Commit Graph
688 Commits
Author SHA1 Message Date
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Opus 5 e6103d02b2 #97: leak gauge reaches all THREE levels -- the normalisation was dropped with an x87 expression
Players: "you can get up to three traingles which drains really quickly" ...
"only seeing one level (lowest) right now" (Oracle), corroborated by Draco
("3 triple delta being the top level").

The display was never the problem: BitMapInverseWipe is already built with
frames=3 and stacks three segments at two levels each (0..6).  The LEVEL
computation was wrong.

Our Execute rounded the raw leak rate:
    level = round(value)
The binary's @004c5d08 does NOT.  Ghidra renders the round as a bare
`FUN_004dcd94()` because it drops the x87 expression feeding __ftol -- exactly
KB gotcha 19, which we already had written down.  The real prologue, disassembled:

    fild  dword ptr [ebp-0x14]    ; ST0 = (float)fullWidth   (frames*2 = 6)
    fmul  dword ptr [ebx+0xb4]    ; ST0 *= value             (CoolantMassLeakRate)
    fdiv  dword ptr [ebx+0xb0]    ; ST0 /= third             (full-scale divisor)
    call  0x4dcd94                ; level = round(ST0)

i.e. level = round(fullWidth * leakRate / fullScale).

Without the normalisation the gauge rounded a value that never exceeds ~1.0
(coolantDraw = zoneDamage * heatLoad, and heatLoad is clamp(0.002*T, 0, 1) --
constants re-verified from the image, including the 80-bit extended 0.002).  So
level could only ever be 0, or 1 via the >0.0025 floor: ONE triangle, always, no
matter how bad the leak.  Three of the six condensers being mis-lamped (#98) hid
how systematic this was.

Also corrected on the way:
  * `third` was declared int but the binary FDIVs it -- it is a float.  The two
    call sites passed *(int *)(subsystem+0x150), i.e. the BIT PATTERN of a float
    read from a RAW OFFSET into our own layout (the databinding trap): at +0x150
    our layout has filterDecay, not the binary's field.  Now resolved through a
    complete-type bridge, BTHeatSinkLeakFullScale.
  * filterDecay was initialised 0.4f; @004b8fec writes 0.15f (param_1[0x54] =
    0x3e19999a).  It is written-once-never-read elsewhere in the port, so the
    correction is behaviourally safe and it IS the gauge's full scale.

Verified live: Condenser6 at 10% zone damage -> draw 0.0358 -> level 1 (one
triangle); the same formula reaches all three at heavier damage, and the mapping
spans draw 0.0026 (half of one) to 0.15 (three full).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-01 13:54:13 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Opus 5 ee079083a3 #96: FIX -- normalise the myomer kinetic heat term to a reference frame rate
The previous commit only instrumented.  This is the behavioural change.

The binary's drive-heat integrator (FUN_004b8d18) multiplies its climb and accel
terms by the time slice but NOT the kinetic one:

    heat += ratio^2 * (1+dmg) * [ (1-accEff)*|vy|*m*g*dt
                                + (1-velEff)*(0.5*m*|v|^2)     <-- no dt
                                + (1-accEff)*|v|*|a|*m*dt ]

A per-TICK energy is a constant on a fixed-frame 1995 machine and a variable on a
modern PC: heat/second scales with frame rate, so two players on different
hardware -- or one player in a heavy scene versus an empty one -- get different
heat from identical throttle.  That is a defect independent of what the pod's
rate actually was.

The kinetic term is now multiplied by (dt * kPodFrameHz), which is exactly 1.0
when dt == 1/30 and makes the result machine-independent.  This is the one
deliberate divergence from a verbatim transcription of @004b8d18, and it is
marked as such in the source.

Measured, Owens at seek 4 flat out:
    before   crossed degradeT(1000) at ~27s, peaked 1213, settled ~710
    after    peak 1007, settled ~525
i.e. roughly halved at our measured ~59Hz, which is the direction the players
asked for ("too much IMO", "def need to tone down the myomer heat some").

⚠ CALIBRATION IS NOT PROVEN.  30Hz is the i860 BOARD frame ([T1],
rendering.md:177); the HOST simulation rate is not separately established, and no
fixed-timestep constant exists in the image (searched 1/15..1/60 and 30/60 Hz --
the arcade computed dt from a clock, as we do).  So the reference rate is the
best-documented value, not a proven one.  BT_MYO_HZ overrides it with no rebuild
so it can be calibrated by feel.

Precedent for the bug class, already logged in the KB: "trail density is
frame-rate-dependent (2/frame @60fps = 2x pod density)" (rendering.md:222).

NOT settled: whether the per-chassis ordering matches player memory (a Thor
sustaining seek 4 where a light chicken-walker cannot).  Post-fix benches put the
Thor HOTTER (crosses at 40s vs the Owens at 47s), but those runs are BT_GOTO
path-driven and the acceleration term is large and path-dependent, so they are
too noisy to conclude from.  The cooling data being identical across chassis IS
solid (measured, previous commit).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-01 13:34:44 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Opus 5 9dd7d48b41 #96: instrument the myomer heat model -- per-mech profile CONFIRMED, overheat cause LOCATED
Two player claims, both now answered from the decomp + measurement rather than
inference.

THE EQUATION (FUN_004b8d18, constants read from the image: _DAT_004b8ee4=0.5,
_DAT_004b8ee8=0.0 (the fabs), _DAT_004b8eec=1.0):

  heat += ratio^2 * (1+damageLevel) *
          [ (1-accEff)*|vy|*m*g*dt        climb   POWER
          + (1-velEff)*(0.5*m*|v|^2)      kinetic ENERGY -- NO dt
          + (1-accEff)*|v|*|a|*m*dt ]     accel   POWER

Our implementation already reproduces this verbatim, dt-less term included.

CLAIM 1 -- "each mech has a unique heating profile".  TRUE, and working, but NOT
by the mechanism the player described.  Measured across thr1/own1/mad1/vul1:
  * the myomer record is IDENTICAL on every chassis
    (velEff 0.995, accEff 0.8, gears 3000/5000/7000/9999, rec 2,
     degradeT 1000, failT 2000, thermalMass 250000)
  * the heat-family COUNT is identical too -- 6 Condensers, 1 HeatSinkBank,
    1 Reservoir, 4 Generators on all four
  * every cooling parameter is byte-identical Thor vs Owens (condenser
    conductance 315000 / mass 420000, bank 231000 / 1.39e6, reservoir
    190000 / 3.42e6)
So there is NO authored per-chassis cooling variation.  The profile emerges from
the equation instead: heat ~ m*v^2, and light mechs are faster.  Measured at
seek 4, flat out:
    thr1  mass 70000  |v| 11.34  kinetic/tick 49026
    own1  mass 35000  |v| 17.22  kinetic/tick 57350
The Owens is HALF the mass and generates 17% MORE drive heat, because v^2 beats
m.  That reproduces the player's OUTCOME (a Thor sustains seek 4, a light
chicken-walker cannot) via speed, not heatsink count.

CLAIM 2 -- "it runs too hot".  The kinetic term carries NO dt: it adds an ENERGY
every TICK, so its contribution per SECOND scales with the tick rate.  Measured
dt here is ~0.017 (~59Hz) and variable.  The other two terms are power terms and
are rate-independent.  On flat ground the climb term is additionally dead --
gravity reads 0 (the carried "environment gravity unwired" open), so hills do not
heat at all right now.
NOT yet established: the 1995 tick rate the dt-less term was calibrated against.
Until that is pinned the OVERHEAT FACTOR is unquantified -- flagged, not guessed.

Adds three diagnostics, all under BT_MYO_LOG:
  [myoheat] now splits climb/kinetic/accel + dt + the kinetic share
  [myoparm] one line per myomer: efficiencies, gears, thermal thresholds
  [hsparm]  one line per heat subsystem: conductance + thermal mass
and three benches (myoheat/myoparm/myocmp) that produced the tables above.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-01 13:14:55 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Opus 5 56f15b569a #98: prove the lamp fix -- table pinned to the image, three condensers verified live
Follows the request to prove the whole fix rather than the one case I had.

1. TABLE, all indices: scratchpad/night8/lamptable_check.py asserts the
   reconstructed arrays against BTL4OPT.EXE and exits nonzero on drift.
       kBTCondenserLamp @0051d058  MATCH  07 2F 2E 2D 2B 2A 29
       kBTPlacementLamp @0051d070  MATCH  29 1A 1B 1C 1D
       kFixed (FUN_004cc148 switch) MATCH  2F 2E 2D 2C 2B 2A
   This covers condensers 2/3/5 without hunting zones for them: there is no
   per-index code path, only the array contents, and those are now pinned.

2. LOOKUP PATH, live: condensers 1, 4 and 6 resolve 0x2F, 0x2B and 0x29 --
   exactly the table.  Condenser 4 is the meaningful control: my reverted "fix"
   would have given 0x2C.  Myomers (eng-page path, 0x25/0x21) and SRM6_1 (quad
   button, 0xd) still annunciate, so other subsystem classes are unregressed.

3. GUARD: condenserNumber is parsed from the name's trailing digit
   (NameTrailingNumber, mirroring the binary's atoi), and every condenser in
   BTL4.RES is Condenser1..Condenser6 -- no Condenser0, no bare name.  So the
   1..6 guard covers every shipped case and slot 0 (0x7) is unreachable.  This
   was the real risk in changing `n >= 0` to `n >= 1`; it is closed.

4. PIXELS: leaklamp_pixel.{sh,py} capture a leaking run and an undamaged control
   run from the cockpit and difference their per-pixel temporal variance.  The
   leak is visibly real -- the COOLANT reservoir drains on screen (S 331->330
   while the control sits at 329).

⚠ WHAT THE PIXELS DID NOT SETTLE, and it is not a testing gap.  Lamp 0x29 is
ALSO kBTPlacementLamp[0]: DAT_0051d058[6] and DAT_0051d070[0] are the SAME int32
-- the two tables abut.  So condenser 6's lamp may not be its own loop button at
all, and slot 6 may be an overrun in the BINARY too (its read is unchecked).
Reproducing it is the faithful choice either way, and we now do exactly what the
binary computes -- but whether a pilot sees loop 6's own button light is a
question only someone who played the original can answer.  Asked on the issue.

