Commit Graph
6 Commits
Author SHA1 Message Date
arcattackandClaude Opus 5 48d47ef806 #45 review pass: correct three claims the fix's own comments got wrong
An adversarial review of the change returned NO BLOCKERS but caught three
statements that were wrong or unverifiable.  All three are corrections to my own
comments/docs, not behaviour changes -- the verified binary is unchanged.

1. The phantom-kill note had the ORDERING backwards.  It claimed the owner's
   record "overwrites it on the next record -- the phantom stops being visible".
   The engine's event priorities run the other way: an inbound update record is
   posted at UpdateEventPriority == MaxEventPriority and drained by
   ExecuteBackgroundTask, while the rerouted score message sits at
   EntityManagerEventPriority == DefaultEventPriority and is popped later -- so
   the correction usually lands FIRST and the phantom AFTER it.  The artifact is
   BOUNDED, not masked: on the killer's pod only, that victim's KILLS reads +1
   until the next record, i.e. <= one 2s heartbeat instead of "until the victim
   next scores or dies".  Swept in btplayer.cpp, KD_SCOREBOARD_PLAN.md and
   RECONCILE.md.

2. The corpus figures were not reproducible, and were mis-tiered.  I cited
   "125 of 125 SCORE type=2 over 255 node-logs" and "0 of 8800 DMG rows" -- true
   when measured, but the corpus is append-only and this fix's OWN verification
   runs grew it from ~255 to 425 files, so nobody can re-derive them.  Replaced
   everywhere with invariant RATIOS that hold at any corpus size, re-measured
   here:
     * 0 of 18818 DMG rows are inst=R (damage is applied master-side only)
     * 439 of 439 DEATH inst=R rows read killer=0:0 killdmg=0.000, against
       0 of 225 inst=M rows (sole lastInflictingID writer: mech.cpp:746)
   Also re-tagged T1 -> T2: log-corpus field evidence is T2 per the CLAUDE.md
   tier table.  Lesson recorded in the banner: cite ratios, not counts, for a
   corpus your own rigs append to.

3. The recordLength guard's justification was wrong (and the plan's risk 5 with
   it).  A short legacy record does NOT desync the stream -- both sides advance
   by the WRITER's stamped recordLength and no reader asserts a length.  The real
   hazard is a read PAST THE ALLOCATION: an inbound update message lives in a
   per-event heap block sized from messageLength, so on a TRAILING legacy record
   the two new fields would be read off the end of it.

Plus: the record struct's own field comment still said "deathCount -- the DEATHS
column", the exact wrong-field belief #45 removed, sitting on the wire struct.

Filed the review's other finding on #60: a SECOND decomp export gap, index
jumping FUN_0049fe80 (ends 0x49ffc8) -> FUN_004a1232, 4714 unexported bytes
containing Mech::TakeDamageMessageHandler @0x4a0230 -- the producer of every
score and death message in the game.  Verified independently against
functions_index.tsv before posting.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-25 22:15:06 -05:00
arcattackandClaude Opus 5 a52207d779 #45 scoreboard: reclaim the binary's DEATHS field, add a heartbeat, sweep the false KB claims
Follow-up to 4fa7eee, driven by an adversarial review pass and three rig cycles.
Each item below is a real defect that pass found, not polish.

DEATHS now uses the binary's own column.  PilotList::Execute @0x4cabd0 draws
`fild [edi+0x27c]` (KILLS) and `fild [edi+0x280]` (DEATHS); +0x280 has exactly
two runtime writers image-wide plus the ctor zero.  Our port had declared it
`pad_0x280`, never written, and displayed the ENGINE's Player::deathCount
(+0x200) instead -- which is the respawn-handshake identity, seeded -2, and is
why it needed a clamp to pass as a count.  It is now BTPlayer::deathTally (our
offset 0x274, offsetof-locked), incremented beside ++deathCount, read by the
gauge, and replicated.  deathCount is left to the engine's handshake.  So this
half moves TOWARD the binary; it also closes the plan's Headline-1.
(`deathTally`, NOT `deaths`/`deathCount` -- those would shadow the base.)

The mirror was not self-healing: update records are UNRELIABLE by construction
(Entity::UpdateMessage clears ReliableFlag, ENTITY3.h:112; the relay's UDP path
also drops stale/reordered datagrams), and the pair was dirtied only on an
event.  One lost datagram left every peer stale until that pilot's next kill or
death -- forever for the last kill of a round.  Added a 2s heartbeat that
re-dirties the record, which also bounds how long the binary's phantom
partner-increment stays visible.  The timer is a function static deliberately: a
data member would change sizeof(BTPlayer) and break the offset locks.

Also fixed: the SBMIRROR row AND its change-detect both still read deathCount (a
constant -2 here), so the "log only the edge" guard could never be false and
every row printed deaths=-2.  That is what made the first rig runs look like
DEATHS was broken when a WRITE/READ trace proved the transport correct.  Row
count per node fell from ~20 to 3, one per real change.

