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Last iteration I withdrew "a bundle is a palette" because the evidence did not choose between selective activation within one bundle and two compositions shown in sequence. The alternative can be killed from the disc, which I had not tried. Hypothesis 2 needs a bundle declaring the GLOWS WITHOUT THE LOGOS. There is none. Every GP_TITLE entry carrying palogo elements: 10, 13 (publisher twins) palogo_eff0.prm, palogo_sqex, palogo_sqex_eff 11, 14 (developer twins) palogo_eff0.prm + all three logos + all three glows Four entries, and each developer entry declares the complete set of six. So whichever bundle was active across frames 94-211 -- entry 11, entry 14, or both in turn -- it declared the logos and the glows, while the game drew two sprites at a time in disjoint phases. Therefore only a subset of a bundle's elements is drawn at any moment, whatever the bundle-loading story is. The conclusion no longer depends on resolving how many bundles are involved, which is why the texture-base test's failure stopped mattering. So the claim is reinstated -- this time by eliminating the alternative rather than by assuming it away. What worked was not a better capture but asking what the competing hypothesis would REQUIRE on the disc and finding it absent. METHOD: a hypothesis that predicts an artefact can be killed by looking for the artefact, which is often far cheaper than measuring the behaviour.
8.2 KiB
❔ A group's DURATION is in the data; its START TIME is not
Status: ✅ the durations are measured and match; ❔ the start offset is undecodable from the placement data, with the obvious candidate refuted.
Found while testing whether the splash timeline, played, reproduces the capture sequence — the last gap in the animation model.
The durations are right
From the 235-frame draw capture of the developer splash, at the settled 2 units/frame, under the shifted time reading:
| element | drawn on frames | = units | declared visible span | match |
|---|---|---|---|---|
palogo_gamearts_eff, palogo_seta_eff |
94–115 (22) | 44 | ~0 … 45 = 45 | 97.8 % |
palogo_gamearts, palogo_seta |
116–211 (96) | 192 | 15 … 210 = 195 | 98.5 % |
(The logos are a = 0 until t=15, so they are drawn for 15…210; the glows fade
in from their untimed first keyframe.) Each element is on screen for its
declared span, to within 2 %.
🔴 But they do not share a clock origin
Every glow declares the same times — 15, 30, 45 — and every logo the same
15, 30, 190, 194, 206, 210. On one clock they would overlap almost entirely:
both families start at 15.
They do not overlap at all. The glows run frames 94–115 and the logos
116–211 — strictly sequential, the logos starting the frame after the glows
end. Fitting a single origin bears this out: gamearts_eff needs f₀ ≈ 93.5 and
gamearts needs f₀ ≈ 103, about 19 units apart, and the same edit that
aligns one throws the other off by ~9 frames at both ends.
🔴 The obvious candidate is refuted
parse_placements reads each group header as (element index, keyframe count)
followed by one undecoded lead-in word. That is exactly where a per-group
start offset would live. It is 0x00000000 for all seven elements of the
developer splash — glows and logos alike. It carries no offset.
❔ So where does the start come from?
Not from the keyframe times (identical across each family), not from the group
header's spare word (zero), and not from declaration order (eff0.prm, gamearts,
gamearts_eff, seta, seta_eff, anima, anima_eff — which interleaves logos and
glows, while the observed sequencing groups them). The RATC child order does not
match the observed order either.
Reach: three places looked, all negative. What remains is that the sequencing is driven by code, consistent with what boot-config-and-gamepart-registry already concluded for the boot order — the driver is code, not data.
⚠️ What a port needs to know
A group tells you how long an element's animation runs and what it does; it does not tell you when that animation starts relative to other elements on the same screen. On the developer splash the observed order is: both glows together, then both logos together. That is a measured sequence for one screen, not a decoded rule — a port animating a screen has to author the sequencing, and should know it is authoring.
✅ Verified against its own refutation — and it goes further than start times
2026-08-29. Two checks on the "sequential, not simultaneous" reading.