CORRECTION: 0b98370 claimed @0051d058 "holds gauge-type name strings, so the
provenance is questionable".  That was MY bug -- a PE section-header field-order
mistake (unpacking VirtualSize/VirtualAddress/SizeOfRawData/PointerToRawData
then destructuring in a different order).  The original reconstruction's
provenance was accurate.  The checker in (1) uses the corrected reader.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-01 12:26:47 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Opus 5 c50236a5e6 bench: shorten the leak-lamp run; verified condensers 1/4/6 resolve 0x2F/0x2B/0x29 (the binary's table), plus Myomers + SRM6 eng/quad lamps unregressed
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-01 11:41:26 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Opus 5 0b983703a4 #98: CORRECTION -- restore the byte-verified condenser lamp table; my previous mapping was a guess and was wrong
0254d9e re-mapped condensers onto the coolingLoop1..6 lamps on the reasoning
that "six condensers <-> six loops" and that the table's missing 0x2C was a
transcription slip.  It was not.  Read the decomp -- which was exported the whole
time and which I should have read BEFORE touching the table:

    FUN_004cc264(sub) { return *(int *)(&DAT_0051d058 + sub[0x1d4] * 4); }

indexed by condenserNumber, no bounds check.  And the bytes at 0051d058 are:

    07 00 00 00  2F 00 00 00  2E 00 00 00  2D 00 00 00
    2B 00 00 00  2A 00 00 00  29 00 00 00  1A 00 00 00

So the ORIGINAL table was byte-accurate: the binary really does skip 0x2C.  The
condenser lamps (2F 2E 2D 2B 2A 29) are a DIFFERENT set from the coolingLoop
lamps of FUN_004cc148 (2F 2E 2D 2C 2B 2A) -- overlapping but distinct.  My
"fix" therefore mis-mapped condensers 4, 5 AND 6, replacing a correct mapping
with a plausible-looking wrong one.

What IS a real port defect, and all that should have changed: the bounds check.
`n >= 0 && n < 6` is a 0-based bound on a 1-based index (live: 'Condenser6'
reports 6), so condenser 6 was rejected and annunciated NOTHING, where the
binary resolves it to 0x29.  The table is now 7 slots ending in 0x29 and the
guard admits 1..6 -- kept rather than dropped, so a stray authored number cannot
walk off the end into the adjacent per-placement table the way the binary's
unchecked read would.

Verified: Condenser6 leak -> [galarm] condition 2 -> lamp 0x29 FLASH, which is
what the binary computes for it.

Lesson, and it is the third time this week: I had a live-reproduced symptom and
inferred the cause from internal consistency instead of reading the available
decomp.  The symptom was real; the explanation was invented.  Gotcha 24 covers
over-generalising a verified fact -- this is its sibling: inventing a fact to
explain a verified symptom.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-01 11:23:24 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Opus 5 0254d9ef34 #98: leaking condensers now flash the RIGHT button -- half of them flashed the wrong one, one flashed nothing
Field reports were all "intermittent": "the display buttons aren't always
flashing or lighting up on leaking components" (Oracle), "I'm getting leaks but
no indicators" (Lynx), "I am getting indicators sometimes" (Sauron).  It is not
intermittent -- it is per-condenser, and three of the six were wrong.

condenserNumber is 1-BASED (verified live: 'Condenser6' reports 6), which the
lamp table's own comment stated.  The guard was `n >= 0 && n < 6` -- a 0-based
bound -- and the table it indexed was missing 0x2C:

    condenser 1..3  -> 0x2F 0x2E 0x2D    correct
    condenser 4     -> 0x2B              WRONG (loop 5's button)
    condenser 5     -> 0x2A              WRONG (loop 6's button)
    condenser 6     -> rejected          NOTHING flashes

So a leak in loop 6 annunciated nowhere, loops 4-5 lit a neighbour's button, and
loops 1-3 were fine -- which from the cockpit reads exactly as "sometimes".

Condenser N drives cooling-loop N, whose six lamps are the same ones the
coolingLoop1..6 codes already resolve through, so the fix routes condensers
through that verified map (BTFixedLampOf(N-1)) and retires the duplicate,
partly-wrong table rather than patching it.

⚠ PROVENANCE: the retired table cited @0051d058 as byte-verified.  That address
holds gauge-type NAME STRINGS, not lamp ids, and a byte search for the six loop
ids as consecutive int32 finds nothing -- so neither the old table nor the new
mapping is byte-verified.  The correction rests on three checkable things: the
1-based numbering (live), the guard contradicting its own documented indexing,
and six condensers mapping onto the six cooling-loop lamps of the verified fixed
map.  [T2 -- behaviour verified, not byte-grounded.]

Also adds the missing diagnostic on the silent path: an alarm item that matched
its condition but resolved no lamp now names the subsystem and why, instead of
returning quietly.  That is what found this, and it immediately surfaced a
SECOND gap for someone to pick up: a destroyed HeatSink (condition 0) resolves
no lamp either, because it is neither Condenser nor Generator nor a
PoweredSubsystem with an aux screen.

Verified (scratchpad/night8/leaklamp.sh, BT_LAMP_LOG):
  before  [galarm] condition 2 ... sub 'Condenser6' -> NO LAMP RESOLVED
  after   [galarm] condition 2 ... -> lamp 0x2a FLASH

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-01 11:12:46 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Opus 5 bb7a6abe70 #32: correct the stale "no field complaints since" note + record the frame-time A/B
Found while checking whether a player had reported this before: the code already
carried a prior analysis of this exact error which deliberately decided NOT to
act on it, concluding the 2026-07-23 atomic-delete fix (a999e5c) had settled it
with "no field complaints since", and that the remaining exhaustion was
transient and likely sub-perceptual.

That claim did not hold, and the note was still sitting there to mislead the next
reader.  All five 4.11.674 player logs are saturated: 3031/4657/5245/6275/6571
failures, first one ~10% into a match, still failing at 97%.

The prior note's core reasoning was about raising the source BUDGET -- more
voices mixing = more CPU during heavy combat -- and it is sound; BT_AUDIO_SOURCES
stays opt-in and unset.  But it does not apply to pooling, which changes no
budget: idle pooled sources are stopped and detached and cost nothing to mix.
The note asks whoever touches this to measure frame time, so I did, same bench
both ways:

    pre-fix   8.672 ms weighted avg over  9390 frames
    post-fix  7.794 ms weighted avg over 10047 frames

Removing ~20k alGenSources/alDeleteSources driver calls per match is a net CPU
WIN, not a cost.  Single run each, so indicative rather than definitive, but it
points the opposite way from the concern.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-01 10:42:12 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Opus 5 ad9dfade88 #32: POOL the OpenAL sources instead of creating and destroying one per sound
Every 4.11.674 player log is saturated with acquisition failures -- 3031, 4657,
5245, 6275, 6571 across five machines.  In Lynx's largest session the first
failure lands 9.3% in and they continue to 96.8%: once it starts it never
recovers for the rest of the match.

CAUSE: RequestAudioChannels called alGenSources() per sound event and
ReleaseSourceSet called alDeleteSources() on release -- create and destroy per
sound.  OpenAL sources are a scarce driver resource (OpenAL Soft caps a context
at 256) and a combat burst churned straight through the ceiling.

The two counters looked contradictory and were the tell: ACQUIRE FAILED always
printed live=256 while the 30s census printed live=6.  Same global, sampled at
different moments -- sources spike to the cap during a burst and drain back
between them.  Churn, not a steady leak.

FIX: generate sources once, up to a cap, and recycle them through a free list.
Release scrubs and parks instead of deleting.  Steady-state play performs no AL
allocation at all.

The scrub is load-bearing, not hygiene: a recycled source carries whatever the
previous owner set, and the engine sets AL_LOOPING per sound
(L4AUDLVL.cpp:327).  Hand a looping source to a one-shot and it plays forever --
which is the "sound stuck looping" family (#51, #5).  Every reusable property is
reset at the single point where a source changes owner.

VERIFIED (scratchpad/night8/audiopool.sh + the two-node mp_burst.sh):
  solo, sustained fire  : 0 failures, pooled 152, reuses 21998
  two nodes, 4 min      : 0 failures on both, pooled 148/149, reuses ~7000 each
⚠ HONEST LIMIT: the bench does NOT reproduce the field failure -- the PRE-fix
binary also scores 0 on it (peak 49 live), because solo/2-node combat is not
dense enough to reach 256.  So this verifies the pool works and allocates
nothing in steady state; it does NOT by itself prove the field failures are
gone.  The five field logs remain the "before".

Peak demand is set by how many audio COMPONENTS are alive (each reserves a
SourceSet of up to 25 voices and holds them), not by audible sounds: measured
high-water 138 solo, 149 two-node.  That scales with player count, so the cap is
set near the driver ceiling (240) and the pool now logs its high-water mark once
per 25-source band -- so the next playtest sizes this from field data instead of
a guess.  Growth also self-limits: if a driver offers fewer sources than the cap,
alGenSources simply fails, growth stops, and the pool recycles what it has.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-01 10:29:04 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Opus 5 3a22c334ac bench: two-node CROSS-POD damage verification for the #95 burst change
Projectile damage now Dispatches directly at the victim instead of going through
the shooter's SubsystemMessageManager, so cross-pod delivery had to be proven on
real nodes rather than assumed.

RESULT: cross-pod delivery intact, and the cluster count survives the wire.
Node A fired 38 missile rounds with bursts {1:5,2:6,3:6,4:7,5:7,6:7}; node B
received exactly the matching zone applications {2:12,3:18,4:28,5:35,6:42} --
i.e. rounds x burst, per burst band, exact.  135 of B's 142 explosive
applications carried burst > 1 (the manager path used to drop it to 1).
Energy stayed at burst 1 on both nodes; no crash on either.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-01 05:28:45 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Opus 5 c23d06cbb5 KB: correct the burstCount claim -- it is honoured by the CALLER, not cosmetic
The KB asserted as [T1] that "burstCount is cosmetic for zone damage".  Half of
that is byte-verified (DamageZone::TakeDamage @0041e4e0 really does ignore it);
the other half was an inference that inherited the [T1] tag and then justified
task #62's salvo-lead design -- which silently divided every missile salvo by its
missile count (gitea #95).

Corrected in both places it appeared (combat-damage.md:334 and :884): the CALLER,
Mech::TakeDamageMessageHandler @0x4a0423-0x4a04d8, applies TakeDamage burstCount
times and re-rolls the struck zone per burst.  burstCount = number of
applications; load-bearing for missile cluster count, splash falloff and the gyro
bounce.  Also records that the arcade Missile dispatches DIRECTLY at the victim
rather than through the message manager (whose consolidation drops burstCount).

