Commit Graph
5 Commits
Author SHA1 Message Date
CydandClaude Fable 5 0e763fda1f BT410 5.3.113: the displays lag because the loop is slow, and the loop was slow because the flags were wrong -- authentic OPT.MAK optimizer set adopted
The operator's 'many seconds between display updates', run to ground:

MECHANISM (verified in source AND the shipped exe bytes): main passes
GetTicksPerSecond() as ApplicationManager's frame RATE, so frameDuration
is microscopic and RunMissions runs flat-out -- exactly ONE background
slot per loop frame, shipped and ours alike (ctor constant @0044f2d8 ==
1.0f, read straight out of BTL4OPT.EXE). That slot feeds a 7-task ring;
the gauge renderer gets 1/7th of slots, one ACTIVE gauge per slot, and
the screen blits once per completed wheel pass. The wheel is 136 gauges
-- and the BT_GAUGE_LOG roster dump shows all 136 are real cockpit
instruments (26 armor colormappers, leak gauges, cooling loops, weapon
clusters...): a Tesla pod shows everything at once, so the roster is
AUTHENTIC and must not be trimmed. Per-instrument latency is therefore
7 x 146 / loop_fps -- the loop rate is the only lever.

THE DEFECT: build410.sh compiled -O2 alone. The authentic release tier
(CODE/BT/OPT.MAK) is -O2 -Ot -Oc -Og -O -Ol -Z -Ob -Oe -Oi -Om -Op -Ov.
Adopting it (all 234 TUs clean, no BC4.52 optimizer ICEs) doubled the
loop: 16.7 -> ~30 fps wall on the rig. Shipped fifo throughput is still
~2x ours (11.8KB/s vs 6.4KB/s, governor-conflated) -- residual gap is an
open question pinned in GAUGE-CADENCE-NOTES.md with the operator A/B ask.

Instrumentation kept, cheap and gated: slot/wheel counters on the
[stack] line (BT_STACK_LOG), one-shot roster dump (BT_GAUGE_LOG),
tick-delta timers compile-gated BT_TICK_PROBES (OFF -- guest tick sums
proved to be trap-burst artifacts in the emulator, not costs; wall rates
are the only trustworthy measure). New: MUNGA/APPTASK.CPP shadow,
fifofps.py (true board fps from a fifodump), pod_render_bgprobe.conf.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-08-04 01:42:08 -05:00
CydandClaude Fable 5 d3b332a62a BT410 5.3.58: the load gate is blocked by a REFILL loop on priority 0, not starvation
Per-priority occupancy, measured every second until the fault:

  [queues] p0=BUSY p1=- p2=BUSY p3=- p4=- nextReady=1

That single line kills the two leading theories.  p3/p4 empty means nothing
above priority 0 is competing, so the pump is free to serve it -- no
starvation.  nextReady=1 means PeekAtNextEvent always has a READY event, so
priority 0 is not holding a timed event whose alarm never comes due -- no
deadlock.  What remains is refill: priority 0 is replenished as fast as the
pump drains it, ~143 events per simulated second.

It is also fully deterministic.  Two runs of the same binary reported
pump=352/1499 at frame 1001 and 495/2643 at frame 2002, identical to the byte.
So 'crashes about half the time' was never a race -- it was comparing runs that
differed in binary or conf.

Only InterestManager::PostRendererEvent posts at priority 0 (it maps every
renderer event there while the app is not RunningMission), so naming the
message names the flooder.  Application::Post now tallies priority-0 posts by
message ID and reports the busiest three.  Notably, all three producers of
NotifyOfNewInterestingEntity are entity-CREATION paths, so if that ID dominates
then something is creating entities in a loop -- which would explain the
unbounded growth behind the fault as well as the hang.

pod_render_noskl.conf now carries the same probes, so one instrumented binary
can be run with the skeleton walk on and off.  Walk-off runs are the only
configuration of ours known to reach 'Turning Plasma Score Display On'.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-28 22:20:11 -05:00
CydandClaude Fable 5 4cf09917ce BT410 5.3.57: the crash is deterministic, and the real blocker is the load gate
The previous commit's attribution was wrong and is corrected in the roadmap.

WRONG: 'the crash is the skeleton walk's' rested on 0 crashes in 2 runs with
the walk disabled -- a 25% coin flip presented as evidence.  The oldest
preserved dump has no [skl] line and ends on the old 'couldn't figure out how
to MakeEntityRenderables' fallback, so it predates the walk and faults
identically.

WRONG: 'it lands at different points each time'.  Every dump carries the same
numbers to the byte (cr2 7000FA64, EIP 66D9).  What varies is how far the log
gets, not where the fault is.

Resolving the address through btl4opt.map names it exactly:
EulerAngles::operator=(const LinearMatrix&)+0x19, a read through the matrix
reference.  A binary scan finds all three call sites of that operator pass a
stack local, so the 1.79GB pointer still has no static explanation -- that is
now its own open item rather than a guess.

