CydandClaude Opus 5
4f34684b16
Packing one into every zip meant a tester who unzipped a new build over their folder got their configuration replaced. bindings.txt has never had that problem, because the exe carries the template and writes the file only when it is absent. environ.ini now works the same way, so a new build can land on an existing folder and every setting survives. The 245-line template moves out of pack-dist.ps1 and into RPL4ENVIRON.cpp as the exe's own literal, which also means the exe alone can produce a working install. It was lifted mechanically rather than retyped, and the file it writes is line-for-line identical to the one we have been shipping - only the line endings changed, from a mongrel 243 LF plus one stray CRLF that PowerShell's Set-Content left on the end, to the uniform LF the game already writes bindings.txt with. It cannot simply become optional. Without environ.ini, L4GAUGE is unset - which disables the gauge renderer and takes every MFD with it - and L4MFDSPLIT is unset, which is the packed-window arcade layout rather than the glass cockpit. The shipped values ARE the desktop game; the built-in getenv fallbacks are the 1995 pod. So the game writes the file rather than tolerating its absence. The cost of a file that is never overwritten is that a tester carrying one across many builds stops being offered new options. Nothing breaks - an option added later defaults to "behave as before" - but it goes unnoticed, and "the podium does not work" is a confusing bug report when the real answer is that their environ.ini predates RP412PODIUM. So the load names every template key the player's file has never mentioned, and says they are at built-in defaults and that deleting the file brings the documented one back. A stale seven-line file lists all 40. The file is read, never rewritten. The mention test is deliberately generous - a key counts as known if it appears in any form, commented or not - because the failure it guards against is worse than a missed notice: environ.ini is applied line by line, so a second copy of a key appearing later in the file would silently override the player's own. The version line also moves to the top of WinMain. It used to print after the environment was loaded, so the first thing in rpl4.log was a message about environ.ini rather than which build wrote it. Verified: the written file matches the old shipped one line for line; an edited file with a hand-added comment survives another run untouched; a seven-line file from an older build boots and names all 40 options it has never heard of; and a full mission on a self-written file brings up the glass cockpit at 125% with the virtual RIO active and nothing alarming in the log. Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 5 (1M context) <noreply@anthropic.com>
139 lines
8.8 KiB
Markdown
139 lines
8.8 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.**
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[v4.12.2](https://gitea.mysticmachines.com/VWE/RP412/releases/tag/v4.12.2)
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carried 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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[v4.12.3](https://gitea.mysticmachines.com/VWE/RP412/releases/tag/v4.12.3)
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is about the screen. The cockpit now scales up as well as down and re-fits
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whenever the window changes, keeping 16:9 so a wide panel letterboxes
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instead of stretching; `-fit` runs it borderless over the whole monitor and
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picks the render size to land on the viewscreen 1:1. The displays are the
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player's to arrange — each of the six can be scaled on its own and the
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radar moved out of the middle of the road (`environ.ini`). Each display's
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button bank now reaches under its glass, so the picture itself is the press
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target rather than a sliver at the edge.
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[v4.12.4](https://gitea.mysticmachines.com/VWE/RP412/releases/tag/v4.12.4)
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is about the lobby. Both rooms now show the host's mission setup — the track,
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then time of day, weather and game length — since everyone flies the owner's
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picks and it was the one thing in the room nobody could see for themselves.
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The football team sheet names each player's VTV beside their team colours and
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position. And a lobby holds **eight** players rather than four, a full grid as
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the pod hall ran it, with the room sizing its roster to whatever space the
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window gives it.
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[v4.12.5](https://gitea.mysticmachines.com/VWE/RP412/releases/tag/v4.12.5)
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restores the **Winners Circle**. The pod hall stood the finishers on a
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numbered award platform when the race ended, and all of it was still in this
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repo — the stand, eight ranked spots in every map, and the code to put racers
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on them — wired only into the mission-review build and so never once run by a
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pod. The race now fades out and fades back in on the platform: finishers in
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finishing order, each pilot's callsign on the plate beside their spot, the
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cockpit glass cleared away, held for a few seconds before the results screen.
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Three pieces of it had been stubbed out in the D3D9 port and are working
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again.
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[v4.12.6](https://gitea.mysticmachines.com/VWE/RP412/releases/tag/v4.12.6)
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is about the windows. Where you put them now survives the
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menu-race-menu loop: `RP412MFDLAYOUT` remembers the game window, the
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exploded view's display panes and the plasma glass in `mfd_layout.cfg`
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beside `bindings.txt`. Append `,noframe` to a line to take that
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window's title bar and border off — a cockpit filling the monitor edge
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to edge at a rect you chose, rather than `-fit` taking the whole
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screen — and the setup screen carries its own **EXIT GAME** button,
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since a window with no title bar needs a way out. The Steam buttons
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now dim and say *STEAM NOT RUNNING* instead of disappearing. And the
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Winners Circle camera is framed off the award stand itself rather than
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off whoever is standing on it, so the shot is the same one for every
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player at every head count.
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[v4.12.7](https://gitea.mysticmachines.com/VWE/RP412/releases/tag/v4.12.7)
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is about sticks. Anything that is not an Xbox-class pad — a flight stick,
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a HOTAS throttle, a twist grip, rudder pedals, a wheel — comes in through
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DirectInput rather than XInput, and the game could not see any of it.
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Now it can, and `joyconfig.bat` sets it up: the wizard asks you to move
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each control in turn, works out which device and axis answered and which
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way round it reads, and writes the joystick rows of `bindings.txt`,
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leaving anything you have edited yourself alone. A twist grip or rudder
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bar drives both pedals through one signed `Pedals` axis, and a real
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throttle lever owns its channel outright rather than nudging a position
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the way a spring-centred stick has to. Ported from the sibling BT411.
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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 config files beside the exe are self-documenting and none of them
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ship: the game writes each one the first time it needs it and then leaves
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it alone, so a new build dropped over an existing folder keeps every
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setting. **environ.ini** is every engine option, commented; **bindings.txt**
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every key, pad button and axis; **pilot.cfg** your callsign and loadout;
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**mfd_layout.cfg** where you dragged the windows. Delete any of them to
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start that part over with the current defaults.
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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. Full map with pad and keyboard diagrams:
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[docs/CONTROLS.md](docs/CONTROLS.md).
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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/CONTROLS.md](docs/CONTROLS.md) | Controls map — pad and keyboard diagrams, the panel button banks, rebinding |
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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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