New gotcha 24: a verified fact, over-generalised, becomes a wrong design premise.
Detection smell -- a "cosmetic/unused" claim about a field other code still
computes carefully.  Nobody spends instructions randomising a decorative value.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-01 04:43:34 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Opus 5 3b7c19c232 #95: REVERT the salvo-damage hack; deliver the cluster the way the binary does
Supersedes the mislanch change in efc3e9f, which multiplied the lead round by
missileCount.  That produced roughly the right average total but as ONE lump on
ONE zone, with no scatter and no variance -- not what the arcade does.

WHAT THE BINARY DOES (all byte-verified):
  * MissileLauncher ctor @004bcff0:  burstCount = missileCount;
                                     damageAmount /= missileCount
  * FireWeapon @004bcc60 spawns exactly ONE Missile -- no loop, missileCount is
    never read there.  The salvo IS one cluster round.
  * Missile::Perform rolls how many of the cluster connect right before it
    dispatches (part_013.c:10082):  b = Random(n) + n/4, clamped to n
    -- i.e. between a quarter of the salvo and all of it.
  * It then dispatches DIRECTLY at the struck entity (FUN_004be078:
    param_2->Dispatch(&msg)) -- NOT through the shooter's message manager.
  * Mech::TakeDamageMessageHandler @0x4a0439-0x4a04d8 applies the hit
    burstCount times, RE-ROLLING the struck zone per burst.

Our handler already implements that loop faithfully (mech.cpp, task #80) -- I
wrongly believed it was missing, because the KB asserts as [T1] that "burstCount
is cosmetic for zone damage".  That is half right: DamageZone::TakeDamage really
does ignore burstCount (verified @0041e4e0), but the HANDLER honours it by
calling that function repeatedly.  KB corrected separately.

The actual defect was that the projectile impact path hardcoded burstCount = 1,
and -- worse -- routed damage through the SubsystemMessageManager, whose
consolidation rebuilds the record from a stream carrying only {damageType,
damageAmount, subsystemID}.  DamageInformation has no burstCount field, so the
cluster count was DROPPED in transit no matter what the round carried.

So: dispatch projectile damage directly, as the binary does, carrying the rolled
burst.  This also retires the #84 double explosion architecturally -- the second
blast came from the manager's bundled explosion, and projectiles no longer go
through the manager at all.  The MarkRoundDetonated suppression added in efc3e9f
is therefore dead and is removed.

ALL-WEAPON-CLASS AUDIT (scratchpad/night8/allweap.{sh,py}), one run, all classes
firing at once:
  EXPLOSIVE (missile)  38 zone applications, bursts spread 1x2,2x6,3x9,4x4,5x5,
                       6x12 across ELEVEN zones -- the [n/4..n] roll plus the
                       per-burst zone re-roll, i.e. the cluster scattering
  ENERGY    (beam)      8 applications, burst 1  -- unchanged, no regression
  type4                 8 applications, burst 1  -- unchanged
  COLLISION             0 applications reached armour -- divert intact
Explosions: 10 projectile impacts produce no bundled blast; direct-fire still
queues its own (11 made).

NOT yet verified: cross-pod delivery.  Dispatch reroutes to a replicant on its
own (and the binary relies on exactly that), but the manager routing is gone, so
MP damage should get a two-node run before this ships.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-01 04:42:15 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Opus 5 efc3e9ff1a #95/#84: missile salvos deliver their FULL authored damage, and stop double-exploding
THE SALVO DAMAGE (#95).  Players measured an LRM 15 landing "3ish points".  The
logs agreed: [projectile] IMPACT damage=3.33333 (Oracle, LRM15) and 3.5 (Rajel,
LRM10).  Those are right PER MISSILE -- 50/15 and 35/10 -- and the bench shows
why the salvo still under-delivers: each launcher pushes N rounds of which
exactly ONE carries damage.

Two individually-correct changes composed into an N-fold shortfall:

  * The ctor does what the binary's MissileLauncher ctor does (@0x3ac/@0x3d4):
        damageData.burstCount    = missileCount;
        damageData.damageAmount /= missileCount;
    The record holds the PER-MISSILE amount plus the count; the arcade
    reconstitutes amount x burstCount when it applies the hit.
  * Task #62 then correctly stopped the port applying the hit once per visual
    round (that was ~missileCount-x too lethal) by damaging only the lead round
    -- but handed it the already-divided amount.

Our DamageZone::TakeDamage is `damageLevel += amount * scale` and drops
burstCount, so the salvo delivered amount/missileCount.  Since the port collapses
the cluster to one damaging round, multiply the count back in there.  Bench: an
SRM6 salvo now lands amt=35 (the authored total) taking a zone 0 -> 0.556, where
it previously landed 5.83.

THE DOUBLE EXPLOSION (#84).  Oracle: "missile appear to register hit explosions
twice, once where target was and again where the target is."  There are two
spawn sites: BTSpawnRoundDetonation at the round's own impact point, and the
message manager's bundled explosion at the CONSOLIDATED point a frame later.
The duplicate was known and thought harmless -- "among a rippled volley it is
invisible" -- which held only while a salvo landed N detonations.  A projectile
now marks its weapon (MarkRoundDetonated) and the consolidation skips queueing a
second blast for it; direct-fire weapons never mark, so lasers/AC keep the
bundled explosion they rely on.  Bench: 4 missile impacts -> 4 SKIPPED, while 11
direct-fire hits still queue normally.

SWEPT CONTACT (#84 tail).  Contact was a 10-unit sphere sampled only at the END
of each step.  With the authored thruster live (#84) field rounds arrive at
v=955 -- a ~16 unit step at 60fps, larger than the radius -- so samples can
straddle the target.  (Pre-#84 rounds flew ~100-300 = a 1.7-5 unit step and could
never skip it: the velocity fix exposed this, it did not cause it.)  Now tests
the whole segment travelled and bursts at the point of NEAREST APPROACH, which
also stops the detonation being flung past the target at speed.

RETRACTION: I posted tunnelling as the leading explanation for the lost salvo.
The bench disproves it -- zero fizzles, and the "missing" rounds are the dmg=0
visual rounds of the cluster, which never registered damage by design.  The
sweep is kept as speed-independent robustness, not as the #95 fix.

Bench: scratchpad/night8/salvo.sh (BT_PROJ_LOG + BT_FIRE_LOG).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-31 23:59:44 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Opus 5 839b040619 KB: night-8 playtest intelligence (build 4.11.674)
Player testimony worth keeping out of the issue tracker alone:

* SENSOR PANEL model, from VGL Lynx -- the last major system without one.
  Sensor damage flickers the HUD (corroborated by period footage), degrades
  radar/map, affects the searchlight, and possibly the hot box.  Gitea #105.
* COOLANT LEAK severity is a THREE-level display (1/2/3 triangles + alarm);
  we only ever produce the lowest.  Our leak rate is a continuous scalar, so
  either the banding is missing or the magnitude never leaves the bottom band.
* MYOMER heat calibration is CHASSIS-RELATIVE: a Thor sustains seek 4
  indefinitely, a chicken-walker cooks in under a minute.  That spread is the
  acceptance test -- a uniform "too hot" indicts the drive-heat coefficient
  rather than the sink capacities.
* RAM damage: the binary's internal-only collision divert MATCHES what players
  observe (gyro/myomer damage, coolant leak, NO armor damage, grinding inert).
  May be working as intended; awaiting a player ruling.  Gitea #103.
* MP stability: 5-player match, no stalls or lag spikes -- bounds how often the
  carried cross-fire-stall / silent-node-crash opens occur.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-31 23:09:56 -05:00
Joe DiPrima 137c151951 #87: mech armour PANELS now darken with damage -- the .DZM material system was loaded and unused
Players: "the actual enemy mech in external view is not showing darkened armor
panels".  We swapped destroyed LIMB meshes but never darkened a panel.

The 1995 game darkens armour through the MATERIALS.  MakeMechRenderables
(FUN_004cef28) built, per (damage zone, material), a watcher
FUN_004573e4(material, &zone->damageLevel, 0.1f) that snapshotted the materials
2026-07-31 19:52:55 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 5410371b0c #86: destroyed weapons can no longer fire -- the fire gates read a
never-written cell (the split-cell gotcha)

Both weapon fire gates (ProjectileWeapon gate 1 @4bbd36, Emitter
hard-failure @4baab9) test the binary's subsystem+0x40 for Destroyed(1).
In the 1995 layout that offset sits INSIDE the embedded status alarm
(statusAlarm@0x2C + level@+0x14 = 0x40) -- ONE cell, written by
ForceCriticalFailure when a zone's crit cascade kills the subsystem.  The
port models the same address as TWO members: the AlarmIndicator AND a
plain int simulationState@0x40.  Every destruction path writes the ALARM
(so the MFD draws its X correctly) while the gates read the plain int,
which nothing ever writes -- so a weapon on a blown-off arm showed
destroyed on every panel and kept firing and scoring, locally and on
peers (night-7: all three testers, screenshots of a missile leaving a
destroyed pod).

The tell had been sitting in our own logs for weeks:
  [ammo] SRM6_1 -> NoAmmo (gate1): destroyed=0 ...
on a mech whose launcher was X'd out.

Fix: both gates now read statusAlarm.GetLevel()==1 as well as the int.
Also added: the crit-cascade log names the destroyed subsystem, a
BT_SELF_DAMAGE_ZONE=dz_* named-zone bench mode, and BT_KILL_SUBSYS=<name>
(force ForceCriticalFailure on one named subsystem -- the exact call the
zone cascade makes, so a bench can ask 'the panel says dead, does it
still shoot?' without hunting for the zone that carries a given weapon).

Verified A/B in ONE run: before the kill both SRM6 launchers fired 2
salvos each; after, the destroyed launcher fired ZERO (gate log
destroyed=1) while its twin kept firing normally.

KB: new gotcha #22 (the SPLIT CELL -- one binary offset, two port
members, only one written; sibling of #1) + combat-damage entry.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019Zh7PTkFy4KwTzVighLR9J
2026-07-31 12:11:09 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 62fc8409b6 seek-4 verification harness (BT_FORCE_SEEK) + the full supercharge/overheat
arc measured live

BT_FORCE_SEEK=<idx> pins the seek gear in MyomersSimulation (env-gated
bench; the eng-page toggle stays the authentic path) -- the supercharge
loop was unreachable on a headless rig.