The phases really are disjoint
If the glows and logos ever shared a frame, the sequencing claim would be wrong. Across all 235 captured frames, the number of frames containing both a glow and a logo is zero. The switch is a single clean boundary:
f110–115 1280x720 + 262x108 + 525x90 ← both glows
f116–122 1280x720 + 243x86 + 499x72 ← both logos
Two sprites either side, no overlap, no transition frame.
A third of the bundle is never drawn at all
Entry 11 declares three logo/glow pairs. Only two are ever drawn:
| sprite | declared | drawn |
|---|---|---|
palogo_gamearts / _eff |
500×71 / 521×91 | 95 / 22 frames |
palogo_seta / _eff |
240×89 / 261×110 | 95 / 22 frames |
palogo_anima / _eff |
388×136 / 407×156 | never |
…and palogo_anima declares the same keyframe times as palogo_gamearts.
⚠️ Reach: the capture covers frames 1–214, so this is "never within the
window", not "never". The pair may follow after it.
What that means for a consumer
A bundle is a palette, not a script. Its elements carry what to draw and for how long; which of them run, and when each starts, is decided outside the placement data — selectively enough that two elements with byte-identical keyframe times get 95 frames and 0 frames in the same run.
That is the same conclusion the boot-order work reached from the other end (the driver is code, not data), now with a per-element measurement behind it.
⚠️ Concretely: compositing every element of a bundle does not reproduce what the game shows over time. It is the right thing for a static screen that settles, and it is not a timeline.
🔴 Narrowing "a bundle is a palette" — the mechanism is NOT established
2026-08-29. The glow phase and the logo phase are disjoint, but there are two explanations and I asserted one of them:
- one bundle, selective activation — the game runs some of entry 11's elements, then others;
- two bundle-loads in sequence — the game shows one composition, then another (entries 11 and 14 are twins declaring identical sprites).
The draw log records each draw's texture base, which looked like it would separate them. It does not:
| phase | frames | texture bases |
|---|---|---|
| publisher splash | 1–90 | 0x11C30000, 0x10000000 |
| glows | 94–115 | 0x11C30000, 0x10000000 |
| logos | 116–211 | 0x11C30000, 0x10000000 |
The test fails its own control. The publisher splash is certainly a different
bundle from the developer splash — different entry, different artwork — and it
uses the same base. So 0x11C30000 is a reused upload address, not a bundle
identity, and it cannot distinguish hypothesis 1 from hypothesis 2.
What survives, and what I withdraw
✅ Survives: a bundle's declared elements are not what gets drawn.
palogo_anima and palogo_gamearts carry byte-identical keyframe times, and in
the same run one is drawn for 95 frames and the other for none — whichever of the
twins was active declares both. The phases are also strictly disjoint (0 frames
of overlap in 235).
🔴 Withdrawn: the mechanism. "One bundle, elements activated selectively" was my reading, and the evidence does not choose it over "two compositions shown in sequence". The practical consequence is the same either way — compositing every element of a bundle does not reproduce what the game shows over time — but the why is not established and should not have been stated as though it were.
❔ What would separate them: a per-draw capture recording the bundle each draw came from, or a kernel/file-IO log showing whether a second RATC entry is read between frames 115 and 116.
✅ Re-established, by elimination — selective activation is happening
2026-08-29. The alternative can be killed statically, which I had not tried.
Hypothesis 2 needs a bundle that declares the glows without the logos. There
is none. Enumerating every entry in GP_TITLE that contains palogo elements:
| entry | elements |
|---|---|
| 10, 13 (publisher twins) | palogo_eff0.prm, palogo_sqex, palogo_sqex_eff |
| 11, 14 (developer twins) | palogo_eff0.prm, all three logos and all three glows |
Four entries, and each developer entry declares the complete set of six. So whichever bundle was active across frames 94–211 — entry 11, entry 14, or both in turn — it declared the logos and the glows, while the game drew two sprites at a time in disjoint phases.
⇒ Only a subset of a bundle's elements is drawn at any moment, whatever the bundle-loading story is. The conclusion does not depend on resolving how many bundles are involved, which is why the texture-base test's failure no longer matters.
✅ So "a bundle is a palette, not a script" is reinstated — this time by eliminating the alternative rather than by assuming it away. The route that worked was not a better capture but asking what the competing hypothesis would require on the disc, and finding it absent.