RP412/README.md

# Red Planet 4.12 — the Steamification

**Red Planet** is VWE's pod-racing game: eight-player VTV contests on Mars
— **Martian Death Race** and **Martian Football** — originally played from
inside VWE Tesla cockpit pods. This repo is the third life of that code:

| Generation | What it was |
|------------|-------------|
| **Red Planet 4.10** | The original game, running on the **Tesla 1** pod platform (DOS-era MUNGA engine, serial RIO cockpit hardware, operator console, batch-file relaunch between missions) |
| **Red Planet 4.11** | The **Win32 port** of 4.10 ([RP411](https://gitea.mysticmachines.com/VWE/RP411.git)) — DirectX 9, WinSock TCP, TeslaConsole/TeslaLauncher session control; still runs in pods, still a LAN |
| **Red Planet 4.12** | **This repo: the Steamification of 4.11** — the same engine, the same wire protocol, the same missions, made distributable on Steam and playable over the internet with no cockpit hardware |

The architecture is deliberately conservative: the VWE's design survives
intact, with each pod-era dependency replaced by a consumer equivalent
behind the engine's existing seams.

| Arcade (4.10/4.11) | 4.12 replacement |
|--------------------|------------------|
| RIO cockpit board (serial) | **PadRIO** — virtual RIO from XInput pad + keyboard, fully rebindable (`bindings.txt`, vRIO profile format) |
| Seven physical displays | **Single-window cockpit** — all displays composed on a locked 1920×1080 canvas around the viewscreen, with the real button banks lamp-lit and clickable |
| Pod button lamps | On-screen lamps, plus an **RGB keyboard mirror** (Windows Dynamic Lighting) |
| TeslaConsole operator | **In-game front end** — race setup menu builds the mission egg locally; an in-process console marshals every race (missions still only end on a console stop, exactly as designed in 1994) |
| TeslaLauncher relaunch-per-mission | **Single binary** — menu → race → results → menu in one process |
| WinSock TCP LAN mesh | **NetTransport seam** — the deterministic pod mesh unchanged, running over plain TCP (LAN/dev) or **Steam Networking Sockets** (FakeIP + Steam Datagram Relay) |
| Site network / fixed IPs | **Steam lobbies** — lobby owner is the console; members exchange FakeIPs and loadouts as lobby data |

**Status: it works.**
[v4.12.2](https://gitea.mysticmachines.com/VWE/RP412/releases/tag/v4.12.2)
carried the first verified end-to-end internet build: three machines, three
Steam accounts, lobby → mesh → marshaled five-minute race → deaths and
respawns → timed stop → results on every machine → rematch from the same
lobby.

[v4.12.3](https://gitea.mysticmachines.com/VWE/RP412/releases/tag/v4.12.3)
is about the screen. The cockpit now scales up as well as down and re-fits
whenever the window changes, keeping 16:9 so a wide panel letterboxes
instead of stretching; `-fit` runs it borderless over the whole monitor and
picks the render size to land on the viewscreen 1:1. The displays are the
player's to arrange — each of the six can be scaled on its own and the
radar moved out of the middle of the road (`environ.ini`). Each display's
button bank now reaches under its glass, so the picture itself is the press
target rather than a sliver at the edge.

## Playing

Grab the release zip (or run `pack-dist.ps1` on a build). Single player:
run `start-windowed.bat` — the game boots into the setup menu, where the
SCENARIO group picks Death Race or Football (Football swaps in the
team/position columns and its own track list). Steam multiplayer: see
[docs/STEAM-3-MACHINE-TEST.md](docs/STEAM-3-MACHINE-TEST.md) (until RP412
has its own AppID it runs under Spacewar, 480).

The two config files beside the exe are self-documenting: **environ.ini**
(every engine option, commented) and **bindings.txt** (every key, pad
button, and axis; written with the full default layout on first run).
Default controls: numpad flies (8/2/4/6 stick, 7/9 pedals, 0 trigger),
Shift/Ctrl throttle, Alt reverse, arrows look, Space fires, letter rows
are the MFD button banks as printed on the panel. **Alt+Q** aborts a
mission. Full map with pad and keyboard diagrams:
[docs/CONTROLS.md](docs/CONTROLS.md).

## Building

**VS 2022 (v143)** + DirectX SDK June 2010 + the vendored Steamworks SDK
(`extern/steamworks_sdk_164`) — see [BUILD.md](BUILD.md). Solution
`WinTesla.sln`, configuration `Release|Win32`, output
`Release\rpl4opt.exe`.

## Documentation

| Doc | Contents |
|-----|----------|
| [docs/CONTROLS.md](docs/CONTROLS.md) | Controls map — pad and keyboard diagrams, the panel button banks, rebinding |
| [docs/RP412-ROADMAP.md](docs/RP412-ROADMAP.md) | The original plan and workstreams |
| [docs/RP412-FRONTEND-DESIGN.md](docs/RP412-FRONTEND-DESIGN.md) | TeslaConsole analysis, the egg format, the console protocol, and the Steam mapping — with status notes as each layer landed |
| [docs/STEAM-3-MACHINE-TEST.md](docs/STEAM-3-MACHINE-TEST.md) | Multiplayer test procedure, Steam Input notes, the abort key |
| [BUILD.md](BUILD.md) | Toolchain and build steps |

Dev tooling: `tools/two-pod-test.ps1` races two pods on loopback,
marshaled by a console feeder speaking the arcade Munga protocol.

## Related repositories

| Repo | Role |
|------|------|
| [RP411](https://gitea.mysticmachines.com/VWE/RP411.git) | Upstream: the Win32 arcade port this repo Steamifies (full history preserved; remote `rp411` for cross-pulling fixes) |
| [VRIO](https://gitea.mysticmachines.com/VWE/VRIO.git) | Virtual RIO panel + vPLASMA — source of the bindings format, the cockpit layout, and the keyboard lamp mirror |
| [TeslaSuite](https://gitea.mysticmachines.com/VWE/TeslaSuite.git) | TeslaConsole / Launcher / vPOD — the arcade session-control stack 4.12 absorbed (and the reference implementation of the Munga control protocol, TCP 1501) |