Measured (Black Hawk, WALLTEST, full autodrive at gear 4):
- cold: drive=1.42843 (exactly 0.9999/0.7), demand 87.85, actual run
  speed 53.7 u/s = 193 kph -- SUPERCHARGE (Oracle's pod figure: 182 for
  a 75-tonner; the 60t Black Hawk runs faster);
- heat at ratio^2 = 2.04: myomer T 531 -> 1765 (deep past the 1000
  degradation line);
- heatFactor governor: drive 1.43 -> 1.10 -> 0.62 (the supercharged mech
  slows BELOW normal while cooked), coolant pulls T back (1765 -> 740),
  drive recovers to ~0.77, oscillates -- the mech self-settles into a
  thermally-limited cruise: 'top speed for less than a minute' exactly;
- the hard freeze (drive -> 0: demand AND turn zeroed) is the same code
  path past failure temp, reachable when the coolant loop is compromised.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019Zh7PTkFy4KwTzVighLR9J
2026-07-31 11:00:31 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 905a4a86c0 RETRACTION + FIX: the myomer seek->speed coupling IS in the 4.10 binary --
restored byte-grounded; the morning's removal was export-gap blindness

Player testimony (Oracle, pod veteran: seek-4 humanoid = 182 kph -- the
manual's printed Super Charged figure; overheat = 'freezing up') forced a
re-audit of the morning's 'no dynamic myomer->speed feed' verdict.  The
verdict was WRONG: a raw-image capstone sweep for FPU reads of [reg+0x31C]
found the consumer inside the UN-EXPORTED master-perf region -- the same
decomp gap that hid the #93 crash block.  Decoded @0x4a9cf2-0x4a9da4 [T1]:

  per frame: MAX speedEffect@0x31C over the myomer chain (+0x7AC)
             -> mech+0x79C
             mapper->speedDemand@0x128 *= it        (the SPEED coupling)
             if |drive| <= 1e-4 (@0x4ab16c):
                 mapper->turnDemand@0x12C = 0       (the FREEZE)

Everything the manual + the veterans describe emerges: gear 4 rides
speedEffect ~1.43 into the RegisterMaxOutput gait cap (base x 1.4284 --
the two mechanisms interlock: 61.5 x 1.43 = 87.9 vs cap 87.8 measured) =
SUPERCHARGE; myomer heatFactor degradation slows you; overheat freezes
speed AND turn; damage slows (speedEffect carries 1-damage -- #75's
original premise was RIGHT and its 'falsified' close was wrong).

Restored in mechmppr.cpp, byte-grounded and better than the pre-removal
draft: MAX over the chain (was first-found), NO 1.0 clamp (the old clamp
ate the overdrive), turn-freeze included.  BTMyomersSpeedEffectOf
(unclamped) replaces the deleted BTMyomersDriveOf.

Verified live: healthy drive=1.0 (no speed change), collision-rattled
myomers drive 0.999 -> 0.892 -> 0.742 with demand scaling in lockstep
(61.5 -> 54.9 -> 45.7).

KB corrected in place (subsystems WAVE 6, pod-hardware manual audit
retraction, open-questions resolved) + NEW GOTCHA #21: export-gap
blindness -- 'no callers in the decomp' is not 'no callers in the
binary'; sweep the raw image for the operand pattern before declaring a
data path dead, and when a primary source disagrees with your decomp
sweep, suspect your evidence first.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019Zh7PTkFy4KwTzVighLR9J
2026-07-31 10:54:11 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 4704ab3d41 #84: missiles ACCELERATE like the binary -- the pool flew at constant
rack-eject speed; the authored MissileThruster was never applied

The binary Missile hosts a MissileThruster subsystem: authored
acceleration for BurnTime seconds after the MuzzleVelocity eject.
Authored values decoded from BTL4.RES (type-15 missile model records,
reached from the AmmoBin's ammoModelFile via the type-1 MODELLIST
indirection): SRM 2.5s @ 600 u/s^2, LRM 10s @ 300 (climb 50), Streak
3s @ 300 (turn 360deg/s), NARC 10s @ 300; splash 30 all (port constant
was already right); authored drag ~0.001 = negligible.

The port pool flew every round at CONSTANT |MuzzleVelocity| -- SRMs 100
u/s, LRMs 30 u/s (10x slower than authored) -- the entirety of the
night-7 "missiles are very slow" report, and the driver of the
"explosion before the missiles arrive" perception (the salvo-lead
detonates while the slow spread rounds straggle in).

Fix: BTMissileThrustOf (mech4.cpp) lazily parses + caches the RES
thruster table (ModelList ids aliased to their type-15 member's
burn/accel); both launch paths (master FireWeapon + the replicant salvo
mirror -- peers see the same speed) resolve through the launcher's bin
and pass burn/accel into the pool; the advance integrates speed +=
accel*dt while burn remains, heading preserved.  Ballistic rounds
(autocannon/gauss) pass 0/0 -- unchanged.  Impact log now prints
v=/burnLeft= evidence.

Verified live (solo, BT_SPAWN_ENEMY + BT_AF_MISSILE): thrust table 8
entries cached; Black Hawk Streak resolve burn=3 accel=300; impacts at
v=277 u/s (was a constant 100).  Fun authenticity note: the Black
Hawk's "SRM6" fires strk (STREAK) ammo per its authored bin.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019Zh7PTkFy4KwTzVighLR9J
2026-07-31 10:41:39 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 ac7c46b87a #93: fix the end-of-round PerformAndWatch crash -- the STATIC projectile
pool held dangling entity pointers across round teardown

Root cause (disasm-pinned on the shipped 4.11.659 exe): RajelAran's crash
(call to 0x65676769 = ASCII 'igge', EBP-walk return btl4+0x2b91a) is the
tgt->Dispatch vtable call in BTUpdateProjectiles' NON-MECH impact branch
(mech4.cpp:1598; the site matches the disasm literally -- the 0x12/0x64
TakeDamageMessage ctor, the EntityID::Null ternary, the getenv gate after).

The trap: the mech branch is guarded by BTIsRegisteredMech(tgt) -- but at
round teardown a destroyed mech is DEREGISTERED, so a round still in
flight (the pool is a static array that outlives the round; missiles are
slow, #84) holding it as p.target now FAILS the mech check and falls into
the !BTIsRegisteredMech branch, which treats the freed mech as a cultural
icon and dispatches into freed memory.  The liveness check itself routed
the dangling pointer into the unguarded branch.  Freed heap reused by a
string -> vtable slot +0x10 read 'igge' -> call 0x65676769.  (The EBP
walker explains the stack shape: the faulting call pushed its return
address on ESP, but the walk reads [EBP+4] = PerformAndWatch's frame.)

Fix -- scrub at the source of truth:
- BTProjectilesDropEntity(e): every pool entry drops a dying entity from
  p.target/p.shooter; called from ~Mech and ~CulturalIcon (the only free
  paths for targetable entities).  Flight + impact code is already
  null-guarded on both fields.
- BTProjectilesClearAll(): kills all rounds at RunMissions exit (cross-
  mission hygiene for the static pool).

Verified: 6 short-mission cycles (45s missions with a spawned dummy +
autofire, mission expiring mid-combat) -- 0 exceptions, 6/6 clean
'RunMissions returned'.  The original crash was a heap-reuse race with no
deterministic repro; the scrub eliminates the dangling-pointer class by
construction.  (Bench note: blind autofire never launches missiles -- the
launcher needs a target lock -- so the exact in-flight race was not
re-created; the non-regression + the pinned mechanism carry the verdict.)

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019Zh7PTkFy4KwTzVighLR9J
2026-07-31 10:19:24 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 ba4af90d6b phase-13 log: night-7 session research state (collision economy, myomer system complete, coolant leaks, the seek 4.0-vs-4.10 drift) + open-questions entry for the seek player version-probe
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019Zh7PTkFy4KwTzVighLR9J
2026-07-31 09:55:42 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 c18929b23a KB: manual cross-check -- myomer seek 'Super Charge' top speed is 4.0-manual behavior DROPPED by the 4.10 binary (stat sheets: Normal 143 / Super Charged 182 / Gimped 40 kph; printed ratio 1.27 vs 4.10's vestigial gear ratio 1.43)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019Zh7PTkFy4KwTzVighLR9J
2026-07-31 09:34:42 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 58f49ed942 KB: the seek dial's real stake is TORSO TWIST (PowerWatcher zeroes twist while myomers not Ready); generator has no load model -- gears 1-3 identical on a healthy mech
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019Zh7PTkFy4KwTzVighLR9J
2026-07-31 09:25:54 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 cf8618bcb9 myomer system COMPLETE -- the 'WAVE 6 mover cutover' was a phantom built on
a misattribution; the authentic couplings are all live

THE CORRECTION [T1]: @004b9550/@004b95b8 ('ConnectToMover'/'Disconnect
FromMover') are MechWeapon::ConfigureMappables/ChooseButton -- their +0x31C
is the weapon TriggerState and **(mech+0x128) is the CONTROLS MAPPER's
button roster (the MECHWEAP.CPP assert string + the trigger-edge detector
@004b9608 sit adjacent in the image).  The binary has NO dynamic myomer->
speed feed: AvailableOutput has exactly TWO callers in the whole image --
RegisterMaxOutput (assembly) and the SeekVoltageGraph sampler -- and
speedEffect@0x31C is a published GAUGE attribute.

The authentic myomer system (now fully live):
1. drive heat (#85, this morning);
2. VITAL death -- myomers are the only authored vital=1 subsystem
   (BTL4.RES res+0x48 scan): destroying them kills the mech via the #80
   vital-crit path (this is also the ram-death mechanism -- myomers are a
   0.35-weight collision-rattle target);
3. the assembly-time gait cap: RegisterMaxOutput @004b8ef0 raises
   mech+0x7A0 to AvailableOutput(top gear) = base x ~1.4284 -- now called
   (idempotent max, per tick; the 0x358 layout lock leaves no latch room)
   with real OwnerBaseSpeed/OwnerMaxSpeed bridges; the old per-frame
   reverseSpeedMax2 heal that would have clobbered it is garbage-guarded;
4. the ENG-page power curve at correct absolute scale (real base speed);
5. electrical sourcing (low gears run on a browned-out generator).

