The six secondary displays sit over the viewscreen like the pod's bezels
and have nothing to say once the race is over. Worse, the radar sits dead
centre along the bottom edge - directly on top of the winner's spot, so
the one position that matters was the one you could not see.
They are hidden when the podium comes up, which uncovers the canvas the
3D is already being drawn on. No matching show: the mission is over by
then, and the next race builds a fresh cockpit.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Button banks
The exploded diagnostic view was still display-only - it predates the
button work - so it now builds the same banks as the cockpit, with
the pod arrangement laid out from the panes measured sizes rather
than a hardcoded 640/480 grid (the banks make each window bigger than
its glass, and the bottom row hung off the work area otherwise).
The map side columns were spread height/6 from the top, but the maps
own legend grid is not sixths: measured off the bitmap it starts 13
rows down with six 102-tall cells on a 105 pitch. Every button sat
high of its label, worst at the bottom. Each buttons top and bottom
now come off that grid separately and are subtracted - scaling a
height directly would let rounding drift them back out of step on a
resized cockpit.
Depth 100 to 240: against the 480 glass the two banks meet in the
middle bar the strips, so practically the whole display is a press
target. This mattered most in the cockpit, where the panes are small
enough that the halfway clamp governs - at 100 the MFDs had a 110px
dead band straight through the middle of the glass.
-fit (also spelled -windowed-fullscreen)
Borderless over the whole monitor, with the render size chosen to
match. The cockpit presents the 3D into a viewscreen that fills its
canvas, so the right -res is that canvas at the scale the cockpit
will settle on; computing it with identical arithmetic makes the
stretch a copy. On the 3440x1440 panel that is 133% and -res 2553
1436, against 125% for the windowed path that pays for the taskbar.
The pick runs after the whole command line, so an explicit -res wins
from either side of -fit. Capped at 3840x2160. Cockpit mode only -
mode 0 has to stay playable on real pod hardware and mode 2 is a dev
view - so those get the resolution and keep their windows.
Display layout, in environ.ini
L4MFDSCALE sizes all five MFDs, L4MFDSCALE_UL and friends override
any one of them, L4RADARSCALE the radar, and L4RADARPOS puts the
radar bottom centre, in either bottom corner, or halfway up either
side. Scaling is applied in canvas units before the canvas is fitted
to the window, so a number means the same thing on every monitor.
Sizing each display separately let the clamps become exact rather
than one conservative rule for all five: what limits a display is its
actual neighbour. Which neighbour that is depends on the radar, so
the clamps follow it - on the bottom edge it clears the one MFD above
its column, but centred on a side it has one above AND below and
grows from the middle both ways, so it must clear the taller twice
over. Clamping shrinks uniformly; these are photographs of real
instruments and a one-axis clamp would squash them.
Verified on the ultrawide: all five radar positions, per-display and
group scaling with the clamps biting, -fit with and without an explicit
-res, and the button geometry measured back off the screen.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The canvas was capped at 100%, so a bigger monitor got a 1920x1080
cockpit in the corner of the screen and maximising did nothing - the
layout only ran once at startup.
Now the fit is one uniform scale with no ceiling, recomputed whenever
the window changes size (maximise, restore, drag), and the canvas is
centred in whatever client area it gets. Uniform scale is what locks
the aspect: a wider-than-16:9 desktop letterboxes with even black bars
instead of stretching the cockpit. Panes gained Resize() so the glass
and its button banks re-scale with the canvas; the pixel buffers keep
their native source resolution.
Scaling up is free quality on the MFDs - their glass is a downscale of
a native 640x480 channel until about 200%.
Verified on the 3440x1392 ultrawide: opens at 125% (2400x1350) instead
of 100%, maximises to 126% centred with even bars, a 1884x661 window
fits 61% letterboxed left/right, 1084x961 fits 56% letterboxed top/
bottom, and a 2584x1461 client scales up to 134%.