Guarded the record against per-bit layouts: update_model is a BIT INDEX and
Entity::WriteUpdateRecord switches on it (ENTITY.cpp:329-352) -- the DamageZone
bit emits a variable-length packed stream whose length it computes itself, so
appending two ints and re-stamping recordLength over that would corrupt it.

Deleted BTPlayerCountObservedDeath -- definition, call site, extern and friend
together, since /FORCE hides stragglers.  It never executed (its call site sat
inside the once-per-death transition, which a replicant never enters) and could
not have worked (0 of 8800 corpus DMG rows target a replicant, which is why every
DEATH inst=R row reads killer=0:0).  Under replication it would have been a
second writer of a replicated counter.

New forensics: NOCREDIT names the failing link when a kill credit is skipped (it
used to be completely silent -- the counter simply never moved), and PLAYER_LINK
records whether the one-shot link resolved.  Both retire the NULL-playerLink
theory: every rig shows `PLAYER_LINK inst=R resolved=1` and no NOCREDIT rows.
PLAYER_DEAD now logs both counters (deaths=handshake, tally=scoreboard).

KB sweep of the claims that hid this bug for so long:
  * context/gauges-hud.md's "RESOLVED -- deaths tally per node from locally
    observed events" was FALSE; corrected with the measured evidence.
  * docs/GAUGE_COMPOSITE.md + btl4gau3.cpp "the dead pad_0x280" -- never dead,
    merely unwritten.
  * btplayer.hpp attributed VehicleDeadMessageHandler to @004c012c; it is
    @004c05c4 (absent from the decomp export -- the #60 gap).
  * docs/RESPAWN_REARM_PLAN.md's "#45 SUBSUMED" -- the PLAYER_DEAD symptom was
    subsumed, the scoreboard defect was not.
  * The corpus figure in the record banner now states its method so it is
    reproducible.

Rig-verified (2-node loopback, several cycles): owner 3:1 kills 2/tally 1 read
`kills=2 deaths=1` on the peer; owner 2:1 kills 1/tally 2 read `kills=1 deaths=2`
on the peer.  Respawn unaffected, no crash, no GLITCH rows.  Still awaiting live
multi-pod verification by a human; all pods must run the same build.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-25 22:09:00 -05:00
arcattackandClaude Opus 5 4fa7eee54f K/D scoreboard ROOT-CAUSED for real (#45): the kill credit was rerouted, not lost
Kills/deaths only ever appeared on ONE machine.  The cause is not a missing
tally -- it is Entity::Dispatch:

    if (GetInstance() == ReplicantInstance)              // ENTITY.cpp:244-251
        application->SendMessage(ownerID, EntityManagerClientID, message);

BTPostKillScore runs on the VICTIM's node (the only node whose mech carries a
populated lastInflictingID), resolves the killer's Player -- a REPLICANT there --
and Dispatch()es to it.  The engine reroutes that to the owning host, so
++killCount lands on the killer's own PC and nowhere else, and nothing carried it
back out: Player__UpdateRecord is currentScore + dropZoneLocation only.  Every
other pod's copy therefore read 0 all mission.  playerLink was never NULL for
these kills -- the dispatch proves it resolved.

Field proof over the whole corpus (255 node-logs): 125 of 125 SCORE type=2 rows
credit the LOGGING node's own player, not one credits a remote pilot; and 0 of
8800 DMG rows target a replicant, so no other node can even know the killer.

This means the owner's counter is already the single authoritative copy,
incremented exactly once per kill.  So the "design decision" the plan was blocked
on collapses: there is no second writer to reconcile, only a one-way
owner->replicant mirror to add.

  * BTPlayer__UpdateRecord = Player::UpdateRecord + killTally + deathTally, with
    Read/WriteUpdateRecord overrides.  No new data member, no new virtual ->
    sizeof(BTPlayer)==0x28c and every existing offset lock still holds.
  * Both counter writes already ForceUpdate() (:508 death, :829/:840 score), so
    no dirty-bit edit was needed (plan risk 6 avoided).
  * recordLength guard in ReadUpdateRecord: a pod on a build without the
    extension degrades to "remote counters don't move" instead of reading a
    neighbouring record as a kill count.
  * Size locks added per plan risk 2 (no false offsetof assert).

Rig-verified, 2-node loopback (scratchpad/rig45_up.ps1, BT_MP_FORCE_DMG):
owner 3:1 finished kills 3/deaths 2 and the peer read kills=3 deaths=2; owner 2:1
finished kills 2/deaths 3 and the peer read kills=2 deaths=3.  Exact convergence
where a remote column previously never left 0.  3 respawns per side with intact
death sequences (deathCount is only overwritten on replicant copies; the
handshake runs on masters), no crash, no GLITCH rows.