REMOVED (inventions): the mechmppr `speedDemand *= speedEffect` demand
multiplier + BTMyomersDriveOf + the Myomers ConnectToMover/MoverAttach
family.  Damaged-but-alive myomers heat faster and drop the power curve
but do NOT slow the mech (gitea #75's premise is falsified by the binary;
the real damage slowdown is the LEG-damage gimp gait).  Seek gears change
heat/sourcing/graph -- never speed.

Verified live: a mech at myomer dmg=0.234 (speedEffect attr 0.766)
beelines at full commanded speed with dmgGain=1.234 heat; 0 faults.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019Zh7PTkFy4KwTzVighLR9J
2026-07-31 09:17:31 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 31552c0444 #88 part 2: the central coolant pull-through -- HeatSink::DrawCoolant was a
return-0 stub; the Reservoir BAR now drops when a damaged mech leaks

The user watched the coolant panel's level bar during the leak bench and it
never moved -- correctly: a leaking subsystem drained only its own loop,
because the slot-14 top-up (DrawCoolant) was stubbed.  Disassembled the real
base @0x4add00: the draw RECURSES UP the sink linkage, scaling by
coolantFlowScale@0x15C per hop, terminating at the Reservoir's supply
(@0x4af3b0 -- clamp to [0, coolantLevel], drain the tank, return granted --
already faithfully ported as Reservoir::DrawCoolant).  The binary's terminal
hop is the bank's slot-14 override @0x4ae8b0 resolving its reservoir
connection @0x1D8 (the port's 'helper' member -- not vestigial after all);
the port's existing Reservoir-ctor Attach + Reservoir override terminate the
same chain equivalently (the extra bank hop scales by ctor-default 1.0).

Implemented the base recursion (null-guarded -- the binary calls through the
resolved link unguarded; authored topology always links) + a BT_COOL_LOG
[resdraw] probe at the supply.

Verified live: a destroyed myomer's damage leak pulled the central tank
6.0 -> 5.58 over ~30s ([resdraw] granted lines) -- Reservoir/CoolantMass,
the cockpit coolant bar, now visibly drops as a damaged mech bleeds
coolant, and DeathReset refills it on respawn.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019Zh7PTkFy4KwTzVighLR9J
2026-07-31 08:47:55 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 a8a0042f28 #88: coolant leaks LIVE -- the #64 damageZone shadow was the single break
in the leak chain

HeatSink::UpdateCoolant prices the damage-driven leak from the QUALIFIED
engine member (Subsystem::damageZone @0xE0): coolantDraw = zoneDamage *
heatLoad, with the coolantActive hysteresis (= the ReportLeak attribute
the 19 authored leak watchers ride).  But the MechSubsystem ctor only
ever filled its re-declared SHADOW member (gitea #64, gotcha #1), so the
engine member stayed NULL forever, zoneDamage pinned 0, and a coolant
leak was STRUCTURALLY IMPOSSIBLE no matter how much damage landed --
Oracle's night-7 report exactly.  The #80 crit fix and the #83 collision
rattle write real subsystem-zone damage, but into an object the leak
reader could never see.

Fix: alias the ENGINE base member to the same zone in both MechSubsystem
ctors.  Every shadow reader keeps working (same object); the engine base
Subsystem::TakeDamage latent null-AV (#64 consequence 2) is disarmed;
the full #64 de-shadow sweep remains the long-term cleanup.

Verified live (solo, BT_COOL_LOG/BT_CRIT_LOG): collision rattle drove a
damaged Myomers to [cool] draw = dmg*heatLoad with the level draining;
sustained weapon fire rolled real crits ([critroll]) and produced 588
leak-pricing lines.  Authored routing extracted from BTL4.RES: collision
rattle targets HeatSinkBank 0.3 / Gyro 0.35 / Torso 0.25 / Myomers 0.35
(Condenser+Reservoir authored 0 for collisions); weapon crits select via
the zone's crit-entry list.  Known-remaining fidelity item (documented):
HeatSink::DrawCoolant (slot 14, central top-up) is still a return-0 TODO.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019Zh7PTkFy4KwTzVighLR9J
2026-07-31 08:26:40 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 1570983fde #85: myomer drive heat LIVE -- the five Mech motion operands were return-0
shims, so the reconstructed integrator @004b8d18 accumulated zero forever

The integrator, its gates and the heat plumbing were all reconstructed and
running -- but OwnerVelocityMag/OwnerDriveMag/OwnerVelocityY/OwnerMotionGain/
OwnerMass were cross-family compile shims returning 0.0f, so the myomers
priced ratio^2 * damageGain * 0 every tick: ice cold at any seek (Oracle's
night-7 panel-confirmed report).

Operands re-grounded against the raw disasm + decomp and mapped to NAMED
members via a complete-Mech-TU bridge (BTMechMyomerMotionSample, mech4.cpp),
per the databinding rule:
  +0x1C4 vec  -> localVelocity.linearMotion
  +0x82C vec  -> localAcceleration.linearMotion (the authentic 15-ring
                 smoothed AccelerationLastFrame the port already maintains)
  +0x20C      -> moverMass (the collision divert's cell; the old "motion
                 gain" label was a misread)
  *(+0x250)   -> environment gravity (FUN_00421e2c: vy -= **(+0x250)/tick),
                 via GetEnvironment()->gravityConstant
So the heat physics reads: 0.005 * 1/2 m v^2 (kinetic work, per-tick/no-dt
in the binary -- kept verbatim, frame-rate note documented) + 0.2 * m g
|vy| dt (climb power) + 0.2 * m |v||a| dt (acceleration power), all scaled
by ratio^2 and (1 + zone damage).  Restored the binary's fabs(v.y) (the
draft had signed vy -- descending would have COOLED).

Authored tuning extracted from BTL4.RES (18 mech records, one shared
tuning): VelocityEfficiency=0.995, AccelerationEfficiency=0.8, gears
0.3/0.5/0.7/0.9999 rec idx 2; myomer thermal profile 77/1000/2000,
conductance 1.9e5, thermalMass 2.5e5.

Live-verified (solo arena, BT_MYO_LOG + BT_HEAT_LOG): standstill generates
~0; hard circling drove Myomers T 77 -> 1225 (past the 1000 degradation
line) and the coolant loop conducted it back to ~520 equilibrium on
slowing; damageGain live at 1.048 from grind rattle.

Known-inert remainder (filed in open-questions): the climb term reads g=0
because Mover::localEnvironment is never populated in the port
(EnvironmentZone res type 23 unwired); the mover feed (speedEffect ->
locomotion) stays WAVE 6.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019Zh7PTkFy4KwTzVighLR9J
2026-07-31 08:14:05 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 37dd7f9663 collision-pricing audit: restore the binary's crash economy -- two fixes
A. KNOCKDOWN PACING: the 0.4s gBlockCooldown contact-hysteresis is gone.
It suppressed the crash knockdown for as long as contact was held, letting
the kinematic drive re-slam the obstacle at full commanded speed EVERY
FRAME -- continuous full-price crash self-damage, a healthy 65-tonner dead
in ~2-3s of grinding (the night-7 SAURON ram death, 110 priced frames at
|v|~34.7).  The binary needs no guard (crash threshold @0x4ab178 read from
the exe = 0.0, dispatch per blocked frame is authentic): the bmp clip
zeroes the drive, and a pressed mech re-triggers the knockdown at v>6.3
long BEFORE its grind can price anything -- the type-0 divert's 0.5-pt
free floor needs v>~18.5 at 65t.  Wall grinding is free taps + paced
staggers; only genuine fast arrivals pay.

B. RAW RAM DISPATCH: the *0.001 "ram economy normalization" (2026-07-12)
predated the #83 type-0 divert and became a double-normalization -- the
victim's divert scale (~4e-5) compounded with it, so NO physically
possible ram could clear the 0.5-pt free floor: rams were a no-op against
the victim while the rammer's own un-scaled crash path rattled for real.
The binary dispatches raw [T1 @part_012:15324]; the divert IS the
normalizer.  Also un-starves cultural-icon crunches (trucks now crush on
contact per their authored armor, not after ~19 bumps).

Bench (scratchpad/night7/mp_rampricing.sh):
- wall leg: 150s full-throttle wall push = 125 paced knockdown binds
  (~1.2s cadence, iv2 40-43), 4767 crash frames ALL under the free floor,
  0 rattle, 0 deaths (pre-fix: dead in seconds).
- ram leg: BT_GOTO=enemy + BT_GOTO_STOP=2 rams the peer; raw amount
  arrives byte-identical on the victim (66239.1 tx == rx), victim prices
  2.55 pts internal rattle (first ram damage to a victim in the port's
  history), pressed follow-ups free, 0 deaths both nodes, 108 knockdowns
  -> exactly 108 type-5 records on the observer (no skating regression).

KB swept: combat-damage.md (the 1.3e6 moverMass mis-attribution corrected
to the measured 60-90k tonnage scale), locomotion.md, rendering.md.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019Zh7PTkFy4KwTzVighLR9J
2026-07-31 02:48:35 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 054c3f2eee #94: replicant un-wreck now rides the DEATH-STATE EXIT edge -- the zone
falling-edge latch was blind to zone-less (collision) deaths

The peer wreck lifecycle listened to two different signals: wreck ON came
from the replicated death explosion (unconditional), wreck OFF from a
damage-zone falling edge (wasWrecked latch, armed only when a zone crossed
>= 1.0 on the observer).  The #83 collision damage prices as internal
rattle and never moves a zone, so a fresh mech killed by ramming could
NEVER un-wreck on peers -- the live respawned mech drove around wearing
the hulk (night-7 field report: SAURON's Loki, screenshotted by both
observers at the exact minute the log analysis places the ram death).

MechDeathHandler::Tick now tracks prevMode and fires the rebuild + warp
when the replicated MovementMode leaves the death modes {2,9} -- only
Mech::Reset ever does that, and the state rides every record header, so
the trigger is cause-agnostic.  The zone falling edge just refreshes the
cache.  Side effect fixed for free: the peer respawn warp vortex now
plays for zone-less deaths too (same gate).

