Investigated the "console death froze peer replication" open question (2026-07-14)
with a direct 2-node repro (BT_REPL_LOG on a circling peer, affinity-pinned):
- Clean relay kill -> replicant kept circling smoothly through the kill, NO
disconnect logged, node survived. Replication did NOT freeze.
- Deliberately STUCK console (scratchpad/btconsole_stuck.py: connect, start
mission, then stop recv() while holding the socket OPEN = the exact
"receive pad full -> close never seen" mode hypothesized) -> replicant kept
moving the whole run. Replication did NOT freeze.
Conclusion: peer replication is INDEPENDENT of the console (pods replicate
peer-to-peer over the GAME socket; the console is a separate egg/mission/status
channel). The original freeze was a transient -- plausibly the same single-box
packet-jitter/CPU-contention artifact root-caused in 49d73dc -- or was fixed by
later MP work.
FIX (the one real bug found): L4NetworkManager::HostDisconnectedMessageHandler's
ConsoleHostType branch closed gameListenerSocket (the GAME listener) on a CONSOLE
disconnect -- a naming bug (the comment + commented-out OpenConnection intended a
CONSOLE re-listen, which CreateConsoleHost already does). Removed. Harmless to
established peer sockets (why a live match survives console loss) but it would
have blocked a NEW peer from joining after a console cycle. Verified: 2-node
still connects (All connections completed!) + the peer circles.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