Kept byte-faithful: the kill handler's partner increment (the binary's
inc [ebx+0x27c] / inc [edx+0x27c] wrong-column slip) is still reproduced.  It
always lands on a replicant copy, so the owner's record now overwrites it -- the
rig caught the correction repeatedly (wasKills=3 -> kills=2).  The phantom kill
stops being visible without silently deciding the fidelity question.

Still open and deliberately untouched: which field the LOCAL pod's DEATHS column
should read (+0x280 vs deathCount), last-hitter-takes-all/ram kills, and the
slip's fidelity.  Awaiting live multi-pod verification by a human.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-25 21:40:59 -05:00
arcattackandClaude Opus 5 6e810d99cc docs: mark the 'only .x meshes load' paragraph SUPERSEDED (native BGF reader exists)
Found during the input-path audit: RECONCILE.md's 'DEEPEST RENDER FAULT =
ASSET PIPELINE GAP' paragraph is stale -- d3d_OBJECT::LoadObject falls through
to LoadObjectBGF (L4D3D.cpp:98/230, bgfload.cpp LoadBgfFile) and BGF geometry
loads natively today.  Docs only.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_0166KTsC7ADm7VXEi1HF1jNg
2026-07-24 19:52:10 -05:00
arcattackandClaude Fable 5 267059ab88 Damage economy RECONCILED: 3 stand-ins fixed, 3 paths confirmed authentic (task #60)
Full 5-path audit of the damage economy vs the decomp (5-finder +
adversarial-verify workflow), resolving the KB self-contradiction the
binary-coverage audit flagged.

CONFIRMED AUTHENTIC as-is (no change needed):
- Energy beam (emitter.cpp): damagePortion = authored DamageAmount x
  (charge/seekV)^2; the ctor x1e7 and fire x1e-7 cancel (_DAT_004bafbc
  dumped from the exe = x87 80-bit 1e-7 exactly).
- Autocannon (projweap.cpp): full authored DamageAmount from resource
  +0x19C delivered unmodified; the 0.0625 at :667 is the shooter's own
  gyro recoil, not the round.
- Zone-armor BASE model: damageLevel += amount x damageScale[type]
  (engine DAMAGE.cpp:379, called mechdmg.cpp:427), legs x0.5, 1.0=dead.

3 STAND-INS FIXED (all byte-verified against the decomp):
- A. mechdmg.cpp:451 -- read the phantom `stance` member (no binary
  offset, zero writers -> perma-0), so the leg-shot-out -> fall/death
  branch was DEAD. Now MovementMode() (mech+0x40, @part_012.c:6910).
- B. mechdmg.cpp:458 -- guarded the leg partial-failure graphic on the
  always-0 IsAirborne() stub where the binary calls IsDisabled()
  (@0049fb54 = movementMode 2||9). On a wreck the binary SUPPRESSES the
  write; the stub let it corrupt graphicAlarm 9->4/3 -- the task-#52
  wreck-graphic bug, now fixed AT SOURCE (was only masked by the
  IsMechDestroyed latch).
- C. mech4.cpp:1551 -- flat kShotDamage=12 fed as the kill-score
  damageAmount (the KB self-contradiction: task #8 claimed it retired,
  but it was live). The score handler @0x4c02e4 derives the whole kill
  award from it, so every kill scored identically regardless of weapon.
  Now lastInflictingDamage -- the real killing-blow magnitude, latched
  in TakeDamageMessageHandler (mech.cpp:624), mirroring the per-hit path
  (mech4.cpp:1207). The phantom `int stance` slot is reused for the new
  Scalar member (size-neutral, no layout shift); init 0 in the ctor.

DEFERRED (task #60-D, documented): the missile CLUSTER model -- the port
fires N flying rounds (net armor total authentic) vs the binary's ONE
missile with a random burstCount cluster roll (loses cluster variance +
single-zone concentration). Blocked on an OPEN decomp semantic (does
burstCount multiply armor or only the gyro kick? settle at FUN_004bef78
-> FUN_004be078 -> EXPLODE.cpp:209-210).

VERIFIED live: clean build; 2-node fight -> clean center-mass kill (no
crash, kills 0->1); [zone-armor] dump confirms per-zone armor 50-140 +
legs x0.5. NB the displayed POINTS score still reads 0 -- a SEPARATE
open gap (scoreAward + role/team/tonnage multipliers unwired); fix C
corrected the damage INPUT to that formula.

KB swept: open-questions.md (self-contradiction resolved + task #60
summary + deferred missile item), combat-damage.md (damageScale is
type-indexed not even/odd; task-#52 source fix; kill-score section),
RECONCILE.md (missile = ONE spawn not N), stale comments in mechweap.cpp
(SendDamageMessage is LIVE), mislanch.hpp, mechdmg.cpp (FUN_0049fb54 =
IsDisabled).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-13 15:38:04 -05:00
arcattackandClaude Opus 4.8 7b7d465e5e Initial commit: bt411 -- standalone Windows BattleTech (Tesla 4.10 port)
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>
2026-07-05 21:03:40 -05:00