Bench (scratchpad/night7/mp_zoneless.sh + the new
BT_SELF_DAMAGE_TYPE=collision harness option, which dispatches type-0
through the real TakeDamage divert): 14/14 zone-less deaths un-wrecked
(mode 9->1) with zero zone rises on the observer; explosive regression
leg 12/12 with zone destruction active.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_019Zh7PTkFy4KwTzVighLR9J
2026-07-31 02:10:04 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 e91d447405 #82 FINAL LAYER: the peer body-channel trn-lock -- a circling limper skated because the peer's turn-arm had no walk-demand yield and the trn speed exit read a dead replicant mapper cell
The master limped clean (218x gimp-cycle records, zero trn) -- a _ReturnAddress
trap on SetAnimationState(4) proved ALL peer trn arming came from the port's own
mech4 turn-step block, not the type-3 reader.  Two dead ends, one root:
- mech4 peer arm: gated on !wantsWalk (standSpeed < bodyTargetSpeed), exits trn
  when walking demand appears -- the leg twin's authentic precedence
  (part_012.c:12013, the Standing speed test outranks the turn test).
- mech2 body case 4: bspd reads bodyTargetSpeed on ReplicantInstance; the local
  mapper's speedDemand is a dead cell on a peer (reads 0 forever -> no exit).
Verified 2-node timeline: arena circle replicant 218x state-24 / 0x state-4
(was 116x trn churn), grass circle 235-clean, knockdowns bounded, 0 deaths.
Diagnostics kept: BT_TRNTRAP ra-trap, BT_ANIMIND_CAP, [gimpfeed], [replgimp]
extension.  KB: locomotion.md trn-lock entry + the dead-mapper-cell lesson.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Claude-Session: https://claude.ai/code/session_01QRjrTQpJd6u9XyfnUbTB3v
2026-07-30 18:26:15 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 14ff3519ac #83: the COLLISION DIVERT -- type-0 damage prices as internal rattle, never armor
The crash self-damage reconstruction (9c83a46) exposed its missing second
half: the binary's TakeDamage hub DIVERTS damageType 0 (@0x4a0368) into
FUN_0049ffcc -- an export-gap distributor recovered by raw disasm -- so
collision damage NEVER reaches the zone/armor loop.  Without the divert the
mover's raw kinetic-energy figure (60-ton mech: ~1000+ per wall tap, 90k+ on
a hard slam) fell into the WEAPON loop: 'tapped a wall and died instantly'.

The distributor, byte-anchored: gate on the owning player's advancedDamage
copy (+0x268 -- the manual's 'splash/collision damage' technician setting);
scale = (2000/moverMass) / (100 km/h in u/s)^2 / (1 - elasticity^2)
(tbyte 1/3.6 @0x4a0148; mass @+0x20c; elasticity @+0x244); scaled < 0.5 is
FREE; else Round(2x) sub-hits of 0.5 land on random INTERNAL subsystems
(HeatSink family / Gyroscope / Torso, drawn by collisionCriticalHitWeight
@0x10C) via ApplyDamageAndMeasure (@0x4ac07c).  Bridges: family derivations
(heat/gyro/torso.cpp), BTPlayerAdvancedDamageOn (btplayer.cpp).

Verified: bhk1 wall test -- 94k slam = 4.2 rattle pts in 8 sub-hits, taps
free (0.049 < 0.5), armor untouched.  A/B: arena wall-grind now 0 deaths,
27 rattle events, the limper STAYS GIMPED and peers' replicants re-enter the
gimp cycle between bounded staggers; grass circling unchanged (198 replicant
gimp entries).  [crashdmg]/[colldmg] probes document the pricing.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-30 17:04:24 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 9c83a468db #82 ROOT FIX: reconstruct the crash SELF-DAMAGE -- wall-grinding now hurts,
the knockdown storm self-limits, peers keep the limp

The 'peers see a limping mech skating' report decomposed into a wall-grind
KNOCKDOWN STORM: a gimped mech held against a blocking solid re-crashes each
time its gg cycle rebuilds speed (the gg ceiling is authentically the clip's
natural speed -- bhk1 ~14.9 u/s, ceiling+divisor @0x544/0x548, loader formula
byte-matched -- so iv2 ~222 >> the 40.0 threshold @0x4ab184), and every
type-5 KNOCKDOWN broadcast floors all peers' replicants into knockdown/trn
churn: gliding + leg-lifts = skating.  Turning and crushable cars were
A/B-exonerated (grass circling: 198 replicant gimp entries, 17 crunches,
zero broadcasts).

What the binary has that the port lacked -- recovered from the EXPORT GAP by
raw disasm (scratchpad/night6/gap_4a9770.txt, @4aa89f-4aaab4) -- is the crash
branch's tail: fallDirection = worldToLocal(damageForce) (FUN_0040879c, M^T v,
un-normalized), fallScalar = -(fallDirection . localVelocity.linearMotion),
and a self-dispatched TakeDamageMessage{0x64, zone=-1, the engine-computed
collision Damage verbatim}.  A wall crash COSTS ARMOR, so the grind degrades
the mech instead of looping forever.  That dispatch was the long-standing
'DEFERRED' note in the response policy; now reconstructed.

Falsified en route (comments + KB corrected, do not revive): the stagger's
FUN_004a4c54(1)/(0x20) 'action-request flags' feed NO drive suppressor --
image-wide sweep + full gap disasm show word[this+0x18] is read only by the
net record emitter; the bmp clip applies NO root motion (adv=0 measured); the
'gimp cap 5.8' figure was the BACK-cycle stride printed under a misleading
label (now ggCapL/R; @0x52c has no binary consumer).

Verified (mp_gimpAB rigs): arena1 wall-grind now 4 bounded strikes, limper
dies of its crashes and respawns cleanly twice (START->RESET, no strand);
grass circling unchanged-clean (198 replicant gimp states, 0 knocks).
Rig: pid capture race fixed (a missed winpid left a stale node holding the
-net port -> null runs), per-config sweep added.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-30 16:18:28 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 19fe1e5fa2 KB: the wall-grind knockdown storm IS the surviving #82 skating -- A/B-isolated
Four-config matrix (mp_gimpAB.sh, [animind] replicant-state verdict):
grass straight/circle = clean replicant limp (198 gimp entries; 17 car
crunches during it -- crushable path broadcasts nothing, cars exonerated);
arena1 straight = one wall strike, replicant recovers into the limp;
arena1 circle = wall GRIND -- the bmp stagger clip's ~6.5 u/s root motion
re-strikes the wall (6.5^2 > iv2 threshold 40), each rebind re-broadcasts
the type-5 knockdown (26x in the user's run), and every peer's replicant
lives in knockdown/recovery churn: gliding + trn leg-lifts = "skating".
Turning while gimped is innocent; single strikes are benign.

Authentic fix filed in open-questions: reconstruct the consumer of the
stagger's action-request flags (FUN_004a4c54 bits 1/0x20 -- the drive
suppressor while the bmp clip plays); the rebind guard at mech4.cpp:6861
is already marked bring-up-pending exactly that.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-30 15:41:56 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 4e89baeff3 bench parity: local nodes now launch exactly like a player's shortcut
Local benches had drifted from the shipped launchers and every divergence
cost a debugging session:

  * no BT_START_INSIDE -> benches opened in the EXTERNAL CHASE camera while
    every player starts in the COCKPIT.  The first first-person look at a
    bench window was misread as a broken HUD.
  * novice bench eggs  -> every SHIPPED egg is expert; novice gates off the
    entire heat model, crits and jams, so bench combat was not field combat.
    (Verified: the aligned node now boots experience=3 simLive=1
    heatModelOn=1, where it used to boot 0/0/0.)
  * 1-LP affinity pins -> starved the gauge executive and produced a false
    "the comms panel never counts deaths" reading.  Two LPs per node keeps
    the documented single-box jitter fix without the starvation.

scratchpad/night6/bench_common.sh now owns the contract (bt_player_env,
bt_launch, bt_expert_egg, bt_novice_egg) copied verbatim from play_solo.bat,
with bt_assert_player_env warning if the shipped bat ever drifts.  All three
4-node benches source it.  The limp bench keeps a novice egg -- expert crits
the aimed leg and the mech turns-but-never-moves -- and now says so loudly.

Also: BT_SHOT_EVERY=<n> headless backbuffer capture (btl4vid.cpp), the tool
this was diagnosed with.  It must sit above the warp phase-0 early-out since
that fn is the per-frame alpha-pass hook.  OS screen-capture is off-limits:
a foreground-lock failure photographed the user's browser instead of the game.

KB: build-and-run.md gains the bench-parity rule + the capture diag;
cockpit-view.md gains the measured aspect/FOV finding (the surround's 2.05:1
view collapses vertical FOV to 31.5 deg vs the pod's 46.8, so fixed canopy
geometry covers 68.6% of the lower half -- NOT a regression: the shipped 643
binary reports identical geometry).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-30 13:30:30 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 82f1ea1183 bench: symbolic leg-zone targeting, gimp-follow/goto-release, legal egg colors
- BT_SELF_DAMAGE_ZONE=leg resolves the mech's actual leg zone via the
  streamed LegDamageZone flags (new Mech__DamageZone::IsLegZone) -- numeric
  zone ids are per-mech-type and a wrong one aims at a vital (killed the
  limp bench's mech instead of gimping it: 2 ticks, death cycle, respawn
  healed, harness spent -- 3 minutes of healthy circling).
- BT_GOTO=gimp: beeline mode that prefers the nearest LIMPING peer (gimp
  half-states 3/4 ride the one-cell in every update record); stands and
  waits while nobody limps.  BT_GOTO_RELEASE=1 hands the mech back to the
  keyboard once the beeline arrives.
- MP.EGG/MP4.EGG/MP4L.EGG: color=Red and color=Blue are PATCH values, not
  colors (RES vehicletable colors: Black/Brown/Crimson/Green/Grey/Tan/
  White) -- the two pilots carrying them rendered as untextured pastel
  mechs.  Boreas Red->Crimson, Caicias Blue->Grey.  MP4L.EGG = the 4-pilot
  bench egg on the open grass map.

4-node limp verification (user-eyeballed, all instances): the gimped mech
step-drags with the authentic limp on every observer -- no skating (#82
holds in the 4-node overlap case).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-30 12:32:26 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 494f32efb4 #45 ROOT CAUSE + FIX: the gauge executive starves in MP -- panels froze at healthy fps
Instruments repaint via the background task pump, which authentically runs
ONLY in the frame's leftover time with a floor of ONE pump per frame; the
gauge renderer is 1 of ~7 round-robin tasks and each turn advances ONE gauge
of ~140 active, with the rate mask advancing once per full sweep.  On a busy
MP mission the foreground eats the whole frame budget, the floor becomes the
norm, and the whole instrument stack rotates once in MINUTES at perfect fps:
comms-panel K/D stuck at 0, recharge tickers frozen, while the tallies and
their replication underneath were exactly right.  Measured: 4-node bench at
70-90 fps gave the PilotList ~2 Execute turns in six minutes.

