Full input-surface audit of the PC keyboard channel. The arcade abort
was the typed ampersand character (0x26), but the Win32 port feeds
WM_KEYUP VIRTUAL-KEY codes into the same channel - and VK_UP is also
0x26. The hat look-up key aborted the mission: that was every mystery
abort across the multiplayer test rounds. Likewise the E key (0x45,
the right pedal!) dumped the event queue on every release.
Disarmed: plain 0x26 and E are swallowed at the L4 layer; the abort
answers only to the deliberate Alt+Q chord (translated to the legacy
engine code, so APP.cpp is untouched); the debug toggles (wireframe
Alt+W, predator vision Alt+V, frame dump Alt+F, perf stats, event
queue on Alt+E now) arm only with RP412DEVKEYS=1. The cheat-string
manager has no PC-keyboard strings and the trace-log keys are
compiled out of release - both inert.
Verified live: a volley of VK_UP releases mid-race leaves the mission
running; Alt+Q aborts on demand. Docs and the dist README updated.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Reproduced A/B on the dev box: with RP412STEAM=1 the wired pad
disappears from XInput because Steam Input intercepts Xbox controllers
for AppID 480. One-time client setting fixes it (disable Steam Input
for Spacewar, or globally for Xbox controllers); PadRIO hot-connects
within 3s once released. Our own AppID will configure this
server-side.
environ.ini in the dist now ships RP412STEAM=1 (the packer regenerates
the file, which was wiping the hand edit each round); machines without
Steam credentials fall back to TCP cleanly.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Steamworks SDK 1.64 vendored at extern/steamworks_sdk_164 (headers +
win32 redistributables only; .gitignore trims the rest). Both projects
build with RP412_STEAM; activation stays behind the RP412STEAM=1
environment switch, so plain desktop runs never touch Steam.
L4STEAMTRANSPORT.cpp implements NetTransport on ISteamNetworkingSockets
with FakeIP: SteamNetTransport_Install brings up SteamAPI, relay
network access, and a two-port FakeIP identity (fake port 0 = console
channel, 1 = game mesh), then swaps the process wire; any failure logs
the reason and the game carries on over TCP. Addressing keeps the
engine untouched: all pods share the -net port convention, eggs carry
fakeip:engineport, and the transport alone translates engine ports to
Steam fake ports via the lobby-fed peer table (RegisterPeer). Connect
mirrors the TCP retry-while-refused loop; Receive normalizes message
lanes back into the stream semantics CheckBuffers expects.
Runtime verified on this box: RP412STEAM=1 under AppID 480 came up as
169.254.59.52 (fake ports 32256/32257); without Steam credentials it
falls back to TCP cleanly; default boot logs no Steam lines at all.
steam_api.dll ships in the dist.
Next: the lobby layer (ISteamMatchmaking member data -> RegisterPeer +
egg build + RPL4CONSOLE marshal), which needs a second account to test.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Starting without -egg, -net, or -mr now boots a race-setup screen
(RP_L4/RPL4FE.cpp) instead of aborting: track / vehicle / color / badge
/ time-of-day / weather / race length plus pilot name, populated from
TeslaConsole''s RPConfig.xml catalog (Death Race scenario). LAUNCH
builds the egg exactly as the console did - the RPMission.ToEggString
port, including the pilot name pre-rendered to 1bpp plasma bitmaps
(128x32 + 64x16) via GDI with the console''s auto-shrink font logic and
the verbatim ordinal graphics - writes frontend.egg, and injects it
into the standard egg-load path (new L4Application::
SetEggNotationFileName).
The menu is a GDI child of the main window (pod green-on-black, double
buffered, mouse driven, EDIT control for the name) running a modal loop
before engine init; closing the window exits cleanly. Found and fixed
along the way: the empty egg CString holds a NULL representation
(operator! is the safe emptiness test), and the modal loop needed a
queue nudge for launch clicks delivered via SendMessage.
Verified end to end: boot -> menu -> LAUNCH -> generated egg (7.5KB) ->
racing in the 1080p cockpit with score and mission clock running.
start-windowed.bat now boots into the front end.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Playtest direction on the canvas layout: all five MFDs at the compact
320x240 glass size - upper pair pushed to the top corners, score glass
top-center, lower pair in the bottom corners, map bottom-center - and
the viewscreen now fills the entire 1920x1080 canvas. Launched with
-res 1920 1080 the 3D renders native 1:1 (the 2007 D3D9 path takes the
1080p backbuffer and 16:9 aspect without complaint). start-windowed.bat
updated accordingly.
Verified live: full-screen native 3D with the cockpit floating over its
edges, mission running, preset lamp lit on the map column.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Remove-Item raced a live playtest session and gutted the folder around
the locked files. Detect a running rpl4opt.exe under dist and abort
before deleting anything.
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>
Collects the Release exe (+pdb), the AUDIO/GAUGE/VIDEO data and INIs from
assets\RP411 (leaving the arcade launch scripts and old 4.10 exe behind),
libsndfile + the system OpenAL runtime (oalinst.exe as fallback), a
desktop environ.ini (PAD;KEYBOARD + on-screen plasma), start-windowed.bat
and a controls README. -Zip additionally produces a handoff zip. dist\ is
gitignored; verified by running the game from the packaged folder.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
CydandClaude Fable 5