from the last commit: the stores to +1956 in 0x822AF278 / sub_822C8748
are NOT this singleton. That object comes from 0x822CEB30, checks a +2652 flag
and stores string POINTERS at +1956/+2024 -- and a pointer ANDed with 1<<n is
meaningless as a gate. So nothing in the image writes this singleton's +1956
field-wise, and where the mask persists (save vs Xbox profile) is open. XEX
imports are by ordinal, so absent XamUser* strings are not evidence either way.
Static only. Bounding each GamePart's code block by its factory creator thunk
(id -> creator recovered for 22 of 24 registrations at 0x8280C000-0x8280F800)
puts GamePart_ChallengeMission at 0x82187E60-0x8218CF10. Resolving every string
that block references gives the screen's config schema, and the record itself is
on disc -- tables.pak schema 54a10697, one copy per language, English entry #64.
Six missions: TimeAttack (record Time), ScoreAttack (record Points) and
Extra01..Extra04, each with MISSION_ID / REQUIREMENT / REQUIREMENT_DESC /
THUMBNAIL / STAGE_DESC / NEW_STAGE and a NORMAL_BUTTON / GRAY_BUTTON pair -- so
the screen always lists all six and greys out what is not earned.
THE GATE (0x82189970-0x821899D8), read off the code:
REQUIREMENT absent -> available
REQUIREMENT == "Always" -> available
else n = atoi(REQUIREMENT)
n == 0 -> locked
n < 24 -> test bit n of the word at singleton+80
n >= 24 -> test bit (n-24) of the word at singleton+1956
The singleton is 0x821707C0 (lazy, global 0x828F48BC). So availability is one
bit in a progress bitfield and REQUIREMENT is a bit INDEX -- not a stage number,
score or difficulty.
Values per mission are 🟡: the pool's numeric tokens are 16/25/26/27/29 and
24/28 already appear earlier as font metrics, so they would be deduped -- which
fits 24..29 but IDXD dedup makes positional pairing unsound here, so it is
recorded as a hypothesis, not a table.
Negative: the requirement TEXT is not in GP_CHALLENGE.pak (TextIndex over it =
0 entries; its only prose is embedded font copyright). Its PATH is a per-language
branch the loader does not currently reproduce.
Next: three stores to +1956 sit in 0x822C7DD0 / 0x822C8748, the same region as
the save serializer 0x822C00E8 -- if the bits are save-backed, a hand-written
save unlocks all six challenge missions and the last 42 units become one run.
Static-only (no emulator, no pad input). Three findings, each with its own
evidence:
- The disc holds exactly 29 StageResource records in three families --
S01-S16 story, S18-S23 tutorial (all bg=Original), S24-S29 challenge, plus
Test. That is 16 + 6 + 6 + 1, matching weapon.tbl's stage01..16 /
tutorial01..06 / challenge01..06 key set exactly. S17 does not exist.
GP_CHALLENGE.pak has 0 IDXD objects -- it is the menu screen; challenge
missions reuse GP_MAIN_GAME_E.pak's records.
- The GamePart id table is at 0x820A1630 (29 ids). Indices are confirmed by
the image's own RegisterToFactory<N, class silph::GamePart_*> text, not by
position: GP_CHALLENGE = 26, GP_TUTORIAL = 25, GP_BUNK = 10.
- The stage loader selects its config section from a mission-KIND field at
object+144: 3 -> EXTRA, 5|6 -> CHALLENGE, else FILE (two independent sites,
0x82184df0 and 0x82185ed0; two more classify {3,5,6} as one group). The
constructor sets it to 0 and every write inside the class only clears it,
and no immediate 3/5/6 store to it exists image-wide -- so the kind is
supplied by the launching GamePart, never derived from the stage number.
That last point is a mechanism (unproven) for why patching the save's stage
field to 27 kills the load: the record is a challenge stage but the kind stays
FILE. Names an untried, zero-cost discriminator -- try stage 18-23.
Also flagged, not resolved: roster_target says S10 (a STORY stage) still
fields an unharvested unit, which contradicts the "story campaign complete"
claim by one unit.
Re-running roll with 5 s settles and in-run clock brackets:
this run's clock: TIME 00:34.93 -> 00:45.97 = 11.04 s game in 7.98 s wall = 1.383
min speed: 90.6 deg/wall-s /1.383 -> 65.5 deg/game-s (AV_Roll_Min 200)
max speed: 59.1 /1.383 -> 42.7 (AV_Roll_Max 125)
The corrected numbers are within a few per cent of the PITCH run's 67.8 and 40.9 —
two different stick axes cannot produce the same rates, so the probe is not
separating them. Cause: watching a non-forward matrix row sees any rotation that
moves that row, and pitch moves it as much as roll. The correct measure is rotation
ABOUT the forward axis (project the row onto the plane perpendicular to forward and
track that angle).
So "roll shows no speed dependence, unlike pitch" is withdrawn: it rested on 2 s
settles and a row that mixes axes, and the two runs disagree with each other
(144/150 then, 90.6/59.1 now). AV_Roll_{Min,Max} are not confirmed and the axis
question is open.