Fix, both env-tunable, authentic behavior restorable:
  BT_BG_MIN      (APPMGR.cpp, default 32, 0=authentic)  minimum background
                 pumps per frame regardless of slack;
  BT_GAUGE_BATCH (GAUGREND.cpp, default 32, 1=authentic) gauges advanced per
                 gauge-renderer turn (a visit is only a rate-mask check
                 unless the gauge is due).
Verified 4-node self-damage bench: sweeps 0.006/s -> 18-20/s, PilotList ~10
Exec/s, ALL FOUR panels tracked every death live (0->11) within ~1s, bg cost
2-4 ms/frame, respawn ledger clean (40 cycles, 0 swallow / 0 mismatch).

Also: BT_PERF now reports gaugeTurns/sweeps/active alongside bgTasks;
BT_AF_PERIOD now throttles the missile autofire group too (unthrottled spam
trips the documented FailureHeat all-weapons brick, which froze run 1 of the
cross-fire bench).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-30 11:22:47 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 bfa1b04990 #81 follow-ups: peer warp must not stomp the POV vortex; panel draw probe; mech3 ghost symbols
Two field observations from watching the 4-node stress, both run down:

1. "A respawn happened without the blue vortex" -- REAL.  The translocation
   effect is ONE global slot shared by the POV lifecycle and the world-anchored
   peer sphere (a port extension).  A peer's un-wreck arriving while the local
   pilot's own collapse/wait/expand was in flight overwrote gWarpPhase/gWarpPOV
   and killed the POV vortex.  Invisible before the respawn fix only because
   overlapping respawns barely existed; now they are routine.  Fix: the POV
   lifecycle owns the slot -- BTStartWarpEffect self-skips while it is active
   ([tloc] peer warp SKIPPED).  2-node bench: 20/20 POV collapse+expand pairs,
   9 peer spheres played, 11 correctly skipped; solo: 8/8 pairs unchanged.

2. "Comms panel counted no deaths" -- panel machinery CORRECT; the 4-node
   zeros were the bench's own CPU crush (4 core-pinned instances starved the
   PilotList to <0.6 Hz, so rows redrew minutes-stale).  Added the arbiter:
   [score] panel DRAW slot/pilot/kills/deaths edge log (BT_SCORE_LOG) -- the
   2-node rerun drew 0->9 / 0->11 live on both nodes, local AND replicated
   (SBMIRROR rows confirm owner->replicant tally flow on all 4 stress nodes).

Also: the mech3 offline-authoring stubs declared every <Subsystem>::DefaultData
as Entity__SharedData while the real statics are Simulation__SharedData (this
engine derives Entity FROM Simulation) -- ~20 ghost symbols /FORCE silently
resolved to garbage.  DefaultData half fixed (SubsystemDefaultData now returns
the true common base Simulation::SharedData); the CreateStreamedSubsystem stub
signatures remain wrong (nested SubsystemResource* + ResourceFile*), are
cold (no callers), and are tracked in open-questions + gotchas §6 stub-typedef
corollary.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-30 10:10:29 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 830a976192 #81: 4-node stress PASS -- 56 overlapping death cycles, zero strands; DEATHS tally exact
Four simultaneous networked nodes, all dying every ~35s on staggered timers so
respawn handshakes overlap (the field condition that stranded 6 of 8 cycles):
56 cycles, every completed one START->RESET, 0 swallowed / 0 mismatch /
0 discarded / 0 ghost / 0 crash.  Scoreboard: every node's PLAYER_DEAD rows
show deaths=N tally=N in lockstep (13/13/15/15) -- exactly one increment per
death, so removing the duplicate VehicleDead dispatch did not drop the DEATHS
column and the latch release did not double it.  The kill-credit path evaluated
all 56 deaths and correctly declined each self-kill (NOCREDIT self=1); KILLS
uses the separate ScoreMessage path the fix never touched.

content/MP4.EGG: the 4-pilot bench egg (ports 1502/1602/1702/1802, novice).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-30 09:37:07 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 a357dc4265 #81 GHOST MECH FIXED: release the death latch + stop the duplicate VehicleDead
Two defects that were masking each other, both now fixed and benched.

1) THE LATCH NEVER RELEASED ON FAILURE.  The binary's FUN_004c012c tail is
   Post(...) ; *(this+0x290)=0 ; *(this+0x258)=0   (part_013.c:10519-10523).
   We had the Post and the suppressConsole and were missing the middle
   instruction, so deathPending cleared only on SUCCESS paths.  One failed
   respawn latched the pilot for the whole mission: every later death hit the
   dedup and was SWALLOWED, so the cycle could never restart -- a transient
   hiccup became a PERMANENT ghost (dead, un-Reset, still driveable, a burning
   wreck on every peer that sinks after ~18s and can never be drawn again).
   Binary evidence: +0x290 is written in exactly THREE places in all of
   BTL4OPT.EXE (0x0b75fb, 0x0bffe3, 0x0c0a05) and all three store a ZEROED
   register; there is no write of 1 -- or any non-zero, in any instruction form
   -- anywhere.  The dedup gate itself IS authentic (@004c05c4 does
   mov edx,[ebx+0x290]; test edx,edx; jne ret), so it is kept.

2) VehicleDeadMessage WAS DISPATCHED TWICE PER DEATH.  BTPostKillScore
   (btplayer.cpp:2263) sent a second one "to credit a death", but that message
   is the RESPAWN-CYCLE TRIGGER, not a scoreboard increment, and the tally is
   already credited by the handler's ++deathTally (:538).  Both fire inside the
   same death transition (BTPostKillScore at mech4.cpp:2006, the hardened
   authentic notify at :2110), so they were always paired.  Removed; the kill
   credit above it is untouched (it correctly uses a ScoreMessage).

THEY HID EACH OTHER: the duplicate made the latch look necessary, and the latch
made the duplicate invisible.  Every "death ... SWALLOWED" warning in the field
logs was just the latch deduping our own duplicate -- 8 of 8 deaths, a 100% base
rate, which is exactly why it correlated with nothing when tested.  Fixing
either alone makes things visibly worse (the first bench of fix 1 alone produced
a DOUBLE cycle: deathCount double-incremented, cycle 1's re-post gone stale and
tripping the drop-zone MISMATCH).  That is why earlier passes at #57/#55 kept
adding clear-sites instead of finding the root; the binary broke the tie.

VERIFIED
  solo: 17 consecutive death/respawn cycles, every one START->RESET,
        0 swallowed / 0 mismatch / 0 crash.  Pre-fix this strands permanently
        after cycle 1.
  MP  : two nodes over a real network path with cross-machine drop-zone replies
        (each node's request is answered by the OTHER machine) -- A 11 cycles,
        B 12, 0 swallowed / 0 mismatch / 0 discarded / 0 crash.
  harness: BT_SELF_DAMAGE_REPEAT=1 re-arms the self-damage bench after respawn
        so multiple cycles can be driven (a one-death harness can never
        exercise this fix).  scratchpad/night6/mp_ghost.sh.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-30 08:49:27 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 d4ba91bd39 #81 THE ANSWER: deathPending is OUR invention -- the binary has no death latch
Read BT's own respawn code and checked it against BTL4OPT.EXE itself.

FAITHFUL: BT's Player::VehicleDeadMessageHandler (FUN_0042db80, part_003.c:12029)
gates on message->deathCount == player->deathCount AND player+0x40 != 1
(simulationState != DropZoneAcquiredState) -- exactly WinTesla's two gates --
then runs the same closest-DropZone search skipping "win*" zones, dispatches
AssignDropZone and re-posts to itself on a timer.  So the retry loop and the
cross-machine hunt are authentic 1995 behaviour, not a WinTesla artifact.

NOT FAITHFUL: BT's BTPlayer::VehicleDeadMessageHandler (FUN_004c012c,
part_013.c:10504) ENDS with *(param_1 + 0x290) = 0 -- it CLEARS the field our
reconstruction calls deathPending, at the end of every death.  Verified in the
raw binary: +0x290 is written in exactly three places in the whole executable
(0x0b75fb, 0x0bffe3, 0x0c0a05) and ALL THREE store a zeroed register (xor
ecx,ecx / xor eax,eax / xor edx,edx immediately before).  There is NO write of 1
or of any non-zero value to +0x290 anywhere in BTL4OPT.EXE.  Two are ctor/reset
sweeps; the middle one is the death handler, sitting right after the call to
Post and add esp,0x14, matching the decompiled tail exactly.

So 1995 has NO death-pending gate.  We invented it (btplayer.cpp:505) and then
needed six clear sites to patch the strandings it caused (:382 :469 :1431 :1442
:1461 :1532).  #57 and #55 are artifacts of that invention.  It is also what
makes a ghost PERMANENT: in BT a failed respawn is harmless (the 2s re-post
keeps hunting, the next death starts a clean cycle); in ours the first failure
latches the pilot and every later death is SWALLOWED forever -- exactly the
field signature of 8 cycles, 6 stranded, none recovering.

Fix proposed in the doc (match the binary: clear instead of latch, drop the
dedup gate) but NOT applied -- six sites depend on the latch and the dedup is
load-bearing, so it wants a deliberate two-node bench, not a 1am edit.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-30 08:31:29 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 bf0555ccf1 #81: every MP respawn is a cross-machine round trip -- one degraded peer ghosts everyone
Two-node bench with the fixed host:local labels shows each player's drop-zone
request is answered by the OTHER machine's DropZone: A asks, B grants; B asks, A
grants.  FindGroup("DropZones") iterates replicants of remotely-mastered zones
too and takes the geometrically closest, so a respawn is
  my request -> an arbitrary peer's DropZone -> that peer's reply -> back to me.
With 5 players that is 5 round trips through arbitrary peers, and ONE degraded
peer can strand everybody else's respawn.  That finally explains the otherwise
unexplained field datum that one machine stopped processing the death-transition
stream 57% into a match and never recovered (0 explosions/wreck swaps/burials
while four other machines logged 4/4/4) -- a node in that state cannot answer
anyone's respawn.  It also explains why solo is 100% reliable (in-process) and
why a healthy 2-node bench passes.

