CydandClaude Fable 5
3194d3f973
The setup menu gains a SCENARIO group. Picking Football relayouts the menu live: the track list swaps to the football-legal set (drops Paingod Passage and the race build of Freezemoon Freeway, adds the football build headmf - RPConfig per-scenario invalid lists), the COLOR and BADGE columns become TEAM and POSITION, and the title reads MARTIAN FOOTBALL. The egg builder was restructured around one flat pilot table so both scenarios share it. Football emits scenario=football, per-pilot team= and position= entries, and the [teams] / [team::X] / [pilots::X] / [teambitmap] blocks in RPFootballMission layout (team name bitmaps generated by the same GDI plasma renderer as pilot names). Colors are derived rather than chosen, as the arcade did it: the runner wears the team runner color, crushers and blockers the team color. Multi-pod games alternate pilots across two teams and give each team exactly one runner, honoring the host own position pick. Verified end to end: Football launches from the menu, the engine loads the football mission (the cockpit shows the RUNNER - GO FOR POINTS panel), the console marshals it to a scored finish, and the Death Race path still passes its regression unchanged. Known gap: lobby members cannot pick their own team or position yet - the host pick seeds a deterministic assignment. Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
77 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
77 lines
4.9 KiB
Markdown
# Red Planet 4.12 — the Steamification
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**Red Planet** is VWE's pod-racing game: eight-player VTV contests on Mars
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— **Martian Death Race** and **Martian Football** — originally played from
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inside VWE Tesla cockpit pods. This repo is the third life of that code:
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| Generation | What it was |
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|------------|-------------|
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| **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) |
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| **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 |
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| **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 |
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The architecture is deliberately conservative: the VWE's design survives
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intact, with each pod-era dependency replaced by a consumer equivalent
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behind the engine's existing seams.
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| Arcade (4.10/4.11) | 4.12 replacement |
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|--------------------|------------------|
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| RIO cockpit board (serial) | **PadRIO** — virtual RIO from XInput pad + keyboard, fully rebindable (`bindings.txt`, vRIO profile format) |
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| 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 |
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| Pod button lamps | On-screen lamps, plus an **RGB keyboard mirror** (Windows Dynamic Lighting) |
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| 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) |
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| TeslaLauncher relaunch-per-mission | **Single binary** — menu → race → results → menu in one process |
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| 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) |
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| Site network / fixed IPs | **Steam lobbies** — lobby owner is the console; members exchange FakeIPs and loadouts as lobby data |
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**Status: it works.** Release
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[v4.12.2](https://gitea.mysticmachines.com/VWE/RP412/releases/tag/v4.12.2)
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carries the first verified end-to-end internet build: three machines, three
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Steam accounts, lobby → mesh → marshaled five-minute race → deaths and
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respawns → timed stop → results on every machine → rematch from the same
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lobby.
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## Playing
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Grab the release zip (or run `pack-dist.ps1` on a build). Single player:
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run `start-windowed.bat` — the game boots into the setup menu, where the
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SCENARIO group picks Death Race or Football (Football swaps in the
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team/position columns and its own track list). Steam multiplayer: see
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[docs/STEAM-3-MACHINE-TEST.md](docs/STEAM-3-MACHINE-TEST.md) (until RP412
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has its own AppID it runs under Spacewar, 480).
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The two config files beside the exe are self-documenting: **environ.ini**
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(every engine option, commented) and **bindings.txt** (every key, pad
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button, and axis; written with the full default layout on first run).
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Default controls: numpad flies (8/2/4/6 stick, 7/9 pedals, 0 trigger),
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Shift/Ctrl throttle, Alt reverse, arrows look, Space fires, letter rows
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are the MFD button banks as printed on the panel. **Alt+Q** aborts a
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mission.
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## Building
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**VS 2022 (v143)** + DirectX SDK June 2010 + the vendored Steamworks SDK
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(`extern/steamworks_sdk_164`) — see [BUILD.md](BUILD.md). Solution
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`WinTesla.sln`, configuration `Release|Win32`, output
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`Release\rpl4opt.exe`.
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## Documentation
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| Doc | Contents |
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|-----|----------|
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| [docs/RP412-ROADMAP.md](docs/RP412-ROADMAP.md) | The original plan and workstreams |
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| [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 |
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| [docs/STEAM-3-MACHINE-TEST.md](docs/STEAM-3-MACHINE-TEST.md) | Multiplayer test procedure, Steam Input notes, the abort key |
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| [BUILD.md](BUILD.md) | Toolchain and build steps |
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Dev tooling: `tools/two-pod-test.ps1` races two pods on loopback,
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marshaled by a console feeder speaking the arcade Munga protocol.
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## Related repositories
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| Repo | Role |
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|------|------|
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| [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) |
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| [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 |
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| [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) |
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