Two theories killed cleanly by the new BT_STACK_LOG probe and a binary scan:
ESP drift (drift=0 over 2002 frames; exactly one callee-cleans function exists
in the whole binary) and an undersized stack (our PE and the shipped one have
identical 1MB/8K geometry).

What the probe found matters more: the application is parked in state=2, which
is LoadingMission, not WaitingForLaunch.  Priority 0 is where the interest
manager queues renderer events during load, the gate needs that priority empty,
and it never empties -- so the mission never launches and the renderer holds a
blank screen by design.  The fault arrives ~30s into that wait.  Runs that DO
launch never print a single [launch] line.  So 'crashes half the time' and
'hangs during load' are one event seen twice.

A 15x disagreement between two clocks looked like a reconstruction slip --
BTL4.CPP passes GetTicksPerSecond() where ApplicationManager wants a frame
rate.  Checked against the shipped binary before touching it: same instruction
sequence, same kind of static float pushed.  Authentic.  Documented so nobody
'fixes' it.

Also swept every subsystem DefaultData against its real C++ base.  Fifteen
chain past their immediate parent, but fourteen skip only classes that add no
handlers and no attributes, and no class's attribute-ID base disagrees with its
index chain -- so there are no gap slots there.  The one real defect: Generator
is a HeatSink but chained to Subsystem::MessageHandlers, so it ignored every
ToggleCooling message.  Fixed (compiles next build).

Tooling: podrun.sh stages the build over BTL4REC.EXE, exports the host-side VPX
board env -- without which the run dies at the iserver handshake rather than
merely rendering nothing -- and archives every run's log, marking it -CRASH
when it faulted.  Before this the only preserved dump was an accident, on a rig
where each run costs four minutes.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-28 21:41:38 -05:00
CydandClaude Fable 5 09192367c0 BT410 5.3.51: THE 3-D WORLD RENDERS -- reconstruction to emulated board to a picture
emulator/render-bridge/first-3d-frame.png: the arena from the pod -- sky,
horizon, ground, the arena structures along the skyline -- at ~31fps on the
VelociRender bridge.

The whole chain now works in our build: MakeVideoRenderer ->
BTL4VideoRenderer over DPLRenderer -> board boot -> Renderer::LoadMission ->
DPLReadEnvironment for the art paths -> 40/40 arena objects loaded -> mission
launch -> per-frame submission over the wire.

The mistake worth remembering: the run was never stalled after
InitializePlayerLink.  I called that from a 150-second sample and it was just
too short.  CheckLoadMessageHandler reposts every second and will not advance
until the min-priority event queue drains, and with the video renderer in the
mission that takes minutes.  A BT_LAUNCH_LOG trace showed the queue draining
and then both RunMissionMessageHandler calls, the plasma display, and the
first sensor tick -- matching the shipped binary line for line.  The renderer
deliberately holds a blank screen until RunningMission (L4VIDEO.CPP:5100), so
'black' was the app still loading, not a rendering bug.

Zero unbuildable entities, zero geometry failures.  The frame is static only
because the mech is parked with no input, and the camera in the bridge title
is the bridge's own viewer, not the game's eyepoint.

Also banked the launch-gate trace (BT_LAUNCH_LOG) behind an env var.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-28 10:30:20 -05:00
CydandClaude Fable 5 af80d52e22 source410: engine COMPLETE (165/165) - link reaches PE emission; deep ledger cut
The tlink32 campaign after the checkpoint: eleven engine bodies back-dated
from BT412 (rotation player team explode dropzone terrain cultural receiver
subsystm app l4gauge - the Application core included), the WinTesla-ectomy
handled by backdate.py's new unwrap rules (accessor-fn statics -> 1995 static
objects, decl rewrites, pointer->reference Derivation ctor, 2007 windowed-
gauge/console-marshal/idle-pump excisions), staged statics TUs opened for the
game classes (MECH/BTPLAYER/BTDIRECT/PROJTILE/MISSILE/BTL4MPPR .CPP + L4APP/
NETWORK engine statics).

State: every compiled symbol short of the shallow graph RESOLVED (the 52- and
17-symbol ledgers burned to zero); with 32stub.exe in place the linker reaches
full vtable closure and emits the deep ledger (~210 symbols, UNRESOLVED-
LEDGER.txt): remaining engine bodies (objstrm cstr gauge/gaugrend graphics
pixelmap palette resfile ray scnrole explosion-table), the DOS driver extern
layer (_SVGA*/_PCSerial*/_PCSPAK*/joystick/netnub/sosMIDI), the full L4App
body, and the real game-TU frontier (Mech::Make et al.). Recipe proven for
every category.

Co-Authored-By: Claude Fable 5 <noreply@anthropic.com>
2026-07-19 11:25:49 -05:00