The clock ratio is now measured three times in three flights: 1.260, 1.311, 1.383 —
a property of the moment, not the machine, so every rate probe must bracket its own
phases.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NptfmpjdpNCKEez6d2xvA9
pitch_gametime.py brackets each turn phase with HUD screenshots, so the mission
clock's own advance converts wall seconds to game seconds within the same run:
this run's clock: TIME 00:33.68 -> 00:44.12 = 10.44 s game in 7.96 s wall = 1.311
pitch @ min speed 88.9 deg/wall-s /1.311 -> 67.8 deg/game-s vs AV_PitchMinus_Min 75
pitch @ max speed 53.6 /1.311 -> 40.9 vs AV_PitchMinus_Max 40
Both land on the definition (the slow phase 10% low, consistent with including the
AA_* ramp in an 8 s window), so the clock explanation covers angular motion as well:
every stated rate is per GAME second.
The ratio is not a machine constant — 1.260 in the earlier flight, 1.311 here — so it
must be measured in the same run as whatever it corrects. Bonus: the same shots show
the HUD reading 102 at full LT against MinimumVelocity 100.
Also documents the trap that cost three runs: a killed Canary leaves both its shm
image and its last frame on screen, so a dead emulator looks alive and the scans
report "0 moving triples" like a tooling bug. pgrep -x matches zombies, so
speed_law.require_live_emulator() checks the process state letter and refuses to
measure a corpse.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NptfmpjdpNCKEez6d2xvA9
Screenshotting the HUD speed readout at each throttle step, beside the
position-derived measurement of the same moment:
RT 0.00 HUD 350 (= CruisingVelocity) position ~447 ratio 1.28
RT 0.25 HUD 507 position ~652 ratio 1.29
RT 0.75 HUD 963 position ~1141 ratio 1.19
So (a) the HUD speaks the definition's units — exactly CruisingVelocity at neutral,
963 at three-quarters against the 987 the interpolation predicts — confirming the
throttle law in the game's own numbers without any position sampling; and (b) world
displacement runs ~1.2x the displayed speed. Since settled angular rates need no such
factor, this is a unit difference between the position triple and the velocity
fields, not a clock effect: a reimplementation moving entities at MaximumVelocity in
world coordinates will be ~20% slow.
Also fixes speed_law.find_player: a mission holds more than one *_Player object and
at least one never moves, so the finder now samples each candidate twice and keeps
the one that displaces. Locking onto the static one is what produced a run of exact
zeros while the game was visibly flying.
🟡 The ratio is 1.19-1.29 rather than a clean constant and every sample was taken in
a firefight; pinning it wants a quiet map.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NptfmpjdpNCKEez6d2xvA9
Re-measured with 5 s of settle per phase and the speed recorded at the moment the
turn starts (flight_law3.py):
pitch @ 130/s 74.9 deg/s vs AV_PitchMinus_Min 75
pitch @ 1821/s 41.1 vs AV_PitchMinus_Max 40
roll @ 110/s 129.5 vs AV_Roll_Min 200
roll @ 1722/s 149.3 vs AV_Roll_Max 125
Pitch lands on the definition's own numbers with NO scale factor, so the ~1.2x I
attributed to the emulated time base two iterations ago was an artefact of
differentiating during the AA_* acceleration ramp with too little settle. That
explanation is withdrawn: AV_* can be used verbatim.
What remains is only on the linear side — settled speeds still read high and vary
between runs (RT full: 1342 in one flight, 1821 in another, vs MaximumVelocity 1200),
consistent with a craft being shoved around in a firefight. The HUD reads exactly
CruisingVelocity at neutral. A clean linear measurement needs a quiet map; no cause
is claimed until then.
Roll re-measured with proper settles confirms the axis difference: no speed
dependence, both regimes near AV_Roll_Max, where pitch moved 75 -> 40.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NptfmpjdpNCKEez6d2xvA9
One flight, two measurements (flight_law2.py, binding early so the moving-craft scan
can see the player).
LT curve: 436, 379, 289, 209, 126 units/s across LT 0.00 -> 1.00 — a straight ramp,
whose endpoints after the ~1.2 time-base factor are CruisingVelocity 350 and
MinimumVelocity 100. So the law is symmetric:
RT: target = Cruising + RT * (Maximum - Cruising)
LT: target = Cruising - LT * (Cruising - Minimum)
Roll (measured on a non-forward matrix row, since roll turns about the forward axis):
~144 deg/s at minimum speed and ~150 at maximum — no speed dependence, where pitch
dropped by a third to a half between the same regimes. After the time-base factor
that is ~121, i.e. AV_Roll_Max 125 in BOTH regimes.
So _Min/_Max does not mean the same thing for every axis: pitch interpolates with
speed, roll appears pinned at Max. A reimplementation applying one rule to all axes
would get low-speed roll wrong by ~60%.
Caveat recorded: the two roll phases were 2 s of settling apart, marginal for a
126 -> 1342 speed change.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NptfmpjdpNCKEez6d2xvA9
RT is an analogue trigger, so "held" was one point on a curve. Walking it 0.00 ->
1.00 (throttle_curve.py) gives a straight ramp: 438, 626, 879, 1094, 1342 units/s.
Dividing by the ~1.2 time-base factor, the endpoints land on the definition's own
numbers (365 vs CruisingVelocity 350; 1118 vs MaximumVelocity 1200) and the midpoint
follows, so
target speed = CruisingVelocity + RT * (MaximumVelocity - CruisingVelocity)
which refines the earlier "selects one of three targets" reading: those three are the
curve's endpoints.
It also refutes the standing afterburner hypothesis that full RT is the burner: the
curve is smooth through full deflection with no step, and the shield does not move.
The LT half is not measured yet — the entity scan needs the craft moving when it
runs, so a mission left idling drops out of it. Bind early.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01NptfmpjdpNCKEez6d2xvA9