The 3D still renders at -res and D3D stretches it to the canvas, so
raise -res to match a large screen for 1:1 pixels; start-windowed.bat
and the README say so.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The amber Secondary/Screen columns get the same treatment as the red
MFD banks, turned on its side: each button reaches 100px in behind the
map with a 10px indicator clearing the edge, so the lamp reads as a
slim column and the radar picture is the click target. The shared
buttonDepth/indicatorStrip constants now drive both banks, and the
columns are clamped so they can never meet behind a narrow map.
The map pane narrows from 404 to 344 for a 324-wide glass, handing the
difference back to the viewscreen.
Verified live: clicking 60px inside the radar from either edge presses
the column button behind it, with feedback in that side's strip (720
and 1350 pixels).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The red banks were thin strips sitting outside the glass, so the click
target was only as tall as the strip. They are now 100px buttons that
extend BEHIND the MFD picture with just a 10px indicator clearing the
edge: the lamp still reads as a slim strip along the bezel, but the
region of the display above or below it is what you press. Paint order
flipped to match - buttons first, glass over them.
The banks are clamped so they can never meet in the middle on a
scaled-down cockpit, and the panes lost 40px of height each (260 vs
300 for a 240-tall glass), which hands that space back to the
viewscreen.
Verified live: clicking 50px inside the picture presses the button
behind it and the press shows in the indicator strip (770 pixels
changed, all of them within the strip).
Amber map columns are untouched for now.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Two pieces of MFD work that had been sitting in the tree (already in
every build and dist since).
The compact cockpit glass shows the full 640x480 gauge canvas at about
half size, and COLORONCOLOR did that by dropping every other row and
column - which shredded the 1-bit vector strokes and small text.
HALFTONE area-averages instead (with the brush origin set, as MSDN
requires) so the downscaled MFDs stay legible.
L4MFDSPLIT=2 adds an exploded diagnostic view: every display in its
own full-size desktop window at native resolution, decoded exactly as
the pod VDB split them from the single gauge canvas, with no cockpit
compositing and no downscale. It makes an individual MFD readable and
screenshottable at full resolution for comparison against the
emulator per-channel reference windows. L4MFDSPLIT=1 keeps the
composited glass cockpit and stays the default.
Also: .gitignore now covers the packaged RedPlanet-*.zip releases,
which live on the Gitea release page rather than in the tree.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The 4-8px black padding framing every MFD and the map read as a jarring
border over the 3D. Glass and button strips now run to the pane edges
(last button in each strip/column absorbs the rounding remainder);
only the thin separations between buttons within a strip remain.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
SS_BLACKRECT paints the system window-frame color - gray on modern
Windows - so the viewscreen child is now a plain STATIC subclassed to
erase true black. The MFD/map panes flickered because Paint() cleared
the on-screen surface before redrawing at the fill cadence; the pane
now composes off screen and lands in a single BitBlt.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Playtest: the half-height red buttons did not read well; back to
display_height/8 (18..40px). The contiguous amber map columns stay.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The cockpit is now a fixed 1920x1080 canvas (uniformly scaled down on
smaller monitors, min 25%):
[ MFD UL 640 ][ MFD UC 640 ][ MFD UR 640 ] <- native glass, 1920 wide
[ viewscreen 800x600 centered ]
[ MFD LL ] [ Map ] [ MFD LR ] <- bottom edge
Playtest direction: the original pods MFDs partially occluded the main
display, and that is used here on purpose - the panes overlap the
viewscreen and render over it (viewscreen pinned to the bottom of the
sibling z-order, WS_CLIPSIBLINGS everywhere, so the 3D present clips
around every pane). Top-row glasses are gauge-canvas native 640x480 -
three across is exactly 1920. Red MFD buttons at half height; the amber
map columns stack contiguous like the pod strips. The auto-fit
scale/L4MFDSCALE machinery is gone - the canvas is the design space.
Verified live at 100% scale: contiguous native top row over the
centered viewscreen, bottom cluster overlapping its lower edge, map and
gauges updating (BOOST values moving, presets lit).
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The game loop pumps ONE message per frame (APPMGR.cpp PeekMessage), and
WM_PAINT is synthesized only when the queue is otherwise empty - so the
child panes queued invalidations that never delivered: the map stayed
black and button lamps froze at their first-paint state on the live
screen. (PrintWindow-based captures forced paints and the synthetic
SendMessage click bypassed the queue, which is why every automated
verification looked fine while the live window was frozen.)
