Deep-dived the authentic engine effect (L4VIDRND.cpp POVTranslocateRenderable, T0)
and reworked our one-shot to match it, fixing the user's "blob from my own POV /
not aligned to my orientation" + "gray, not blue" reports:
1. PLACEMENT was the misalignment. The engine parents the sphere to the VTV/eye
("rotated and scaled around the VTV", L4VIDRND.cpp:1812) -- it is centered on and
oriented to the viewpoint. We world-fixed it at the mech's feet, so from your own
camera it sat off-axis and, once expanded, engulfed the eye as a shapeless blob.
Now: the own-respawn warp (BTStartWarpEffectPOV, from btplayer) uses
world = Scale(s) * inverse(view) -> centered on + carried by your eye (the tunnel
wraps you). Observing a PEER (BTStartWarpEffect from mechdmg) stays world-anchored
at the peer's point.
2. GEOMETRY SPIN was inauthentic. myRotateY/myRotateYSpeed are set in the engine
ctor but NEVER applied -- the swirl's rotation is entirely the material's texture
SCROLL (bintA, SCROLL 0.0 0.0 0.1 0.5). Dropped our world-Y geometry spin.
3. COLOR (gray) fixed at the source. The blue/white is the "sky" RAMP remapping the
grayscale bintA cloud per-texel (argb=lerp(0,0,0.6 -> .99,.99,.99, luminance),
L4D3D.cpp:480). The port bakes exactly this but GATED it off for normal-bearing
meshes; tsphere has normals so it arrived raw gray, and a MODULATE tint can't add
the blue floor (it only multiplies) -> the wash-out. Un-gate the ramp for
tsphere_mtl (bgfload.cpp) so the bound texture is already the blue-white swirl;
draw it MODULATE by white (no tint), alpha from TFACTOR.
4. SCALE to authentic 100 (collapse) / 150 (expand end) -- correct now that it's
eye-centered (you're meant to be inside it as it collapses through you and blasts
back open, the "blast off into the distance").
Still deferred (higher risk / SimulationState-coupling trap): the WaitForReincarnate
Lissajous wobble + the SetIsDead world-mask (black-out during the dead hold). Noted
for follow-up; the placement/color/motion are the parts the user flagged.
Smoke-verified 2-node: own respawn logs POV(eye), observer logs world-anchored, no
crash. BT_WARP_ADDITIVE / BT_WARP_COLOR / BT_WARP_SCALE remain as live tuning knobs.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Clean, self-contained extraction of the BattleTech-specific work from the
reverse-engineering workspace -- engine + game + content + build, with nothing
from Red Planet or the raw archive dumps. Builds green (Win32) and runs the
single-player drive->animate->target->fire->damage->destroy loop out of the box.
Layout:
engine/ MUNGA + MUNGA_L4 shared 2007 engine, carrying our BT render/loader
work (bgfload/L4D3D/L4VIDEO: BSL bit-slice decode, LOD/ground/shadow
models) + image codec; the minimal rp/ headers the audio HAL needs
game/ reconstructed BT logic + surviving-original BT source + fwd shims
+ WinMain launcher
content/ full runtime tree (BTL4.RES, VIDEO/, GAUGE/, AUDIO/, eggs, BTDPL.INI)
docs/ format specs + reconstruction ledgers
reference/ raw Ghidra pseudocode (recon source-of-truth) + decomp exporter
tools/ MP console emulator + map/resource scanners
One top-level CMake builds munga_engine lib + bt410_l4 game lib + btl4.exe.
All paths relativized (186 fwd shims + ~437 CMake abs paths -> repo-relative);
DXSDK is the one external, overridable via -DDXSDK. Verified: builds to a
byte-identical 2.27MB exe and runs combat (TARGET DESTROYED, 0 crashes) against
the bundled content.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
