Enabling gauges crashed (null-this, illegal 0x478). Root cause was NOT video:
the MUNGA main heap (fixed 6MB default) exhausted loading gauge images. The
heap size comes from getenv("HEAPSIZE") (BTL4OPT.EXE @0x401076; default
0x600000); the pod's PARAMETR.BAT sets it (:POD=15MB, :REVIEW/:LOOP=32MB) but
our minimal setenv launch never did. memsize is irrelevant (it's the game's
own heap, not DOS memory -- verified memsize=127 still gave 6MB). Pods have
32MB RAM so 15MB fits.
Fix (no binary patch): set HEAPSIZE=15000000 + L4GAUGE=640x480x16 in
gauge.conf. Game now runs sustained with gauges on (500+ frames); the VESA
640x480x16 mode switches fine on our emulated S3 and the cockpit instrument
panels draw (DISPLAY/PROGRAM/ENG DATA/TRIGGER CONFIG...).
patch_btl4opt.py also gained Verify_Failed (DEBUG-build assertion) neutral-
ization -- release-equivalent robustness, separate from the heap fix.
Known-open (GAUGE-NOTES.md): the framebuffer renders only a top strip,
garbled -- the game bank-switches via a hardcoded far pointer in L4GAUGE.INI
(C000:2616, the STB Horizon+ card's VESA WinFuncPtr) that isn't valid on our
emulated S3, so only the first bank(s) page in. Fixing bank-switching (or an
LFB mode) is next; then the full buffer can be split into the six displays.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Lighting: stride-8/9 vertices carry a normal (floats 3-5, uv at 6-7). The
backend transforms normals by the instance rotation and lights with a single
directional sun (GL_LIGHT0, smooth, two-sided, GL_COLOR_MATERIAL). Terrain
and hulls shade instead of reading flat.
LOD: the lod flush has no switch distances -- the host keeps the active LOD
at the child-list head and re-orders over the wire, so children[0] is right
and LOD changes come through as the sim runs.
The crash that halted the game once the RIO drove the sim was not ours: fault
at 0047E1D1 writing 0xFFFFFFFF is the RIO driver's DISABLE_AND_DIE debug
macro (PCSPAK.ASM, DIE_ON_ERROR=1), which deliberately faults on a serial-tx
anomaly -- error 3 = body char >0x7F during a RIO packet, i.e. a glitch on a
board reset. Release build (DIE_ON_ERROR=0) compiles it out and recovers
(and al,07Fh). patch_btl4opt.py NOPs all 12 sites by signature (with .orig
backup) = release behavior; game then survives RIO resets (1200+ frames).
(ALPHA_1 is git-ignored, so the tool ships, not the patched binary.)
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Texturing (validated live -- game-live-textured.png, the ravine's brown dirt
terrain): the wire model is Division's intensity+ramp scheme. action 26
uploads 8-bit intensity texels ([node][nbytes][w][h] + rows; type 13 =
texture); texmap (12) references the texture; material (11) references its
texmap and a ramp (14: lo/hi RGB); texel color = lerp(lo, hi, i/255). The
backend bakes RGBA per material, uploads to GL, maps with wire UVs
(stride-5: floats 3-4; stride-8/9: floats 6-7).
Serial (directserial fork options, tracked in vpx-device/serialport/):
- rxpollus:<us> -- receive poll tick (stock 1ms); 100us discovers inbound
bytes ~10x sooner. Validated: sim advanced, camera moved with real RIO.
- rxburst:<n> -- stock DOSBox re-serializes received bytes at emulated wire
speed (~1ms/byte at 9600) though they already paid wire time on the real
cable; a 15-byte analog reply gained ~14ms, blowing the RIO's few-ms ACK
window and dropping the game into its 15-second retry fallback
(L4CTRL.CPP limit=15.0 //0.2). rxburst:16 delivers buffered bytes 16x
faster. game_rio.conf: realport:COM1 rxpollus:100 rxburst:16.
Crash-on-advance fixed: *_TSHD.BGF terrain shadows live only in arena
subdirs the search path misses; null shadow renderable was dereferenced once
the sim moved. All 11 copied into VIDEO/GEO in the working image; game now
runs sustained (560+ frames, textured, no crash). Details in RIO-NOTES.md.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The full DPL hierarchy the game uses (vs flyk's flat scene) is now decoded
and rendered:
- stride-aware set_geom_verts (header word 3 = floats/vertex: 3/4/5/8/9;
mech meshes carry normals + UVs)
- instances are list_add children of DCS nodes; instance flush field 4 ->
object; object->lod->geogroup->geometry; dcs_link builds the articulation
tree of 4x4s (payload floats 4..19, row-major, row 3 = translation)
- game world is y-down (DCS matrices carry a reflection); projection flips
x (Division mirror) and y
render_game.py reconstructs a captured game stream offline: the mission
arena (10km, 246 instances, 330 geometries), the player's Thor at the
camera, six enemy mechs 1.5km north -- game-mech-decoded.png shows one with
real hull/armor/glass materials; game-cockpit-decoded.png the cockpit view.