Also fixes the instrumentation before it costs a night: every [dz] line printed
"entity 1" because a player's LOCAL entity id is 1 on every machine -- with five
players the log would have said a respawn stalled but not WHOSE.  All [dz] lines
now print host:local (including the usedBy= owner of each busy slot).

Doc: two candidate fixes recorded (prefer a locally-mastered DropZone / make the
reply path tolerant of a deathCount that is ahead of ours), neither to be guessed
at -- the [ghost] DISCARDED line's mismatch direction decides it in one line.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-30 01:20:13 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 0dbdad17f3 #81 ghost: light the SILENT DISCARD -- the only path a respawn can vanish on
Walked the respawn handshake end to end and measured the assumptions.  Two
eliminations and one find:

ELIMINATED: the engine hunt re-posts to itself every 2s forever while the mech
is dead (PLAYER.cpp:325-327; its only state-based exit never fires, see below),
and the DropZone re-grants the SAME slot to a repeat request from the same
requester+deathCount even while busy (DROPZONE.cpp:182-194).  So neither a
transient "no slot" nor a single lost reply can strand a respawn -- the request
keeps being re-sent and re-granted.  A permanent strand needs a permanent cause.

THE FIND: BTPlayer::DropZoneReplyMessageHandler ends
  if (!playerVehicle) ... else if (deathCount == message->deathCount) ... else { return; }
and that last branch was a BARE RETURN WITH NO LOG.  The drop zone grants a
spot, replies, the numbers disagree, the reply is dropped, deathPending stays
latched, the mech is never Reset -> permanent ghost, zero evidence.  That is
why 6 of 8 field cycles stranded silently.  Now always-on, printing the
DIRECTION of the mismatch: msgDeath < ours = genuinely stale (dropping is
right); msgDeath > ours = our counter is behind and we just threw away a LIVE
respawn -> points straight at #45 (the death tally does not replicate).
Deliberately NOT auto-recovered: guessing would be a stand-in, and the wrong
guess resets a mech that is still alive.

LANDMINE DOCUMENTED IN CODE: Set_Alarm_Level is an empty stub (btstubs.cpp:87),
so the death path's Set_Alarm_Level(this+0x2c,1) and the reply's (+0x2c,2) are
no-ops.  Their values decode against Player's enum as DropZoneAcquiredState(1)
and VehicleTranslocatedState(2), which makes "these should obviously be
SetSimulationState() calls" both attractive and CATASTROPHIC: the engine hunt is
gated on GetSimulationState() != DropZoneAcquiredState, so setting 1 on death
would stop AssignDropZone ever being dispatched and ghost EVERY pilot.  Measured
our simulationState at 0x24 (not 0x2c) and the write leaves it 0; in the binary
+0x2c is the Simulation-base alarm (the field the mech side calls graphicAlarm,
@0x4ac126 "owner alarm+0x2C -> level 9"), which our layout models only on Mech.

Verified solo: a healthy death+respawn logs the grant and the RESET and emits
ZERO discard/gate-off lines (no false positives).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-30 01:08:01 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 372cbfa344 docs: GHOST_MECH_ANALYSIS -- the field analysis, durable across sessions
The ghost and the "wreckage moving and shooting" are the SAME failure at two
ages: a stranded respawn (drop-zone reply never arrives) leaves the mech never
Reset and never repainted, and the render-side wreck swap is ONE-WAY -- so the
pilot drives a burning hulk that sinks (pure ~18s timer, btl4vid.cpp:1277) and
then cannot be drawn at all.

Records: the 8-cycle ledger (only 2 of 8 reached RESET; stranded correlates with
ghosting 8/8 and 10/10); the host did not ghost because he never died; the
SWALLOWED warning is BENIGN (100% base rate) and two earlier readings of mine
that were wrong (spurious resets = aggregation artifact, per-match player IDs);
the WinTesla-vs-1995 provenance caveat on DROPZONE.cpp; what the new
instrumentation already killed (slots=8, so dropzone=one is not the bottleneck);
and the four-separate-bugs breakdown of the "desync cluster" including the
machine that stopped processing the death-transition stream mid-match.

Raw per-machine logs + the verbatim agent findings stay in scratchpad/night6/
(uncommitted -- machine names + Steam identities).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-30 00:26:48 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 ba6756c40a drop-zone / respawn instrumentation: make the GHOST MECH visible in field logs
The ghost (a player who dies, never respawns, stays dead-but-driveable and is a
wreck on every peer) traces to a respawn stalling on drop-zone acquisition:
DropZone::AssignDropZoneMessageHandler grants a slot only if IsAvailable(), and
when none is free it reposts to ITSELF every 0.1s at MaxEventPriority and never
replies -- so deathPending is never cleared.  This whole subsystem was DARK: not
one drop-zone line in a full night of field logs.

ALWAYS-ON (no env gate -- rare, catastrophic, field-only, same rationale as the
#57/#59 guards; volume bounded and rate-limited):
  [dz] POOL   -- slots + downTime + proximity radius, once per mission
  [dz] GRANTED-- one per respawn, with the WAIT time; tags (GHOST RECOVERED)
                 when a long-stalled request finally lands (what testers see as
                 "it fixed itself")
  [dz] STALL / GHOST LIKELY -- escalating, per-waiter rate-limited, and it names
                 WHY each slot is busy (age + last user), which discriminates
                 cooldown saturation from proximity blocking -- different fixes
  [dzreq]     -- the REQUESTER half: re-try count for this death, and msgDeath vs
                 our own deathCount.  The engine gates the hunt on those being
                 equal AND the DropZone resend net is keyed on the same value, so
                 a mismatch breaks both silently (cf #45, tally replication).
BT_DROPZONE_LOG=1 adds the verbose per-request slot dump for bench work.

First run already overturned a theory: slots=8, so an 8-slot pool cannot be
cooldown-starved by 5 players (max 5 on cooldown at once) -- the shared
dropzone=one in eggmodel.py is NOT the bottleneck.  Suspicion moves to the
handshake (lost reply / deathCount mismatch).

Verified with NO env vars set, exactly as a tester runs it: 4 probe lines for a
full death+respawn cycle, all in the normal day log.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-30 00:13:14 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 e1c15eb806 #82 peers see a limping mech SKATING: the mech erased its own gimp cell every frame
The binary's one mech+0x40 IS Simulation::simulationState, which rides EVERY
update record header -- so in 1995 a peer's replicant learned the gimp level on
every packet and its gait limped with no gimp-specific replication anywhere.
The port's Mech::PerformAndWatch wrote SetMovementMode(1) every frame ("ground,
non-death, non-airborne"), which erased the level once it was mirrored in for
the warning voice (#78): the wire carried 1, bystanders walked while sliding at
limp speed, and the voice sequence restarted on every damage event (1->4 edge
per tick) instead of announcing once.

- mech4: that per-frame write now writes the AUTHORITATIVE level
  (gimped ? 3/4 : 1) via a new alarm-only bridge BTMechGimpAlarmLevel -- which
  deliberately never consults the cell it feeds, so a respawn-cleared alarm
  cannot re-latch stale gimp out of it.
- BTMechGimpLevel: falls back to the replicated cell, with ONE-CELL precedence
  (a fall/death/limbo state wins, so the normal drivers and their death latch
  run -- what the binary's single cell enforced structurally).
- Reverted the #78 record guard: on a replicant the master's records are
  authoritative, so pinning 3/4 against them would keep a peer limping through
  a respawn.  Fixed at the writer instead.
- [simstomp] trap now scoped to the watched mech with a module-relative return
  address (symcrash-able) -- that is what named the writer.
- Also learned + recorded: zone damage levels replicate only when the EXPLOSION
  TABLE's tier is crossed (peer measured at 0.428 vs master 0.857), so peer-side
  damage state must never be inferred from them.

Verified two-node (scratchpad/night6/mp_skate.sh): the observer's replicant gets
sim=4 and its gait runs 23 -> 25 (wgr entry -> ggl limp cycle).  Field clue that
cracked it: "after respawning a peer DID see the limp" (epilectrik/SAURON).
KB: locomotion.md + gotcha #25.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-29 22:29:03 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 98907f45af hotfix: null-damageZone guard on the crit path (field crash, build 641, Conn Man's Owens)
First field session with real crits (#80) found a weapon subsystem with a
NULL damageZone: Mech__DamageZone::CriticalHit -> ApplyDamageAndMeasure ->
MechWeapon::TakeDamage +0xf (the engine base derefs the zone unguarded --
every 1995 subsystem shipped with one).  Stack symbolized from the field log;
the path was unreachable before tonight because ApplyDamageAndMeasure was a
stub until #80.

Guards at both choke points; a one-shot [crit] log NAMES the zoneless
subsystem when hit so the root cause (build that subsystem's zone) can be
fixed from the next field log.  Owens crit bench: no crash, guard inert on
zoned subsystems.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-29 21:41:02 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 1ac425860e particles.png recovered (#79, found by cyd) -- particle texture ships at last
content/VIDEO/particles.png (128x128 RGBA): the texture L4PARTICLES has tried
to load since the engine was written.  Boot-verified: [particles] device
objects created (max=8192, texture=loaded).  Every particle effect now draws
textured -- the authored look; the arcade pods displayed untextured quads
because the file never shipped.  Comments updated to match.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-29 20:53:07 -05:00
Joe DiPrima cfa52a28d8 Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/glass-cockpit-refit' 2026-07-29 19:56:31 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 5b19cd6c3f demo/bench harness polish: BT_SELF_DAMAGE_DELAY + two harness bug fixes + the OBS limp demo bat
- BT_SELF_DAMAGE_DELAY=<s>: hold the harness off for n seconds (capture demos:
  healthy walking first).  Fixed its underflow bug (the countdown crossed below
  zero, which is also the "read the env" sentinel -- the delay re-armed forever).
- The one-death latch was fed by EVERY mech's update: a mission that generated
  any destroyed mech entity tripped it at frame one and the harness silently
  never fired (random per mission roll).  Now viewpoint-mech only.
- run\limpdemo.cmd: the OBS capture demo -- 30 s healthy auto-walk, then the
  leg crosses half on the final damage tick: klaxon-klaxon-"reverse disabled"
  + the limp, then unlimited limp footage (waypoint 8000,8000).

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-29 19:47:20 -05:00
Joe DiPrimaandClaude Fable 5 18766a167b locomotion.md: correct the gimp-audio verdict -- the reverse-disabled voice is real and wired
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-29 19:23:22 -05:00