MFDSplitView::Repaint and PlasmaScreen::Update now paint synchronously
via RedrawWindow(RDW_INVALIDATE|RDW_UPDATENOW) at fill time, and the
button press/release feedback goes through the same path. Verified with
a true screen capture (CopyFromScreen): map drawing live, timer
counting, the active preset lamp bright on the map right column.
Lamp anchor sanity-check against the game code: mode switch NOV/STD/
VET/EXP = ButtonAuxUpperRight5-8 = 0x33..0x30 = the upper-right MFD
bottom strip left-to-right; presets = Secondary7-12 = 0x18-0x1D = the
map right column - both match the placed buttons.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The main game window becomes the cockpit shell (enlarged, clipping
children); every display folds in as a chrome-less child pane in the
pod interior arrangement:
[ MFD UL ] [ MFD UC ] [ MFD UR ]
[ plasma (reduced) ][ viewscreen (centered) ]
[ MFD LL ] [ Map ] [ MFD LR ]
The 3D scene presents into a black STATIC viewscreen child via
Present's hDestWindowOverride (new gMainPresentWindow global) - no
swap-chain changes, and STATIC's transparent hit-testing keeps mouse
input over the 3D view flowing to the game window. MFDSplitView gains a
parent/child mode; PlasmaScreen::Position reparents the glass into the
shell. Main window class background goes black for the cockpit gaps.
Verified by screenshot: live green gauges (LIFT CUT / BOOST / CHUTE /
trigger-program screens) with their red button strips, the 3D canyon in
the centered viewscreen, plasma score glass at its left, map with lit
amber preset lamps - one window, 976x1132 client at 50% scale.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Each MFDSplitView window now carries its display's physical button bank,
placed as in the pod (addresses per vRIO CockpitLayout): a 4x2 red
cluster around each MFD glass (anchors 0x2F/0x27/0x37 upper, 0x0F/0x07
lower, addresses descending row-major) and 6 amber buttons down each
side of the map - Secondary 0x10-0x15 left, Screen 0x18-0x1D right; the
remaining column addresses are Tesla relays, per the pod wiring, so they
get no buttons.
Buttons light from the lamp state the game commands: PadRIO grows a
static active-instance hook (SetScreenButton/GetLampState); mouse
press/release feeds PadRIO's desired-state sampling alongside pad and
keyboard, and paint decodes the lamp byte (state1/state2 brightness,
solid/slow/med/fast flash animated by tick). With real serial hardware
(no PadRIO) the buttons draw dark and inert.
Verified: map flank buttons light per the game's preset lamps, aligned
with the labels the glass draws at its edges; MFD clusters render 4+4.
Roadmap: queued the vRIO Dynamic Lighting RGB-keyboard lamp mirror as a
polish-pass item. dist repacked.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The pod drove five monochrome MFDs from the color channels of two video
outputs - SVGA16 packs bit-slices of the shared gauge canvas into R/G/B
of gauge window 3 (upper MFDs) and R/G of window 4 (lower MFDs), with the
map palettized on the secondary and physically mounted portrait. The
desktop reconstruction previously required an external BitBlt-mirror
wrapper.
With L4MFDSPLIT=1, SVGA16 renders each display into its own window
(MFDSplitView, plain GDI) straight from the canvas + port bit-masks:
five green-screen MFD windows and the 90CW-rotated Map, tiled in the pod
grid to the right of the main view (L4MFDSCALE percent, default 50). The
packed D3D windows stay hidden but keep presenting off-screen, leaving
the original path untouched. Handles spanning mode (2-window setups).
Also: the plasma glass now opens directly below the main view (clamped
to the work area; L4PLASMAPOS=x,y overrides) per playtest feedback.
Verified: window grid comes up as main + 5 MFDs + Map + plasma with the
packed windows hidden; screenshots confirm a green MFD score readout and
the portrait tactical map rendering correctly. dist packer and BUILD.md
updated; the launcher wrapper is obsolete for split-mode use.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
CydandClaude Fable 5