The live backend (vpxlog.cpp) gained the same traversal and now draws the
game's out-the-window view in real time (game-live-gl.png): sky, arena
floor to the horizon, own gun barrels at frame bottom.
Next: texturing (action-26 texel maps + UVs), lighting from wire normals,
per-frame articulation once the RIO drives the sim.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
The emulated VPX board now draws frames in real time. The FIFO burst
assembler feeds an in-process DPL scene store; each vr_draw_scene publishes a
frame snapshot to a dedicated WGL window thread that renders it fixed-function.
- vpxlog.cpp: scene_burst() decode + VScene store + rt_main GL window thread;
glFrustum from the view-node window rect, glScalef(-1,1,1) for Division's
mirrored screen-x, action-31 camera as modelview. No build change (opengl32
already linked).
- Validated: flyk divrgb.scn opens the "VPX VelociRender (emulated)" window
and draws the SMPTE bars live via the real camera.spl spline camera
(divrgb-live-gl.png), matching the offline render_capture.py decode.
- Game path (alpha1.conf) opens the window + draws background but hits the
pre-existing production btdpl.ini vr_sync timeout (sends_wo_rcv) -- not a 3b
issue. Remaining work tracked in PHASE3-PROGRESS.md.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
- vpxlog.cpp: VPX_FIFODUMP=<path> records every FIFO burst ('VPXM' records)
- decode_fifodump.py: action census + payload dumps of a capture
- render_capture.py: reconstruct the DPL scene graph from a capture and
software-render each draw_scene frame (camera, view, materials, geometry
all taken from the wire)
- divrgb.conf + divrgb.fifodump: flyk divrgb.scn capture fixture
- divrgb-decoded.png / divrgb-frame0.png: first images ever produced from
the Rel 4.10 VPX protocol without a real board -- the textbook SMPTE
color-bar pattern, validating verts/conns/materials/camera in one shot
- PHASE3-PROGRESS.md: the established Rel 4.10 wire protocol (action map,
node types, message layouts); RENDER-HARNESS.md updated
Co-Authored-By: Claude Opus 4.8 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Built DOSBox-X from source with a custom VPX link-adapter logging
device (vpx-device/vpxlog.cpp) and captured the game's outbound boot
sequence. Findings:
- Register map confirmed against LINKIO.C: outputData 0x151,
outputStatus 0x153 (polled bit0), resetRoot 0x160, analyseRoot 0x161.
- Reset preamble captured exactly (analyse=0, reset 0->1->0 + status inits).
- The game streams 85298 bytes to outputData that are BYTE-FOR-BYTE
identical to VRENDMON.BTL; first byte 0xF0 = transputer boot-from-link
primary-bootstrap length. Protocol stage 1 (reset + monitor download)
fully characterized; no hidden bulk/interrupt path.
- Production cockpit dump ALPHA_1 added (git-ignored): its BT is v1.1.0.6
with a VRENDMON.BTL byte-identical to the captured stream, so this
result reflects the exact cockpit software. ALPHA_1 is the reference
image going forward (carries RP + production pod/network boot chain).
Adds analyze_capture.py, capture.conf, PHASE1-RESULTS.md. DOSBox-X
source tree and capture artifacts are git-ignored.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
Baseline boot test under DOSBox-X confirms the emulation architecture
empirically. Key findings:
- Borland 32RTM/DPMI runtime works under DOSBox-X (risk retired).
- BTLIVE ships a version-mismatched BTL4.RES (1.0.1.2 vs EXE 1.0.1.4);
BTRAVINE (1.1.0.6) is self-consistent and matches this repo's source
(BTL4VER.HPP), so it is the development image.
- With the matched image the game boots through the resource check and
BTL4Application construction, polls the RIO on COM1, then reads the
VPX link at port 0x150, gets 0xffffffff, and fails rcv_protocol with
'length 65535 too big' — the exact VR_COMMS.C path the plan predicted.
Adds emulator/baseline.conf (repro) and emulator/PHASE0-RESULTS.md.
Working binaries (dosbox-x/, image/) are git-ignored.
Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
CydandClaude Opus 4.8